Novas tecnologias e meio urbano

Os objetos de estudo desta pesquisa são projetos de arquitetura de residências unifamiliares com captação e aproveitamento de águas pluviais. A pesquisa tem como objetivos abordar o aproveitamento de águas pluviais como condicionante dos projetos arquitetônicos; verificar como os sistemas de captação e aproveitamento de águas pluviais impactam na arquitetura e na cidade; levantar, através de entrevistas, a postura projetual de arquitetos e contribuir para referenciar novas propostas no âmbito da arquitetura. Os dados da pesquisa detectam a importância da proposição destes sistemas nos projetos de arquitetura; mostram que sua concepção deve ser iniciada já na etapa de estudo preliminar, evidenciam mudanças na postura projetual dos arquitetos neste sentido e concluem que, para o município de São Paulo, o volume de águas pluviais que pode ser captado em residências unifamiliares e aproveitado para fins não potáveis é bastante significativo. As conclusões e dados obtidos podem subsidiar futuras pesquisas e divulgar a proposição do aproveitamento de águas pluviais em projetos arquitetônicos.

É esperado que na idade pré-escolar a atenção esteja ainda em formação. Entretanto, as queixas de problemas atencionais nessa faixa etária têm justificado novos estudos sobre recursos terapêuticos eficientes para minimizar os prejuízos desses traços, especialmente no ambiente escolar. Poucos estudos foram encontrados sobre essa questão, apesar do recente aumento de indicações na literatura. Este estudo teve como objetivo observar os efeitos da prática da yoga nos traços de dificuldades atencionais e comportamentos externalizantes apresentados no ambiente escolar em crianças entre 4 anos e 6 anos e 11 meses. Esta pesquisa clínica e randomizada trata do desenvolvimento, aplicação e avaliação de uma intervenção de prática de yoga de 11 semanas em duas escolas públicas na cidade de São Paulo. No total, 24 crianças foram triadas e distribuídas aleatoriamente entre grupo controle e grupo experimental. O método de avaliação usado foi a escala C-TRF. Os resultados demonstraram melhoras significativas nos problemas de atenção, comportamentos externalizantes e melhora no tempo de permanência na atividade. O estudo ainda discute fatores que contribuíram com os resultados da prática e com o desenvolvimento atencional na idade pré-escolar.

This thesis considers how residents of a favela (shantytown) in the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil use the internet to publish and disseminate content, particularly on blogs, which puts forward their own representations of the area where they live. The interdisciplinary and ethnographically inspired approach taken in this thesis links content published on blogs to the practices involved in its publication and circulation, in a wider 'communicative ecology' of local content creation incorporating other internet platforms, as well as print media. The emergence of web 2.0 has widened the possibilities for the production of local content by ordinary people, at the same time as it has paved the way for a broader understanding and application of the term 'local content', outside of projects which include the publication and dissemination of such content as a goal. Whilst place remains a crucially important reference in people's use of the internet, the internet is also a medium through which to explore and develop affiliations which go beyond place. This thesis includes a critical and theoretical exploration of what the 'local' means in the context of the internet, and draws on networked theories of place and locality. It proposes that local content can be understood as the expression of a potentially plural and diverse ecology of locality constructed around (and by) individuals, incorporating multiple locations and interests. Sectors of Brazilian society, and in particular the mainstream media, tend to homogenise favelas and to portray them as territories of violence, crime and poverty, which are not recognised as part of the official city. These dominant representations remain an important reference which favela residents attempt to work against when producing their own content. Favela residents publishing internet content with an awareness of its potential translocal visibility are thus particularly concerned with place, and with the affirmation of the territorial embeddedness of their content as a way of combatting the stigmatisation of their neighbourhoods. The thesis presents three detailed case studies focusing on the work of specific content creators from the same Rio de Janeiro favela, showing how they employ different practices to explicitly anchor their content in a particular geographical location, at the same time as they affirm the favela where they live as an integral part of the city, which is also connected to other favelas and urban periphery neighbourhoods through shared perspectives and concerns. This local content can be understood as part of a broader trend towards the increased visibility of the Brazilian urban periphery in recent years, both as a result of projects set up by non-governmental organisations, and independent cultural production by favela residents. Whilst the internet, and digital technologies more broadly speaking, have been an important factor in this visibility, this thesis argues that despite the innovative and dynamic nature of Brazilian digital culture, and the rising levels of internet access by favela residents in Rio de Janeiro, a more nuanced assessment of the effects and implications of digital culture is required. Access to the internet by favela residents in Rio de Janeiro and their use of this medium for the publication and dissemination of more diverse (self-)representations of favelas has challenged some hierarchies, but by no means removed them. The empirical insights provided by this thesis show how a local content approach, which is both conceptual and methodological, can shed new light on internet practices and representations of the local within a specific context.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have emerged as symbols of modernity in the developing world, and currently policy makers and popular press perceived them as bridges to promote social and digital equalities. However, scholars have regularly demonstrated that digital inclusion projects have often failed to meet expectations related to human development objectives. Some postulate that the problem may not be entirely one of project failure, but rather of our limited understanding of the value that technology provides. Hence, this dissertation emphasizes the socio-cultural aspects of digital inclusion projects aimed at favela residents and attempts to understand ICTs aspects and practices from their perspective.

Favelas, urban slums in Brazil, are considered marginalized areas due to the absence of State social and physical investments. As a consequence of this, such areas lack proper infrastructure, sanitation and road systems and provide their residents, the marginalized, with a low quality of life. Favela residents are deprived not only of proper services for their basic needs, such as health and education, but also of access to technology and Internet. Most of them rely on community technology centers (CTCs) to access ICTs. Based on an over eight-month ethnography in the favelas of Vitória, Brazil, this dissertation focuses on the motivations, engagements, and adoption of ICTs by favela residents in CTCs. It asks the following questions: (1) What is their experience using CTCs? (2) How does their experience inform the ways we should think about what constitutes empowerment and disempowerment vis-à-vis ICTs? It argues that theoretical positions stemming from technology utilitarianism need expanding, because mundane and non-instrumental practices observed in the favelas shed light on the importance of technology in a variety of dimensions within people’s lives. Encompassing such practices contributes to a broader comprehension of the engagements and strategies that help shape the daily use of technology by people who suffer the consequences of being poor and marginalized.

This dissertation addresses the connections between everyday violence and digital technology. I describe three years of ethnographic research concerning a community policing program called “pacificação ”(pacification) in a Brazilian favela (shanty town). Alongside supporting a permanent police force that destabilized a powerful drug faction, pacification policy endorsed a wide range of social projects and dramatically reshaped the relationship between the Brazilian State and its marginalized citizens. Among the social projects associated with pacification were a number of “inclusão digital” (digital inclusion) programs that combined technical literacy with critical political literacy in the hope of disrupting exclusionary conditions. During my observations of these programs, I found what I call a hidden politics of digital reproduction. Rather than disrupting the pacified favela’s social conditions, as proponents of digital inclusion suggested, technology disguised and reproduced longstanding forms of oppression. I recount several examples of digital inclusion’s hidden politics including technology corporations that used a discourse of disruption to promote middleclass consumerism in the favela and police who appropriated the rhetoric of social media activist to distract from human rights abuses. In considering these hidden politics of digital reproduction, my theoretical discussion informs anthropological scholarship concerning violence, a modern information society, and democracy in marginalized urban communities.

Since the turn of the 21st century, favela communities have faced new and unprecedented challenges in the light of renewed eviction threats and displacement connected to real estate development and speculation. The right to remain has become ever more complex as favela communities wrestle with and against dispossession and the political contexts which underpin its making. Yet, favela grassroots resistance has also grown in complexity and capacity. This dissertation focuses on the various motivations, processes, and spatiopolitical dynamics through which grassroots housing resistance have been mobilized in response to the threat of dispossession. Through participant observation, informal conversations, and interviews, I utilize an ethnographic approach to advance three inter-related arguments. First, I argue while dispossession operates as a technique of subjection for the preservation of differentiated treatment towards favela residents, it simultaneously motivates residents to exercise unique forms of agency that reflect the situated politics of their impending dispossession. In the nexus of subjection and agency, dispossession is not only opposed and negotiated, but it is also embodied and performed as a form of resistance unto itself. Second, I argue that such acts of agency have taken flight through the coming together of wider network relationships between favela residents and differently-scaled supporters to address both on-the-ground, localized struggles and to advance a broader politics of insurgency around favela housing rights in the city. Third, I argue that a broader politics of insurgent mobilization has been made possible through the enrollment of grassroots favela resistance into the digital. Digital mobilizations serve not only as the basis for physical actualizations of on-the-ground resistance, but it is also a means to foster broader imaginations of alternative ways to remain in the city. Collectively, this dissertation highlights the diverse spatiopolitical dynamics of dispossession and the ways it serves to underpin the dynamic and creative formation of subaltern, grassroots housing resistance in Rio de Janeiro.

O tema da presente dissertação foi analisar a formação de redes estratégicas no contexto da globalização contemporânea, bem como suas implicações sociais tecnológicas e econômicas. O estudo focalizou as redes sociais tendo como objeto o processo participativo na Rede Social Campo Grande - SP, uma iniciativa fomentada pelo Senac São Paulo e analisada no período de 2004 a 2008. O objetivo geral procurou compreender e analisar a trajetória desta rede nos quatro anos de sua atuação na zona sul de São Paulo, na perspectiva de um caminho estimulador do processo de participação cidadã. Os referenciais conceituais adotados foram: globalização, redes sociais e participação cidadã, fundamentados em autores nacionais e estrangeiros, principalmente das Ciências Sociais. Os procedimentos metodológicos utilizados neste estudo foram: reflexão e pesquisa bibliográfica sobre a temática das redes sociais e da participação cidadã; pesquisa documental sobre o Senac SP e Rede Social Campo Grande SP; pesquisa de campo, que incluiu a construção de critérios e definição de nove sujeitos com os quais se realizou entrevistas semi estruturadas, bem como observação participante da pesquisadora nas reuniões da Rede em questão; transcrição e organização dos dados coletados a partir do eixo central da participação cidadã. A pesquisa mostrou que a Rede Social Campo Grande vêm lutando e conquistando a participação cidadã pelos seus sujeitos, representantes de ONGs, Poder Público Municipal e moradores locais, destacando-se a formação de vínculos sociais e atuação coletiva em projetos e ações conjuntas que ampliam o processo participativo, e apresentando também limites quanto a compreensão de participação cidadã enquanto direito social.

This study investigates the processes that underlie the rise of technology-intensive agglomerations in Brazil and their relevance to the country's ability to develop advanced technologies and internationally competitive products. My hypothesis is that the key to regional specialization in high-technology industries lies fundamentally on the political mobilization of local groups, which actively promote and take advantage of government-sponsored research for industrial applications. Collective technological learning in the industrial district thus emerges from the convergence of place-based politics and institutional strategies that foster a synergistic relationship between scientific research and the production system. The effective coordination of mutual learning through cooperation and shared resources increases the efficiency of technology search procedures by individual agents. These interactions shape the characteristics of the local production structure, reinforcing the concentration of specialized technical knowledge. The convergence of interconnected initiatives by the public and private sector thus becomes a collective regional asset. This study of 92 firms in three regions (Campinas, Sao Carlos and Sao Jose dos Campos, in Sao Paulo State) indicates that different configurations of these processes have been essential for their development. In Sao Carlos, the agglomeration is fundamentally a product of local efforts to direct university-industry cooperation toward a common developmental goal. In the other two regions, particularly in Sao Jose dos Campos, local technology-intensive industrialization stems primarily from "top-down" initiatives by the federal government, which has promoted domestic self-reliance on selected technologies through publicly-sponsored research and procurement. In all cases, there is only a partial conformance to the most dynamic models of innovative industrial complexes. The intense linkages between research and industry in these regions constitute a powerful ingredient of technology-intensive industrialization. Yet, these agglomerations remain essentially collections of isolated firms. They still lack strong inter-firm linkages and the collective organizational flexibility that arises from an efficient coordination of competitive and cooperative relationships between specialized suppliers and producers. In short, local politics have not yet been able to construct substitute mechanisms to overcome the limitations of an unstable macro-economic environment.

This thesis addresses several aspects of Third World technology policy and industrial development through an examination of the Brazilian information technology industries in the 1990s. At the general level, this thesis explores how production systems change, e.g., how innovation in the organization of production occurs. Theories of industrialization that posit diffusion of production arrangements are contrasted with approaches that contend that productive capabilities are constituted locally and international models adapted to local conditions. Second, the thesis introduces production institutions--the division of labor--into processes of industrial change; the development of inter-firm linkages, industrial structure, employment relations, and managerial capabilities is traced. Third, the research assesses the implications of past policies and industrial trajectories for contemporary restructuring. In this respect, the research specifically examines how high levels of structural instability, technological dependency and weakly developed productive resources in Brazil have affected the adoption of flexible production arrangements. Based on interviews conducted in 1991 and 1992 with government officials, unions and business associations, and executives, managers, and production workers at 34 information technology companies in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this thesis presents the following findings: (a) Contrary to leapfrogging versions of Third World industrialization, productive capabilities were gained slowly, through experience with manufacturing, collaborative problem-solving with parent and affiliated companies, and upgrading of employee skills; (b) Market instability has not, contrary to prevailing theory, generated the adoption of flexible manufacturing in Brazilian electronics; and (c) The interplay of international political and competitive pressures with local instability has resulted in industrial practices that minimize links to local industrial networks and labor markets. Together these practices constitute a "regressive" form of flexilbility, one in which responsiveness to markets is balanced against other corporate goals, including the spread of risk and the creation of buffers against macro-economic instability. The research shows that production is organized to maximize both short-term profits and the transfer of risk away from the firm. A cheap labor strategy, with production still oriented to the domestic market, is coming to dominate many companies within Brazil. Corresponding commitments to long-term innovative potential, labor force stability and upgrading, and industrial development are largely absent. These short-term profit-making strategies provide a weak basis for long-term growth in the sector.

This study explores the impact of technical change and organizational rationalization in the banking industry in metropolitan Sao Paulo, a locus of intensive capital accumulation in Brazil during recent years. Between 1980 and 1986, the number of automated branches increased dramatically from none to more than twenty-three hundred. This massive influx of information technology affected not only absolute levels of employment but also the labor process and labor relations in the public and private sectors by changing skill, educational, and training requirements, modes of control, labor market position, the labor force participation of women, and extent of unionization. The study links the context of automation to the period of high financial speculation following the aftermath of the economic "miracle" when the state depended on domestic savings for deficit financing. I argue that the state's response to the deficit and inflation were critical in defining and limiting the scope of automation. Three conclusions are drawn. First, the impact of automation on the labor force was limited and its potential for labor savings and organization was not utilized. Second, the introduction of on-line data processing led to modest upgradings in skill requirements. However, labor conditions also declined, especially in the private sector, in part as a result of the economic crisis. Third, automation was far from an unitary phenomenon, and its impact was mediated by other factors such as ownership of capital (state, private), type of bank (merchant, retail) and organizational culture.