Between Natural Heritage and Concessions in the State of São Paulo: Psychosphere and Public Policy

• Grant number: 25/05559-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Maria Tereza Duarte Paes
• Grantee: Vitória Eichenberger
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

All over the world, and in various sectors, there is an expansion of so-called neoliberalizing policies, a process that is also putting pressure on legally protected natural areas. Currently, areas that for decades have been managed by the public authorities have been transferred to the private sector through models such as concessions. Although they occur in small parts of protected areas, concessions result in new uses and functions, and depending on how they are managed, they act to boost socio-spatial inequalities in access and also within these territories, often contradicting the objectives of preservation from both the environmental and cultural spheres. This project seeks to contrast the discourses and practices of concession policies with those of natural heritage protection policies, taking the state of São Paulo as its spatial focus and the guidelines, criteria and definitions adopted by the São Paulo State Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage (Condephaat). It is here proposed to use the psychosphere as the guiding concept for the analysis in order to identify symbologies, senses and meanings mobilized in political discourses and by private initiative, as well as the desires and values that speak to the individual and collective imagination. By operationalizing the concept of the psychosphere and analyzing the state context and specific cases, namely the listed and concessioned areas of Cantareira State Park and Horto Florestal and Tenente Siqueira Campos Park (Trianon), the aim is to understand and interpret how policies in protected areas are associated with neoliberalizing practices, linking imaginaries, discourses and new social practices in the territory.