Full text
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| Author(s): |
Thais da Silva Mascarenhas
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Educação (FE/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2010-04-30 |
| Examining board members: |
Celso de Rui Beisiegel;
Sylvia Leser de Mello;
Paul Israel Singer
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| Advisor: | Celso de Rui Beisiegel |
| Abstract | |
In a society characterized by intense competitiveness, individualism, productivity, consumerism and hierarchy, the solidarity economy emerges as an alternative mode of production and distribution, based upon workers possession of all means of production and self-management. They are co-operatives, associations, Local Exchange Trading Systems, and economic and political networks with common values and practices, constructing together a social movement. In these experiences, workers together build up an everyday experience of self-management working, sharing a culture established on values of cooperation, solidarity, equality, and tolerance. Popular education takes part in the formation process of these social movement participants, exchanging knowledge and experiencing a new values learning process that irradiates beyond working, for other dimensions of life. These experiences contribute to the construction of another path of development of society. This path is very similar to the pluralist view of development elaborated by the Indian economist Amartya Sen. This view goes beyond simply increasing income; it concentrates on valuing the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. This includes not only economic improvement, but also making it better in political and social aspects, among others. All these aspects affect one another. This research examines how the educative process in solidarity economy experiences, based on popular education principles and practices, influence development, understood as expansion of freedom. The studies on solidarity economy, popular education, and development as freedom were obtained from the following authors: Paul Singer, Paulo Freire, and Amartya Sen, respectively. They serve as the basis for the analysis of the experience of Cooperafis, a cooperative of 122 women that works in crafts made of sisal and other natural fibers from the Bahias semi-arid region. The analysis highlights several changes and learning, using data from observing the everyday work of these women and their statements: the valuing of freedom, the expansion of freedom in the work and other areas of life such as domestic, educational, cultural and environmental, the assuming as the subject of his story, the confrontation of oppression, the enhancement of democracy, among others. Despite the difficulties, the educational nature of this experience is present all the time, explicitly or implicitly, mixing education and work and encouraging the participatory creation and recreation of the ways of development. (AU) | |