Research » Axes

Here we introduce the research axes of the Program, including the names of those responsible for their coordination and researchers, in alphabetical order (family name).

Axis 1
Social ecology, communities and sustainability

Coordinator-a: The axis has no coordination for the time being
Team
Marta de Azevedo Irving
Tania Maria de Freitas Barros Maciel – Retired
Marta de Araújo Pinheiro
Frederico Augusto Tavares Junior

The research axis on Social Ecology, Communities and Sustainability focuses on interdisciplinary reflections inspired by both perspectives of Psychosociology and Social Ecology, with contributions from the emerging field of the disciplines that make up the Environmental Humanities. Also related to group and communication processes, the axis addresses contemporary dilemmas concerning socio-environmental interfaces that, anchored in the relationships between society, culture and nature, transcend the oppositions that they suggest. Along these lines, development issues and sustainability commitments are considered and reframed, according to perspectives of social inclusion, cultural dynamics and construction of citizenship, thinking of ecology as a composition of subjectivities. With this guiding focus, anchored in the socio-environmental and communicative dynamics that are established within the scope of communities and in the dynamics of society as a whole, this axis seeks both to interpret the subjectivities involved in reading nature and to transform them. Moreover, based on imagery, identities and worldviews, considering local dynamics, local-global relations and public policies.

The reflections related to this axis involve the critical debate on interdisciplinarity as a contemporary way for the production of knowledge, recognizing the civilizational crisis and the need to bridge paths to face it. The axis develops research on imagery and conflicts with regards to society-nature relationship, post-catastrophe constructions, ecofeminism, experiences of common worlds in ecological transitions, consumption and environmental marketing. Regarding the fields of sustainability, it leads to research on socio-environmental responsibility; social inclusion; tourism and culture; education; and communication. With regard to public policies, which are linked to the previous themes, it studies local development; participatory socio-environmental management and socio-environmental conflicts; governance; biodiversity; and other related topics. The axis takes as inspiration the epistemology of complexity of phenomenological orientation, as well as contemporary critical epistemologies. From a methodological point of view, it favors qualitative intervention and engaged community research, discourse analysis, environmental assessment practices, in addition to ethnography. It also adopts participatory techniques and strategies, and the development of social technologies.

Axis 2
Critical psychosociology, communities and networks

Coordinator: Mohammed Elhajji
Team
Regina Helena Freitas Campos
Milton Nunes Campos
Monica Machado Cardoso
Samira Lima da Costa
Luciene Alvez Miguez Naiff

The axis of research Critical Psychosociology, Communities and Networks aims to understand psychosocial building knowledge processes and practices carried out by groups and communities, mediated by informal, formal and socio-technical networks, and also to intervene in them. Adopting an interdisciplinary standpoint towards the understanding of community cultures, anchored in the area of ​​Group Processes and Communication, this axis weaves philosophical, historical, anthropological and pedagogical knowledge with psychosociological approaches regarding dynamics, notably community speeches and narratives.

The researches that integrate this axis focus on sociability and policies that emerge from contemporary daily life. It studies global and local discursive mediations, in addition to multicultural issues such as social memory, occupations and displacements, social exclusions and the human rights of human generations (adolescence, youth, and so forth) and specific contemporary populations (migrants, traditional communities such as indigenous peoples and afrodescendents). Researchers working within this axis also explore issues of community identity in fields of experience (work, health, education, etc.), their constitution (gender, race / ethnicity, generations, socioeconomic status, etc.) and their modes of cultural and political manifestations. The axis adopts critical epistemologies based on culture and communication, in which the subjective sphere, the public space of the socio-political-economic system and the psychosocial mediations that make possible intersubjectivity, interpenetrate. From a methodological point of view, it favors qualitative methods, techniques and strategies such as discourse and narrative analysis, face-to-face and virtual ethnography, logical-argumentative and rhetorical analyses of multimedia networks, oral history, quali-quanti case studies, research-action processes, and other participatory, immersive and collaborative methodologies.

Axis 3
Psychosociology of health and communities

Coordinator: Emerson Elias Merhy
Team
Kathleen Teresa da Cruz
Maria Paula Cerqueira Gomes
Maria Cecilia de Mello e Souza – Retired
Beatriz Akemi Takeiti

The axis of research in Psychosociology of Health and Communities aims to understand psychosocial processes of health and care in the practices of groups, communities and networks, through interference and sharing of experiences in the production of knowledge about oneself and the other. In this sense, it articulates inter and transdisciplinary human and community health processes, including care networks, centered on the subjects. Thus, it contributes to intersubjectivity building by means of unveiling the power production behind relationships through narratives.

In this axis, social transformations are sought to be operated in groups and communities through processes to “make emerge” critical societies capable of producing challenging reflections and new policies for psychosocial development, care and the conscious insertion of subjectivities in contemporary daily life. Research in this area also explores the formation of colelctives’ inner transformation (meditation, discovering oneself and the other, interdependencies between nature and culture); community (affirmative processes of strengthening identities, on the one hand, and new becoming of subjectivity and, on the other); institutional (agency of production of stocks in socio-cultural and educational work in health) and political (micropolitical processes of daily life and production of existential living networks).

This axis works from critical epistemologies and contemporary post-structuralist perspectives. From a methodological point of view, it favors oral narratives as a mean of making emerge intersubjectivities in the production of realities, instrumentalized by genealogy, archeology and cartography of the senses.