Representações sociais da cidade de Cuiabá : estudo com crianças em contexto de escolas particulares

Abstract

This study was developed by the Psychology Research Group of Children (GPPIN) and aimed to identify and analyze the social representations of the city of Cuiabá, according to children in the context of private schools. The study is delimited in the field of research with children, inspired by the contributions of the sociology of childhood, which gives them the role of social actors with active participation in the processes of construction and meaning of reality. It adopts as theoretical support the Theory of Social Representations, Onto-genetic Approach to Social Representations and Historical-Cultural Theory. In dialogue, it approaches with the contributions of sociology and history through Richard Sennett studies on the construction of contemporary sensibilities in relation to the space of the city. Similarly it pursuits Pierre Bourdieu's studies for understanding the power relations established in the "field" through capital accumulation. The data were generated with 40 children in four private schools, divided between the regions: East, West and South. The children produced drawings, inspired by the proposal of cognitive maps, interpreted by implicative content analysis and analysis with the support of the software Cohesive Hierarchical Implicative Classification (CHIC). The data also held individual semi-structured interviews with the children that were processed by software the Analyse Lexicale par Contexte d ́um Esemble de Segments de Texte (ALCESTE). The data announce that regarding the composition of the socio-spatial representation of the city there is a predominance of private dimension to the detriment of the public dimension, so that the higher frequency of designed spaces are private and driven by consumption. The city aspects as the streets, the neighborhoods and the squares, they are identified as scenarios observed by children during the paths that they take, usually performing the connection between family places, consumption and school. The city appears in the representations as fragmented places and the lack of historical elements of the city suggests a distancing attitude toward cultural roots. The home and the family are represented as important elements in the significance of the city, which receives affection and sense of belonging for children or, on the contrary, acts to strengthen stigmas and detachment from Cuiabá. In the central part of the social representations the “I” represents itself as spectator of urban reality represented as distanced from private life, whose problems to be solved are based on the logic of exclusion and reproduction. In this scenario, the citizen condition that the “I” presents is subtracted from their right to transit through the public space of the city. In this sense, their rights seem to be kidnapped in the name of protection. An “I” protected seems to be the main aspect of citizenship that elucidates the child's relationship with the city. This “I”, even devoid of varied experiences regarding the city, is able to develop hypotheses about reality anchored in speeches socially shared through the media, school experiences and immediate social interactions. These findings unveil the transformative potential of formative processes and in the same time show their conservative power.