Comments: João Arriscado Nunes (CES)

Abstract 

The workshop will address our academic and Brazil-focused studies that articulate Collective Health, Political Ecology, Communication and Social Movements, particularly, a documentary on the socioecological crisis and alternative knowledges that we are making with filmmaker Silvio Tendler. The ecological crisis reflects a broader civilizational crisis, which some authors rather prefer to call it “Capitalocene" or "Westerncene" than “Anthropocene”. It reflects the divorce between modern society (capitalist and colonial) and nature, life and economy, conveyed by the intensification of the social metabolism of globalised capitalism and several associated violences. The typical modern economy, science, and technology have produced a way of thinking, feeling, and living that fragments reality, the relationship between people and communities, and of the latter with nature. One way to overcome this fragmentation is to create spaces for the meeting of scientific and non-scientific knowledges that exploit and recover principles, narratives and experiences that give meaning to the human adventure in the face of a crisis, which is bound to worsen. We believe that intercultural dialogue is not only a crossroads of knowledges, but also a meeting of sensitivities and compromises around ethical principles and policies on life, nature, social and interpersonal relationships. Such is the meaning of significant narratives that we work on:

The seminar is organised in four parts:

1) Initially, Marcelo will present the meaning of the socioecological crisis, its western and capitalist roots in the ways of thinking and feeling that produce an economy in disharmony with the cycles of life that intensify the social metabolism.

2) Marina will then address the importance of significant narratives and the encounter of art with different knowledges as a methodological challenge for intercultural dialogue and the ecology of knowledges.

3) Subsequently, Marcelo and Marina will tell traditional stories and recent experiences of living with the Munduruku people, who live on the banks of the Tapajós River, in Pará, Brazil. These stories reveal knowledges and other possibilities of relation with nature, time, work, travel, community life and interaction with technologies.

4) Finally, there will be a group dynamics with discussions, drawings and significant reports of participants on topics addressed during the seminar.

Bio notes

Marcelo Firpo Porto is a researcher at the Centre for Health Studies in Worker Health and Human Ecology at the Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, with a postdoctoral degree at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra.

Marina Fasanello is a PhD candidate of the Postgraduate Programme in Health Information and Communication (PPGICS) of the Institute of Communication, Scientific and Technological Information in Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (ICICT/FIOCRUZ), with a visiting doctoral student internship at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra.