Theses defended
As lutas indígenas em contextos de injustiças e conflitos ambientais: vida, saúde e mobilizações dos povos Tupinikim e Guarani Mbyá no Norte do Espírito Santo
July 28, 2017
Democracy in the Twenty-first Century
Stefania Barca
e
Marcelo Firpo de Souza Porto
PhD with a joint-supervision from the Universidade de Coimbra
In recent decades, indigenous peoples have been mobilized around legal guarantees and the continuity of ecological relations established in their traditional territories and resist the advance of the market economy or public works over the areas necessary for their physical, cultural and symbolic reproduction. They seek public recognition of their territoriality to ensure the continuity of their traditional practices and to pressure the state to formulate and implement public policies that contribute to mitigating the negative consequences of territorial transformations on their way of life and collective health. The study analyzes the dynamics of this type of mobilization between the Tupinikim and Guarani Mbyá peoples in Aracruz/ES. It also analyzes the strategies that these communities have undertaken to ensure access, quality and respect for ethnic differences in the Indigenous Health Care Subsystem. The qualitative study was conducted through in-depth interviews complemented by documentary analysis and review of secondary sources. It concludes that indigenous political struggles bring with them an emancipatory potential from demands based on specific relations with the land, with ecosystems and health care, but that they have not yet been able to translate them into public policies. It also concludes that health policies have been little permeable to indigenous demands that break with the claim of epistemic superiority of biomedical knowledge and seek to reconfigure the relations that these communities establish with SASI. For these reasons, it considers that both socio-environmental policies and health policies do not fulfill their potential to mitigate the negative effects of environmental injustices, since agencies responsible for them remain marginalized within the state structure and remain poorly articulated with each other and with the Indigenous demands in the territory. The few initiatives in this direction remain underfunded and insufficient to meet their real needs.
Keywords: Health of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Population. Environmental Conflicts. Social participation. Public Policies
Public Defence date
Doctoral Programme
Supervision
Abstract
In recent decades, indigenous peoples have been mobilized around legal guarantees and the continuity of ecological relations established in their traditional territories and resist the advance of the market economy or public works over the areas necessary for their physical, cultural and symbolic reproduction. They seek public recognition of their territoriality to ensure the continuity of their traditional practices and to pressure the state to formulate and implement public policies that contribute to mitigating the negative consequences of territorial transformations on their way of life and collective health. The study analyzes the dynamics of this type of mobilization between the Tupinikim and Guarani Mbyá peoples in Aracruz/ES. It also analyzes the strategies that these communities have undertaken to ensure access, quality and respect for ethnic differences in the Indigenous Health Care Subsystem. The qualitative study was conducted through in-depth interviews complemented by documentary analysis and review of secondary sources. It concludes that indigenous political struggles bring with them an emancipatory potential from demands based on specific relations with the land, with ecosystems and health care, but that they have not yet been able to translate them into public policies. It also concludes that health policies have been little permeable to indigenous demands that break with the claim of epistemic superiority of biomedical knowledge and seek to reconfigure the relations that these communities establish with SASI. For these reasons, it considers that both socio-environmental policies and health policies do not fulfill their potential to mitigate the negative effects of environmental injustices, since agencies responsible for them remain marginalized within the state structure and remain poorly articulated with each other and with the Indigenous demands in the territory. The few initiatives in this direction remain underfunded and insufficient to meet their real needs.
Keywords: Health of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Population. Environmental Conflicts. Social participation. Public Policies