Os saberes ambientais em movimentos populares no entorno das lagoas Itaperaoba e Papicu.

Abstract

This dissertation intends to understand how environmental knowledge is developed in popular movements which pursuit the revitalization of lakes in Fortaleza, and identify the connection between its demands and the formation of popular knowledge about the environmental issue, in order to encourage collective praxis. The theoretical and methodological orientation is based on a historical-dialectical viewpoint, associated with emphasis on relation, consented by the Echo-Relational Perspective (PER). It is a Participant Research, which includes the following techniques: participant observation, provided by continuous interaction between researcher and research subjects; semi-structured interviews, supported by guide containing general questions and topics, focusing on the subjects’ historical actions inside the movements and their perception about the knowledge generated and the popular and environmental dynamics; focus group, aiming to obtain information about environmental knowledge and supply the interaction between two different popular groups. This research is grounded by a critical and dialogic conception of Environmental Education which led the themes of creation, practice and organization of environmental knowledge immersed in the subjects’ everyday life. The results are demonstrated according to three fundamental categories, working as mediation which grants the establishment of knowledge in the popular groups. These categories are: social relations that constitute and are constituted at the same time by popular movements; the movement itself; and the bases which contribute to the subjects’ formation. In speakers’ life experience and talks, it’s possible to identify knowledge and values associated with respect, environmental awareness, planetary responsibility, complexity, critical viewpoint about reality, environmental bureaucracy, collectiveness importance, dynamics of popular movements and self perception. In conclusion, in the combination of different pieces of mediation, it’s likely to identify the establishment of knowledge capable of promote individual and collective praxis. The relations set up in the interior of the groups make the subjects recognize each other. This is provided either by the boundaries they present or by the apprenticing process when confronting their different kinds of social reality. There is also the need of encourage thinking and experiences that can develop group consciousness. The relation to the place, in which the lake is inserted as one of its components, is based on the affectivity that makes the subjects find a new meaning for urban places. The lake takes this position of place that keeps memories, symbols and interaction concerning to peoples’ life in both individual and collective ways, single elements tied with plural issues and dreams. To sum up, environmental praxis requires affective attribution of meaning to the place because structural conditions are not enough to knowledge development.