A catação de lixo na (de)formação da criança como ser social

Abstract

This study deals with scavenger children’s quality of life and work, highlighting the subjective meanings of garbage collection and the (de)formation of the scavenger child as a social being. This research was motivated by the observed children exploitation, their daily roaming, the excessive load on their puny bodies under the sun and the rain. Long-lastingly, the children try to complement the family income or their own survival. With the family, in pairs or by themselves, the children collect what is left from the city day. The investigation was carried out in Granja Portugal district, in Fortaleza, and the main subjects were 11-year-old scavenger children, beyond their parents and educators. Considering the capitalist society contradictions, this research starts from the objective reality which these subjects live in to understand their singularity. The theoretical input used is based upon Leontiev studies (1978, 1986), which deals with the main activity and formation of the subject in the historic-cultural psychology; Marxian-Lukacsian ontology aspects concerning work as a social being’s founding category; Heller studies (2001) about the daily and non-daily life as spheres of man’s social activity. When discussing the individuation, schooling and daily life process, Duarte (2001) is also a reference used in this study, to maintain the theoretic-practical coherence. The results show that in an early insertion in the adult world, the children mingle with the other scavengers in garbage dumps. There, they learn, in conversations, about profit, change, school grant, sex and, above all, exploitation. That makes them feel half adults, half children, confusing them in the definition of their main activity. The school that receives these kids, not actually receiving them, also reinforces the negative image of them, what interferes in the definition of their main activity. Consequently, that reaches the child’s singular individuality, overshadowing their subjective free expression. This way, instead of being presented as social-historic subjects, which give them the human emancipation prospect, the scavenger children are seen as objects of social protection, as well as control and discipline objects. These presentations created by the men in the capitalist sociability crystallize the scavenger children’s subjectivity in the everyday life sphere.