新作坊

Pedagogies of resistance: community-based education for women's participation in watershed management in São Paulo, Brazil

摘要：

Une organisation et une éducation formelle de la communauté de base sont des atouts fondamentaux pour créer les conditions d'une participation équitable des femmes et des peuples marginalisés à la démocratie. Cet article étudie des initiatives récentes au Brésil qui ont dévehppé des "résistances pédagogiques" qui s'appuient sur des processus de décision sans retour. In Brazil, for example, the federal Water Law of 1997 requires participation by "civil society," along with public officials, on watershed management committees at the local, state, and federal levels which decide water allocation and infrastructure questions and have the power to institute water charges to pay for water, sewer, flood control, and irrigation infrasrructure. However, women are gravely underrepresented on these committees, despite the fact that women in general, due to gendered poverty and work/caring roles in society, are seriously impacted by water issues and often have specialized knowledge that can be invaluable in water decision-making. Women made up eight percent of representatives on state-level water councils, while two local-level watershed committees in São Paulo State for which data is available were about 14 percent female in 2005 (Moraes and [Patricia E. Perkins]). A deeper problem is that in the absence of watershed-based community organizations which make possible political communication with constituencies and representative politics, the meaning and value of "representation" by gender or even class is far from clear. Another creative and inspirational model for transnational intervention to increase public involvement in watershed management is being developed by the Socio-Environmental Knowledge and Care Centre of the La Plata Basin (Centro de Saberes), an organization funded largely by a fraction of the hydroelectric power revenues generated by the huge Iguaçu dam, located on the Paraná River where Brazil meets Paraguay and Argentina (centrodesaberes@pti.org.br; http://www.saberycuidar.org/home/). The Paraná watershed, which drains much of central and eastern South America and reaches the Atlantic ocean via the La Plata River near Montevideo, also includes Bolivia and Uruguay, so the Centro de Saberes works in three languages - Portuguese, Spanish and Guaraní, the official language of Paraguay. In an organizational model developed in part by Moema Viezzer, the Centro de Saberes convenes regular meetings of "permanent learning circles" attended by media, academic, activist and political representatives of each of the five countries in the watershed. Each year, like ripples, the "permanent learning circles" expand, as the participants from the year before invite additional representatives to attend in subsequent years. The circles have grown from five participants (one from each country) in 2006, the first year, to 35 the next year, to hundreds currently. More than half are women. The agenda and program of the meetings include social exchanges among participants, discussions of local priorities for environmental and political action, and brainstorming about how to accomplish the goals identified by each group.