“CHILDHOODS” AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY IN SÃO GONÇALO: INVESTIGATING THE PARTICIPATION OF CHILDREN IN THE CITY”

Abstract

This article is the result of a research that has been carried out under the perspective of a broader project, called “’Childhoods’ and the city: investigating territorial components of educational processes of children in the city of São Gonçalo” (TAVARES, 2010, 2016, 2018). In this research we question if the territorial components of the city of São Gonçalo have an impact on educational processes of children from the working classes in the municipality. The research has been complexifying those relationships which involve the childhood and the right to the city, thinking of the children and including them in the debates that have been intensified, not only in the Social Sciences, but in the field of education as well, especially in the studies of Sociology of Education and Social Studies of the Childhood, focusing on the problem of the childhood in the city in a more substantial way. So, as we investigate the urban trajectories and the circuits of educability of children who come from those neighborhoods delimited by the research, we find out the existence of an undetermined zone that crosses the entanglement of social life, reverberating both in the practices and in the circuits of a broader urban life, and not only in the school equipment. From the point of view of an epistemological horizon, we think it is necessary to thoroughly analyse the concept of research as an experience of knowledge. In our study, we deepened the idea that the city, more than a concept, is a field of practices. It is worth mentioning that, children’s practices of knowledge, readings, representation and ownership of the urban space imply the elaboration of a more open research plan which, by producing multiple lines of power, might continue to urge us to think of the issue of “childhoods” in the city in a pluralistic way.