U.Porto - Revistas Cientificas
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What if Einstein had not sent the letter to Roosevelt?
Get PDFThe 20th century was unique in known human history for a number of reasons. It holds a brutal human suffering with two planetary wars with unparalleled levels of destruction and genocides of a dramatic scale. It was the century of the explosion of science and its expression in technologies inconceivable in previous times, moving Humanity to new frontiers, well illustrated by the walk of human beings on the Moon. It was the time of the emergence of disruptive social and cultural movements, the time when we found the finitude of the planet that shelters it. Just as was the time of Humanity to acquire the ability of self-destruction through the atomic bomb release of the energy stored in the depths of the atom. The process that led to this includes a crucial element, a letter signed by Albert Einstein to US President Franklin Roosevelt. This essay elaborates on the circumstances that led to the writing of such letter and on what might have happened had it not existed
“Vamos fazer-nos ouvir”: ativismo climático de crianças na floresta local
Get PDFThis study aims to understand the potential of participatory devices in children’s activism, trying to understand how they problematize and how they intervene in environmental issues in the local forest. It involved, for three consecutive months, 22 children aged 10 years old from the 4th grade of primary education, in moments of participation in an action-reflection logic. The approach community profile motivated the children’s participation, since they were involved in a collaborative, active and negotiated way in the research; and they were involved in a process of training, research, and identification of solutions to the issues they identified as relevant. The data were collected through logbooks, photographs and videos; reflective written, pictorial and material records of children’s projects; joint discussions; informal conversations with family members; and interviews with teachers. The analysis shows children as environmental agents with activist practices, for example collective actions they developed in the forest, the request for partnerships in the community to solve local environmental problems and the organization of a demonstration in the local community to make themselves heard. Learning in the forest promoted not only children’s awareness, namely regarding the impact of the dominant anthropocentric view on sustainability, but also motivated them to put into practice their environmental activism. Este estudo visa compreender a potencialidade de dispositivos participativos no ativismo de crianças, procurando perceber como problematizam e como intervêm em questões ambientais da floresta local. Envolveu, durante três meses consecutivos, 22 crianças com dez anos do 4.º ano do 1.º ciclo do ensino básico em momentos de participação, numa lógica de ação-reflexão. Com base numa abordagem de perfil comunitário, as crianças investigaram a floresta local e foram implicadas num processo de exploração dos problemas e de identificação de soluções para as questões que identificaram como pertinentes. Os dados foram recolhidos através de vários dispositivos: diários de bordo, desenhos e projetos elaborados pelas crianças; fotografias, vídeos do processo, e notas de terreno da investigadora contendo registos de discussões conjuntas com as crianças e de conversas informais com familiares; e entrevistas semiestruturadas com as professoras. A análise revela as crianças como agentes ambientais com práticas ativistas, por exemplo, ações coletivas que desenvolveram na floresta, a solicitação de parcerias na comunidade para a resolução de problemas ambientais locais e a organização de uma manifestação na comunidade, para se fazerem ouvir. A aprendizagem na floresta não só promoveu uma tomada de consciência por parte das crianças, designadamente a respeito do impacto da visão dominante antropocêntrica na sustentabilidade, como também as motivou a pôr em prática o seu ativismo ambiental.
Recebido: 21/2/2022
Aceite: 30/5/202
Imagine isto: Investigando os impactos das mudanças climáticas na saúde mental dos jovens utilizando a metodologia photovoice como intervenção
Get PDFThis paper focuses on the mental health impacts of climate change in youth and young adults, with a specific interest in undergraduates in environmentally-related programs of study. We used photovoice methodology as a data collection tool and simultaneously analysed it as a potential intervention to manage climate-related mental health impacts and empower youth. Youth involved in the study experienced diverse climate-related mental health impacts derived from a range of experiences, including environmental education itself. To cope, study participants drew on several primary sources of resilience, including spending time in nature, participating in the community, taking environmental action, and practicing mindful reflection. Our study found that through participation in photovoice, which reflects key elements of these coping strategies, youth experienced subjective improvements in mental health and well-being and feelings of empowerment. We conclude with recommendations for managing climate-related mental health impacts and improving supports, specifically in post-secondary institutions. Este artigo foca nos impactos das mudanças climáticas na saúde mental de jovens e adultos/as, especificamente os/as estudantes universitários/as de programas relacionados com o meio ambiente. A metodologia photovoice foi utilizada como ferramenta de recolha de dados e analisada como potencial intervenção para gerir os impactos na saúde mental relacionado com o clima e empoderar os/as jovens. Os/As jovens envolvidos/as experimentaram diversos impactos na saúde mental relacionados com as mudanças climáticas, derivados de experiências, incluindo a própria educação ambiental. Para lidar com isso, os/as participantes recorreram a fontes primárias de resiliência, incluindo passar tempo na natureza, participar de atividades na comunidade, promover ações ambientais e praticar reflexão consciente. O estudo a partir da metodologia photovoice reflete elementos-chave dessas estratégias de coping e os/as jovens experimentaram melhorias subjetivas na saúde mental e bem-estar, desenvolvendo empoderamento. Concluímos, recomendando a gestão dos impactos na saúde mental relacionados com as mudanças climáticas, melhorando o apoio à saúde mental em instituições pós-secundárias.
Recebido: 25/1/2022
Aceite: 25/5/202
Reframing the Far North: Landscapes of Care in Borealis and Hyperborea
Get PDFExploring the Far North historically meant an immense effort, meticulous planning and the endurance of many hardships. These are characteristics that partly still hold true today. The northern parts of our planet are therefore surrounded by a narrative of distance. In this simplified notion the Far North is pictured as an isolated and unspoiled wilderness, one of the last places on Earth free of human disruption. Meanwhile, the (sub-)Arctic areas are among the first to be profoundly affected by climate change. Melting snow and ice incites a chain reaction that is known as the albedo effect, causing an accelerated rise in temperature. The Far North comprises territories whose physical state is profoundly altered at the moment; the melting of ice and permafrost has lasting effects on the physical make-up of the area, and thus these places can be marked as vulnerable and unstable landscapes.
This article explores how a theoretical focus on relationality can unearth relations between photography and the geographical concepts ‘isolation’ and ‘connection’ in order to put forward a type of caring that is more geographically dispersed. In the photographic series Borealis (2015-2020) by Dutch photographer Jeroen Toirkens and Hyperborea (2013-2019) by Russian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva, the oppositions between ‘isolation’ and ‘connection’ are inverted. This article analyses their photographs not as flat representations of a secluded place, but as nodes in a spatial constellation in a wider sense. Eventually, the images construct a ‘landscape of care’ that moves beyond physical boundaries and underlines an ethical duty for anyone living on this planet to care for and about places that we otherwise deem disparate.
Cover image: Evgenia Arbugaeva, Untitled 90 (From the series IV. Chukotka), 2019-202
Tornar-se um ativista do clima: Formação em desobediência civil como processo de socialização para jovens activistas da Extinction Rebellion em Paris
Get PDFThis article analyzes the socialization processes that lead first-time activists and members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) Paris to become part of an activist elite trained in nonviolent direct action. The article is based on an ethnography of civil disobedience trainings given by XR in 2019 and 2021. These trainings act as institutional rites that “consecrate” activists, but they also sort out activists by operating a social selection: social origins, cultural capital and primary socialization (religious in particular) determine why some individuals are willing to engage in non-violent activities. These trainings do more than teach practical knowledge. They create an “esprit de corps” according to Blumer specific to the movement that enables the internalization of collective political identity, and in such have more impact than the mere transmission of activist know-how.Este artigo analisa o processo de socialização de jovens iniciados na Extinction Rebellion (XR) em Paris que os transforma em ‘ativistas’ desobedientes, um grupo de ativistas de elite treinados em ação direta não violenta. O artigo baseia-se numa etnografia de cursos de formação em desobediência civil ministrados na XR em 2019 e 2021. Estes cursos são “ritos de instituição”, de acordo com Bourdieu, que consagram ativistas operando uma seleção social. Assim, alguns indivíduos estão dispostos a envolver-se em atividades não violentas devido à sua origem social, ao seu capital cultural ou à sua socialização primária (religiosa em particular). Muito mais do que a transmissão de conhecimentos práticos, o objetivo destes cursos de formação é criar um “esprit de corps”, para utilizar o conceito de Blumer, específico do movimento. O simbolismo dos cursos é mais forte para estes ativistas do que a mera transmissão de conhecimentos técnicos, permitindo a interiorização de uma identidade política coletiva.
Recebido: 5/2/2022
Aceite: 31/5/202
Recensão à obra de Gallager, Kathleen, & Kushnir, Andrew (2022). Hope in a collapsing world: Youth, theater and listening as a political alternative. University of Toronto Press.: Cenários de esperança no teatro da educação
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Recebido: 6/10/2022
Aceite: 25/10/202
English
No full textLand worldwide is deeply marked by human activity, which became heavier, harder, more wasteful, and permanent after the industrial revolution. The landscapes of the Anthropocene encompass riddled proving ground and test sites, nuclear wastelands, immense open-pit mines, contaminated lands, disappearing bodies of water, boundless landfills, and discarded territories. These grounds are the landscapes of growth, production, and destruction: the sceneries where the show of quarrying, discharge, stockpile, abandonment, drainage, and burial is staged. However, this rush to exhaustion is giving shape to the landscape of tomorrow: the examination of unforeseen uses and values attributed in the current age to some of these ‘sceneries of consumption’ – the Bingham Canyon Mine near Salt Lake City; the former Fresh Kills landfill in New York; the decommissioned Templehof Airport in Berlin– suggest they may play unpredictable cultural and strategic roles in the next future.
Cover image: Mining operations at Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah, 2009 by Arbyreed. License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.
Educação e ativismo climático: Práticas e imaginações democráticas juvenis para um mundo comum
Get PDFYoung people around the world have become mobilized by the urgency to tackle the climate crisis. Increasingly gaining momentum, youth activist movements have been calling everyone’s attention to governmental inaction regarding the climate crisis and to the shortcomings of institutional political agreements (European Youth Forum, 2019). While for some parts of the general public (mostly in the Global-North, which has been less affected by) the consequences of climate change may still seem a somewhat distant, abstract and dystopian phenomenon, as they become more widely felt, the harder it will be to reverse the problem (Giddens, 2009). Faced with the paradox of having a problem that may seem ‘not quite severe enough’ while aiming at triggering generalized motivation for individual and collective change, young generations have been defying ‘adultist biases’ and mobilizing among themselves in new ways and dimensions
Songs of the Dead
No full textSongs of the Dead is a photographic exploration of the aftermath of a devastating fire that impacted the community of Fort McMurray in Alberta Canada on the 3rd of May 2016. Six months after the fire, stimulated by media coverage and reflecting on the discourse surrounding dispossession and the environment, the project commenced at ground level with support of a Royal Photographic Society Environmental Awareness Bursary in a region inhabited by Anishinaabe1 located within Treaty 8 Territory, the traditional lands of the Cree, Dene and unceded territory of the Métis.
The visual essay presented here is centred in the wake of a major fire event, however, it is also about human law and ecosystems. By traversing discussions on ethics within documentary photography and briefly exploring the history Aftermath of this medium, we argue how photography can better address socio-ecological issues within climate change through poetics. We offer a way of resisting the norms of documentary photography, resulting from subject and process-driven methods.
Cover image: The Last Man - photo by Alan McFetridg
Proximidade pessoal, dissidência disruptiva e governança urbana participativa como formas de ativismo pela mudança climática por meio da agricultura urbana: Exemplos ilustrativos em capitais europeias verdes Lisboa e Bristol
Get PDFFighting climate change has been a long battle that is far from being won. Official climate change negotiations and agreements have been carried out for decades and targets have been set to impose reductions of greenhouse gas emissions to governments and major industries. In addition, citizens started exploring ways in which they could take part. From originally demonstrating, to attempt to put pressure on stakeholders and states that are the biggest polluters, they acknowledged that addressing climate change will realistically lead to best results if we change our economic and production systems also in our daily lives, through changing our ways of living. This article explores three types of climate change activism expressed through Urban Agriculture (UA). Through ‘proximities’, ‘disruptive dissent’ and ‘participatory urban governance’, this article analyses how UA, as a form of Climate Change activism on the ground, can help to act and to influence policies, taking illustrative examples from green capitals of Europe: Bristol in the UK and Lisbon in Portugal.
A luta contra as mudanças climáticas é uma longa batalha que está longe de ser vencida. Negociações e acordos formais sobre mudanças climáticas vêm sendo conduzidos há décadas e metas foram estabelecidas para impor reduções nas emissões de gases de efeito estufa a governos e grandes indústrias. Além disso, os cidadãos começaram a explorar maneiras de participar. Depois de focar em protestos para tentar pressionar stakeholders e estados que são os maiores poluidores, eles reconheceram que a luta contra as mudanças climáticas levará a melhores resultados se mudarmos os nossos sistemas económicos e produtivos também no nosso quotidiano, mudando os nossos estilos de vida. Este artigo explora três tipos de ativismo de mudança climática expressos por meio da agricultura urbana (AU). Através de ‘proximidades’, ‘dissidência disruptiva’ e ‘governança urbana participativa’, este artigo analisa como a AU, como forma de ativismo de mudança climática no terreno, pode ajudar a agir, tomando exemplos ilustrativos de duas capitais verdes europeias: Bristol no Reino Unido e Lisboa em Portugal.
Recebido: 24/1/2022
Aceite: 21/6/202