“Qualquer coisa dá e sobra”: as Representações Sociais de Pobreza nas relações sociopedagógicas em uma instituição socioeducativa na periferia de São Gonçalo-RJ

Abstract

This dissertation proposed a discussion on the theme of Poverty, through a psychosocial approach, and had the general objective and had the general objective of understanding the possible social representations of poverty and their implications for the organization of relationships and socio-educational practices of a group of professionals working in a non-school space, in the 4th district of the municipality of São Gonçalo, in East Fluminense. The specific objectives were: to identify representations of poverty based on the social interaction of social educators and their students within the socio-educational field of activity; verify how social educators appropriate these representations in their relationships in the socio-educational field; and analyze how these representations participate in the development of socio-educational practices towards impoverished subjects. The main theoretical contribution was based on: Serge Moscovici, with the Theory of Social Representations (TSR); Willem Doise, with the societal approach to social representations (SR); Ferreira, with the studies on the SR of poverty; and Baptista, with Hospitality Pedagogy (HP) as a proposal within Social Pedagogy (SP). Being field research with a qualitative approach, the following methodological tools were used: making field diaries and conducting semi-structured interviews. The research methodology is inspired by Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, reflected by Depraz and proposed by Ferreira as an instrument for observing socio-educational spaces. The analysis method was the Rhetorical-Philosophical Discourse Analysis (RFDA), inspired by Aristotle, organized based on Reboul, and restructured for SR by Mazzotti and Ferreira. In the main results, it was evident that there are social representations of Poverty among educators that constitute symbolic images of otherness as “impoverished-students”. Such SR have as their figurative core the symbolic “lack”, supposedly of an ontological order, condensed by the metaphor “They don’t have the light”, maintaining that the “impoverished-other” is a “being of lack”. These “lacks”, organized into the discourse based on thematic forums, express the following types of poverty or “lacks” of: culture; adequate social relations; affection; family structure and future perspective. Thus, it is inferred that the SR of poverty create mechanisms to maintain didactic practices and the functioning of interpersonal dynamics that aim to meet the demands of the Institution to the detriment of the real needs of students. It is concluded that the SR of poverty negatively affects pedagogical practices and social relationships experienced between educators and students, with no evidence that professionals work with a pedagogical orientation that focuses on specific concepts of HP. With this, social bonds and emancipatory processes are not created, but rather, affective dependencies. In this context, impoverished students remain with their most urgent needs, receiving a poor education for the poor people.