Dialogando com Lideranças Comunitárias sobre participação: um estudo sócio-psicológico

Abstract

T his study discusses the understanding and experiences of community leaderships concerning community participation. It presents the partial results of an exploratory field research with qualitative approach based on content analysis. Community psychology is the used theoretical-methodological referential. The study discusses studies addressing social participation in the health context and highlights challenges and barriers. The discussed and analyzed reports of community leaders indicate conceptions of community participation related to solidarity, involvement and commitment to the common, the need to collectively improve the neighborhood, to construct knowledge concerning the community, and participants’ valorization and personal development. The community participation is set forth as a process that express a dialectic relation in which the community subject overlaps his/her housing context.