The Solidarity

Economy of Culture
and Cultural
Citizenship in the ABC
Region of São Paulo,
Brazil
The Solidarity
Economy of Culture
and Cultural
Citizenship in the ABC
Region of São Paulo,
Brazil
Edited by

Neusa Serra and Hamilton Faria

Translated by

Eva Paulino Bueno

The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship in the ABC
Region of São Paulo, Brazil

Edited by Neusa Serra and Hamilton Faria

Translated by Eva Paulino Bueno

This book first published 2018

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2018 by Neusa Serra, Hamilton Faria, Eva Paulino Bueno

and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-1316-5

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1316-7
… dentro de nós convive tanto o espírito solidário como o espírito
competitivo. O que vai vencer será aquele que cultivarmos mais e
melhor.
—Célio Turino de Miranda
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................ ix
Neusa Serra and Hamilton Faria

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... xii

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Eva Paulino Bueno

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 7

The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship:
New Paradigms

1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms............................... 8

Ladislau Dowbor

1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives ............... 22

Célio Turino de Miranda

1.3 Plenary Debates ................................................................................... 42

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 47

The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship:
Reflections from Experiences of the Cultural Collectives in the City
of São Paulo and the ABC Region

2.1 The Experience of Collective Cultural Groups.................................... 48

Associação Ribeirãopirense de Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA)
Fernanda Henrique Souza de Lima
Coletivo de Consumo Rural e Urbano (CCRU), Renata Silva
Ilú-Obá de Min, Baby Amorim and Lenita Sena
Ponto de Cultura Circomunidade, Hélio Costa
São Mateus em Movimento, Aluízio Marino

2.2 Plenary Debates ................................................................................... 57

viii Table of Contents

2.3 Critical Reading: The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Local

Development in the ABC Region .............................................................. 67
Sílvia Helena Passarelli, Rafael Silva, Renan Magalhães
and Thiago Mariano

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 77

Paths for the Construction of the Regional and National Agendas
of the Solidarity Economy of Culture

3.1 The Role of Municipal Public Policies ................................................ 78

Osvaldo de Oliveira Neto

3.2 The Solidarity Economy and the Economy of Culture:

Convergences ............................................................................................ 82
Georgia Haddad Nicolau

3.3 Cultural Rights and Citizenship ........................................................... 88

Gil Marçal

3.4 Plenary Debates ................................................................................... 94

3.5 Critical Readings: Perspectives for the Great ABC Region ................ 98
Anderson Simões Costa and Lara Rodrigues Alves

3.6 Critical Readings: The Solidarity Economy and the Connections

with Cultural Policies .............................................................................. 106
Neusa Serra and Simone Pellizon

Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 113

University and Social Transformation
Daniel Pansarelli

Contributors ............................................................................................. 117

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 120

Index ........................................................................................................ 126

 PREFACE

The initiative of Federal University of ABC to organize an event bringing

together both cultural groups in the spirit of solidarity and cultural
managers of São Paulo and the surrounding region took, as a starting
point, the reality that new forms of articulation among cultural groups and
between these groups with the public sector are currently underway.
Hence, it is opportune and necessary to extend the debate to these sectors,
as well as to their interaction with the civil society. The issue of economic
and financial support for cultural activities is highlighted in the new
agenda that emerges in a context marked by the dissemination of the work
on the internet, simultaneous to the segregation of the urban space and the
reduction of public spaces available for collective use, especially in the
peripheral zones of the city.
The debates that took place in the Solidarity Economy of Culture and
Cultural Citizenship meeting organized by the Federal University of the
ABC (UFABC) and the Instituto Pólis highlighted that, today, we can
explore another facet of the economy—the economy of open access and
the more open and free movement of information, in which the central axis
is not competition but collaboration. Large companies involved in
intensive knowledge-gathering work have already started sharing their
efforts on basic research. And, inspired by the successful experience of the
Italian industrial districts, medium and small sized companies have also
started articulating themselves in productive arrangements that enable
them to share information and knowledge. And yet, our capacity for
organization and association is much less developed than our technical
capacities. The solidarity economy, that is the economics of sharing the
collective production and the social use of the results, is a path that needs
to be taken on the way to our learning how to associate with one another
and forming new paradigms of civilizational changes. The economic
model based on the maximization of profit has not solved all the dilemmas
related to the distribution of income and wealth in our societies. At the
same time, this model developed new technologies and originated creative
new opportunities, and also made it more difficult for others to have
access to the results of this production. As a result, this model generated a
concentration of resources while increasing the number of people excluded
from the economic and political spheres.
x Preface

We understand that the solidarity economy inaugurates a new context

for culture and citizenship. The reflection on solidarity culture aims to
shine a light on the subject of cultural citizenship, understood as a set of
rights and values that reinforces different lifestyles and participatory
modes of cultural production. The groups appearing in this project
participate as protagonists of the emergent cultural undertaking that is
taking place right now in the city of São Paulo and its peripheral regions.
In order to accomplish their goals, the groups that live these participatory
experiences bring us new elements to reflect about culture in a more
generous and amplified form. Hearing directly from some of their
representatives in the Solidarity Culture and Cultural Citizenship meeting
that took place on June 11, 2015 at the Federal University of ABC allowed
us to observe cultural citizenship in the process of building itself. Through
their collectives, these young artists take a central role in the cultural
scene, provoke mobilization in their networks, and question and propose
new aspects of and directives for public policies.
Cultural citizenship is the expression of these acts, in this case through
art. As Célio Turino said in his talk, in the past people recognized
themselves and others through their abilities as their “art”: “I am a
mason,” “I am a carpenter.” It is through art and culture that we exercise
the idea of belonging, of unity, of the “ubuntu” or the impossibility of
being well if others around us are not.
On the other hand, as the public managers participating in the
conference emphasized, “the municipal budget is not neutral.” There is
competition among the kinds of events and people who will be supported.
There is also a reduction of resources available for artistic endeavours in
times of economic cooling and crisis. The relative lack of resources and
the difficulties of access to the official channels of support have led many
in the cultural groups to organize themselves and seek resources in
solidarity with one another. The testimonies of some of these groups
reveal innovative forms of self-management that include the formation of
support networks in the communities and the occupation of public spaces.
The 2015 conference at UFABC also meant a confrontation of roles
and expectations. Are the demands of the cultural movements of the ABC
Region and the city of São Paulo being observed by the already-existing
municipal cultural plans and the plans still in their initial phases? Are these
collective efforts known to the municipal public systems of culture? Are
they the protagonists—or at least participants—of the Planos e Conselhos
[Plans and Councils] being implemented at the moment? And what are the
public policies in the area of culture? According to the public managers, a
“public policy only becomes public when people own it.” In other words,
 The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship xi
in the ABC Region of São Paulo, Brazil

“policies do not make themselves alone,” or “public policy does not

belong to the state alone.”
Today, Brazilian society is managing to rethink its cultural paths,
especially with the emergence in the 2000s of programs such as Valorização
das Iniciativas Culturais [Valorization of Cultural Initiatives] (VAI) and
the Living Culture program. These programs leveraged the processes of
cultural citizenship with the stress on diversity and—through live actions
and internet work—the empowering of groups previously excluded from
the cultural scene.
The great challenge now will be to extend the intercultural dialogues
and public policies in a more comprehensive scale that includes the new
repertoires marked by solidarity, tolerance, space sharing with different
peoples and ideas, and a culture of rights, especially the right of the
enjoyment of the city itself.
This book brings together some of the lectures and testimonies from
the event, followed by comments from the organizers. After the initial
reflections by Ladislaw Dowbor and Célio Turino problematizing and
assigning parameters to the discussion of the solidarity economy of culture
and cultural citizenship, several cultural collectives working in the city of
São Paulo and the ABC Region gave their testimony, focusing on their
work and means of survival. The solidarity practices are a constant theme
in their presentations, revealing some of the creative processes in the
construction of a financial support system that permeates the cultural
movements blooming in Brazil today. In the third part of the book, cultural
managers and representatives of the government make their considerations,
putting forward their perspectives and ideas about the economy of culture,
the solidarity work, and the meaning and construction of cultural
citizenship. Finally, the book closes with some reflections about the role
the promoter of the event—the university—in the construction of a new
cultural agenda.

Neusa Serra
Hamilton Faria
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My gratitude goes to the volunteers, students and faculty of the Federal

University of ABC in São Paulo, Brazil, who organized the conference in
2016, and then transformed the testimonies and lectures into a book in
Portuguese, Economia solidária da cultura e cidadania cultural, desafios
e horizontes (São Bernardo do Campo, SP: EdUFABC, 2016. ISBN 978-
85-68576-46-5). Neusa Serra and Hamilton Faria organized the event, and
Serra ensured that the text was impeccably proofread. Later, she helped
me obtain the official permissions from EdUFABC to pursue the
publication of the current translation. Three other persons worked very
hard to obtain the permissions, practically “combing through” the
megalopolis called São Paulo to find the participants of the original event
so they could give us written permission to use their testimony in this
book: Thiago Mariano, Simone Pellizon, and David Teixeira dos Santos.
Valeu, pessoal! Here in the United States, I am grateful to my colleagues
at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, especially Mark Lokensgard,
Rosalinda Helbig, Angel Tazzer and Janet Dizinno, who helped me in
many different ways during the past years. I also want to acknowledge the
generosity of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, which
granted me a semester sabbatical to finish the work required for this book.
At home, I counted on the strength of my daughter Sara, always ready to
make some coffee, share a good story, and cook a delicious meal. It is
great to have adult children! I cannot fail to mention the many hours of
relaxation and sheer fun spent with my granddaughter Valentina, who
taught me to dance to new and old tunes, as well as watch kids’ movies all
over again, many, many times. It is wonderful to have young children to
remind us that life is born anew every day, with every child.

Finally, I want to express my deepest gratitude to Terry Caesar, my

husband, co-conspirator, scholar, and best friend, who fought a terminal
illness with great dignity and courage until the end. This book is dedicated
to him.

Eva Paulino Bueno

 INTRODUCTION

EVA PAULINO BUENO

This book is the result of the work of many people who organized and
participated in a conference in the ABC region of São Paulo. Its translation
into English is part of the effort to make one more part of the rich and
complex Brazilian culture known to the non-Portuguese-speaking public.
In fact, with the exception of superstars like European-born novelist José
Saramago, whose books were almost immediately translated into English,
much of the literary and essayistic production from the Lusophone world
is woefully under-represented in English. This translation presents the
experiences of university professors, city managers, culture agents, and
artists of one region of Brazil who came together to speak about the
solidarity economy—its theory and practice—and to give their testimony
of how it has enabled (or has yet to enable) the creation and practice of
different arts coming from different areas. The artists speaking at the
conference do not belong to the elite. Many of them are self-taught, and all
of them struggle daily to continue what they believe is their mission—to
bring entertainment, education, and beauty to their communities through
their art.
In the process of translation, the text itself suggested several issues
pertaining to the nature and value of art, and who has the authority to
determine what is and is not art. These are not new issues in Brazilian
culture. Indeed, in 1962 the executive director of the Popular Cultural
Centers Carlos Estevam Martins published a manifesto, “For a Popular
Revolutionary Art,” in which he made some sharp distinctions and wrote
that the “art of the people … is the product of economically backward
communities, flourishing primarily in rural and urban contexts that have
not yet reached the lifestyles that accompany industrialization.” In this
case, the public and the artist, for Martins, are indistinguishable from one
another, because “the level of artistic elaboration is so primary that the act
of creation does not go beyond the simple ordering of the most patent data
of a backward popular consciousness.” In contrast, Martins maintains,
“Popular art … is distinguished from the art of the people not only by its
public, made up of the population of the developed urban centres, but also
2 Introduction

by the division of labour that makes the masses the non-productive

receivers of works created by a professionalized group of specialists.”
Martins concludes that the art of the people and popular art, “when
considered from a culturally rigorous point of view, scarcely deserve to be
called art,” because they are neither truly “popular” nor “of the people” (in
Johnson and Stam 1995, 60). Although Martins does not explain what a
“culturally rigorous point of view” might be, it is quite possible that he
means that the “professionalized group of specialists” are those who
decide what deserves to be called art, and what can be discarded.1
Fortunately, ideas such as Martins’s were not met unopposed. In his
preface to Maria Rita Galvão and Jean-Claude Bernadet’s O nacional e o
popular na cultura brasileira (1983), Adauto Novaes argues the opposite
to Martins’s ideas. First, Novaes points out the dangers of a reasoning that
equates the state with what he calls an “Absolute Spirit” which transforms
the nation and its people into “objective moments or symbols of an idea”
(7). As Novaes sees it, this “discursive reasoning” attributes to intellectuals
the role of “functionaries of reason” (7). The intellectuals only rose to this
position due to the belief which separates the subject from the object,
consciousness from things, and representation from facts, when the
knowledge and the ability of doing anything fragment the social and the
political space even more. In this division, the intellectual who speaks “for
the State, to the State, and from the point of view of the State” becomes
the consciousness of culture, a consciousness that possesses the truth of
everything, that explains everything, and that intends to unify that which
the political reality itself separates. It is in this path that the projects of
National Popular Culture grew, becoming a fantastic investment in charge
of building the cultural identity and social unity, and at the same time the
idea of legitimacy (8).

Obviously, as one can gather from Novaes’s reaction to statements like

Martins’s, not all intellectuals arrogate to themselves the role of the
consciousness of their culture. Indeed, as the organizers and participants of
the conference at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo
demonstrate, it is possible—and desirable—for intellectuals of any country
to approach artists with an express desire to learn from them as well as
understand them and their needs. None of the organizers and presenters
approached the idea of culture in Brazil from a standardizing point of
view. None of them spoke in favour of a “regulating synthesis” of culture
in the different areas of the country. On the contrary, each spoke as
someone who went to the different areas of the country, not to impose
ideas but to listen and bring news of available financial resources to
 Eva Paulino Bueno 3

support artists and community centres so they could develop themselves

according to their own artistic characteristics.2
After the two initial opening presentations by Ladislau Dowbor and
Célio Turino de Miranda, different artists from the surrounding area spoke
and gave their testimony of what it is like to be an artist in Brazil, how
they approach what they believe to be their mission, and how they
communicate with their community. Each demonstrates that Martins is not
correct—their artistic elaboration is far from primary, and that, although
none of them comes from the wealthy elite, they can and do produce art,
not just consume it without further thought. In addition, their experience
shows that before the existence of the government-funded Points of
Culture, neighbours and groups of friends from even the poorest areas
sought to create conditions and find a space where they could strengthen
their community and express themselves through music, dance, literature,
theatre, circus performances, and the visual arts. They are groups of young
people like Hélio Costa and Fernanda Henrique Souza de Lima, who work
with their collectives in an effort to develop their artistic language, making
it possible to share it with their community. They are women like Baby
Amorim and Lenita Sena of Ilú-Obá de Min, who created a space for other
black women to gather, to learn their history, to become conscious of their
strength, and to make art together. They are people like those represented
by Renata Silva, who take it upon themselves to create solidarity networks
that make it easier for people to purchase healthy and affordable food
straight from the producers. The examples abound, and are certainly not
restricted to the ABC region. One such example is provided the youth of
Araçuaí, a small town in the state of Minas Gerais, who donated to the city
the money obtained from their shows for the creation of an art centre to
benefit the community. Another example is the Pirambu Academy of
Sciences and Letters, located in a slum in the city of Fortaleza in the state
of Ceará, which was created and maintained by the residents, all
“fishermen who lost the sea and former farmers who lost their land.”
When the official representative of the government arrived in the slum, the
residents had the space, idea, and plans, as well as artists already working
there. What the government funds did was enable them to expand and
serve more people in their community by providing a larger space for
study, for work, and for creative ideas to flourish.
Granted, the conference in São Paulo opened with the presentations by
two renowned public figures, Ladislau Dowbor and Célio Turino de
Miranda, and closed with the provost of the Federal University of ABC,
Daniel Pansarelli. They may be part of the “professionalized group of
specialists” that Estevam refers to. However, the organizers, as well as
4 Introduction

Dowbor, Turino de Miranda, and Pansarelli, approach the artists and their
art not as “explicators” or “apologists,” but as people who go where the
artists are, who enter into a dialogue with the artists, and not do not see the
different artists as mere gatherers who order “the most patent data of a
backward popular consciousness.” Very much to the contrary, each of the
presenters and organizers has a personal history of work with and
appreciation for the differences within the Brazilian nation, as is
demonstrated by the effort to bring artists together to share their
experiences and knowledge with one another and, in the process, inspire
other artists, city managers, intellectuals, and the university itself.
Nevertheless, as several of the artists said, the official funds are not
enough to cover all their needs. It is true that the Brazilian government,
starting with that of Luis Inácio da Silva (“Lula”) under the Minister of
Culture Gilberto Gil, adopted laws to support the Points of Culture
throughout the country. And yet, the existence of such laws does not
automatically guarantee that all groups and collectives will have access to
funds. Although the Points of Culture have been a powerful incentive to
many different collectives all over Brazil, the fact is that, as more than one
participant pointed out, it is difficult for a group with few resources to
apply to obtain the status of a Point of Culture. At this moment, the
principles of solidarity become crucial. Without the sharing and the
exchanging of resources, many groups would not be able to fulfil the
requirements to apply for funding. The protagonists of this book are the
artists who not only create art that makes sense and meaning to them and
their communities, but who also extend their technical expertise to others,
helping different collectives and groups to obtain funds and find their way
to creating their own art. There is a genuine sense of fraternity and
comradery among the groups, because they all know that many times this
is the only way for all of them to survive.
And yet, even though there is some funding and nowadays the
understanding of what art is and who can be an artist has changed from the
1960s, there is still much to be done. Some of the artists who spoke in the
conference pictured a Brazilian society that still does not accept art
coming from the poorer parts of the country, and there are ignorant people
in powerful positions. Many still seem to consider that art is only that
which appears in museums, downtown theatres, or performance halls; in
other words, for many in the wealthy segment of the Brazilian society, art
is the privilege of a few, a kind of class embellishment that only the rich
can afford, appreciate, understand, and, most crucially, create.
Unfortunately for some of the artists who spoke at the conference in 2016
and gave their testimony, they are still misunderstood and even harassed
 Eva Paulino Bueno 5

by government officials who mistake their efforts to engage the youth of

their community for anarchy and send the police to attack them and their
public during their performances. Furthermore, some talented artists are
reaching the point of caving in to financial pressures, and are considering
abandoning their art and their effort to be role models for others. One
cannot help but be moved when a thirty-year-old artist admits to feeling
tired, exhausted, spent, and at the point of giving up his art and plans.
Is there a solution to the problem of how art can be created and known
in a developing country like Brazil? Can artists from the working class in a
poor country have the luxury of being full-time artists? Perhaps, as the
voices of the conference showed, there are many solutions, as well as
many artists who dare persevere in their art, despite all difficulties, as long
as there is real solidarity among artists, intellectuals, public culture
managers, and the public. The effort to bring all these groups together,
spearheaded by university professors in the ABC region of São Paulo, is
an example of the type of event that can reinvigorate artists while calling
official attention to their work and their inestimable value in the
construction of a more just, happier, and healthier society.

Notes
1
At this point, one cannot help but think that Martins was quoting—avant-la-lettre,
since Martins published his essay in 1962—from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s
essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in which she concludes, among other things, that
no, the subaltern cannot speak except through the middle-class intellectuals (a
“professionalized group of specialists”) who speak for the subaltern. Spivak’s
influential essay cannot be seen apart from the historical moment in which it was
published, or from the situation of subaltern studies at that time. Much has changed
since 1985, when the essay first appeared in the journal Wedge, but many of the
questions Spivak raises are still relevant today.
2
Unlike what happens in many richer countries, in Brazil it is very uncommon for
companies (much less individuals) to support the arts. Since 1991, Brazil has had
the Law Rouanet, which was created in the government of Fernando Collor de
Melo (1990–2). This law is an incentive for companies to support the arts, but
companies making use of this fiscal incentive tend to interfere in the selection and
end up determining what art and which artists they will support.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY OF CULTURE

AND CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP:
NEW PARADIGMS
 1.1 THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY:
NEW CULTURAL PARADIGMS

LADISLAU DOWBOR

We live in a time of critical challenges, which encompass environmental,

social, and financial challenges. These challenges are articulated among
themselves, and they demand a systemic change of how we orient our
development.

The Environmental Challenge

The first challenge is global warming. Yes, there have been discussions
around the theme, particularly involving the war among the large coal and
oil groups that organized a planetary massacre of disinformation. Today,
however, there are practically no controversies around this reality. “Things
are happening,” and we can see the impact of global warming everywhere.
We, members of the Homo sapiens species, with our powerful
technologies, are capable of extracting fantastic volumes of water, and yet,
at the same time, we can destroy forests at a phenomenal rate. We have
been able to map the routes of fish in the ocean with GPS and identify
their biomass concentration by satellite so we can extract ninety million
tons of fish from the seas every year. Life, however, cannot replenish itself
in this rhythm. It is tragic that we can remove seventy million sharks from
the ocean because “elegant” people like to eat their fins. We, Homo
sapiens, suddenly have technological instruments that are much more
powerful than our social intelligence.
Indeed, we have technical capacities that advance much faster than our
capacity for organizing and living intelligently and humanly together. This
gap generates a very dangerous hiatus. We are using up the water sources
everywhere, and not just in the city of São Paulo—after all, selling water
is a good moneymaking business. And we have the Companhia de
Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo [the Basic Sanitation
Company of the State of São Paulo] (SABEST) and its stockholders. They
say that to fix the sewer system in the city is very expensive. That is all
 Ladislau Dowbor 9

very well, but if we are losing thirty-three percent of the water, is all that
matters that which makes money—the selling of water? We are not
speaking about uninformed people—most of the people inside SABEST
and the research institutions know very well what needs to be done, the
rhythm of depletion of the aquifers, and the long-range climate change
previsions. But unfortunately, financial gain takes precedence over all
other concerns.
Once, upon request from the government of an African country, I
spoke with one of the large industrial fishing companies that are killing off
the fish in West Africa. I told them that, “the fish are going to disappear!”
And they answered, “my friend, I have one hundred million dollars
invested in industrial fishing, and I have to recover ‘what is mine’.” And
then, here comes the key argument: “If I don’t do it, another one will!”
One such example appears in Fred Pearce’s 2006 book When the
Rivers Run Dry: Water—the Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century.
In the book, there is a moment in which the author is speaking with
farmers in the interior of India. In the past, a little donkey went around the
well, pulling ropes that brought up the water, and this did not kill anyone.
Today you have pumps that extract twelve square feet of water per hour.
The Gross Internal Product and productivity increase, but at the same time
the aquifers go down. Pearce asks the farmers, “At what depth are you
pumping water?” They answer, “Now at 350 metres.” “And then what
happens?” “Well,” they reply, “each year we add one and a half metres to
the tube.” Let’s not forget that we are not talking with “idiots,” but with
people who understand agriculture and water. Then, the evident follow-up
question is, “How far can this situation go?” And they answer, “We know
that the water here is going to end, but … in this region, there are millions
of these pumps, this is an enormous aquifer, so if one of us just packs up
and leaves, nothing will change.”
With 7.2 billion inhabitants, powerful technologies, and the mental
disposition that each one can extract as much as possible, the planet will
not withstand all these attacks. It is Adam Smith upside down—the sum of
the individual interests does not lead to the common good; rather, it leads
to disaster if we do not build another economic culture.
We are facing a system in which each one grabs as much as they can.
The philosophy of success does not consist of a person feeling happy for
their contribution to the planet and the general good, but for how much
they can show has become “theirs.” In other words, the logic of an
economy for the good of all is being swallowed by the logic of power and
individual success. In reality, we are not here on this planet as passengers,
but as part of the crew. We have to think about the planet, the future, and
10 1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms

“our children.” I am not a pessimistic or dramatic person, but I follow the

situation and I can see that things are “going downhill” very fast. In 2015,
the Worldwide Fund for Nature released a very serious report showing that
from 1970 to 2010 we managed to destroy fifty-two percent of the
vertebrates on the planet and contaminate whole forests with agricultural
toxic products. We need to rethink the form in which we administer
ourselves as a society. This business of “I defend my own interests, and
other people can go to hell” must change.

The Social Drama

The second challenge is inequality, because the current social situation is
dramatic. Up until some time ago, we used to study income inequality.
Today, we have started to systematically study wealth inequality, which is
different. I am a professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica [Pontifical
Catholic University] (PUC), and my annual income fluctuates. My wealth,
in fact, consists of my house and my bank account. If I deduct my debts, I
have my net household wealth. Today, eighty-five million families own
more wealth than the 3.5 billion people who constitute the poorest of the
planet. Never before, in any moment of the history of humanity, has this
kind of accumulation been possible through financial mechanisms,
because none of the owners of these fortunes produced the wealth they
have.
This inequality is leading to absolutely explosive situations. It is not
just the fact that this is the situation here in São Paulo, where the military
police kill people. There are “explosions” everywhere. In the Arab world,
seventy percent of the workforce is engaged in the informal sector and do
not have access to regular ways of making a living. The average in Latin
America is around forty-eight percent. Brazil is at around forty percent.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) states that, in 2014, forty-
three percent of the youth in the world were in danger of unemployment or
in non-self-supporting forms of employment. This situation is leading to
explosive environments, especially considering that people’s attitude
towards ingrained poverty has changed.
Nowadays, a poor man knows that there are resources for his wife to
obtain medical assistance and give birth in a safe way, for their children to
attend a good school, and so on and so forth. One can no longer find the
poor people that the rich people love, those subservient poor that lower
their heads and say “yes, Sir” to whatever the rich say. This is true with
the Aymaras and other indigenous peoples, the young people of the
favelas, or the daughter of the maid in the 2015 film Que horas ela volta?1
 Ladislau Dowbor 11

People know that the resources exist, and therefore the temperature rises
not just in the climatic system. And, of course, this is the case in the Arab
world as well as all over Asia, Africa, and the United States. It is the same
everywhere.
We are facing a disintegration of the governments’ capacity to govern,
as well as a demoralization of the absurd, unjust social and economic pact
that rules us. Up to two billion people still cook with wood, while 1.3
billion people have no access to electricity in the twenty-first century.
Meanwhile, 720 million people are starving. Ironically, the World Bank is
encouraged by these figures because ten years ago 920 million people
were starving. We have all the data on how many people live with less
than US $1.90 a day and how many with less than US $4.00, as well as
how many children go blind every year because the governments of their
countries did not spend ten cents on vitamin A. We are a hugely well-
informed society when it concerns the absurdities that we generate and
reproduce. The problem, therefore, is not lack of resources.
Today in the world, seven thousand reals2 of goods and services are
produced monthly by each family of four people. Since Brazil is exactly in
the middle of the world average, this is also our reality. With what we
produce today, all Brazilians could live comfortably. Now, the reality is
that there are hundreds of millions of children who go hungry in the world,
and of these, five or six million die of starvation or illnesses brought about
due to their fragility. Thus, starvation is never considered as the final cause
of death. Only counting the children starving in our world today, just for
comparison, this is the equivalent to more than five of New York’s World
Trade Center towers falling every day. And yet, the destruction of the twin
towers on September 11th, 2001 generated an immediate media spectacle
and frenetic speculation with the gold market. In the meantime, children
die in silence, the same way their parents’ pain is silent. We know where
these crises are taking place; we know we have the money and the
technology. We have everything. But how far can indifference to human
suffering go?
I am not mentioning these facts to over dramatize, but to stress these
points. Our great challenge is not to invent one more chip or something
else—our great challenge is to organize ourselves as a civilized society.
This organization requires a decisive step towards the better allocation of
our resources. While this step is not taken, we watch, impotent, the “soap
opera of corruption” and “the orchestra of the favoured interest groups”—
everything led by elites that, only in Brazil, own US $520 billion, the
equivalent to almost one-third of the country’s GDP, safely stashed away
in “fiscal safe havens” (according to data from the British Taxes Justice
12 1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms

Network [TJN]).3 The solution to the social and environmental dramas is

not simply an economic or technical matter; rather, it is a political and
ethical matter.
We know what has to be done to face the environmental crisis, and we
know what has to be done in order to organize the productive inclusion of
the poorest countries and, at a minimum, to assure a basic income for all
families. It is not a matter of building a higher wall between Mexico and
the United states or around the Palestinian population, and it is not a
matter of filling the Mediterranean with armed ships. These propositions
are so absurd that sometimes we have to stop and wonder where we lost
our sense of how ridiculous they are. An interview with one of the people
who makes a lot of money organizing the migrations of Africans into
Europe reveals the obvious, when he says: “Instead of spending so much
money combing through the Mediterranean trying to catch the refugees,
why do these governments not finance infrastructure so people can make a
living in their own countries?” The challenges are real. We need a shock
of common sense.

The Financial Challenge

The financial system needs to be overhauled, since it is not a physical but
rather an immaterial system. What truly exists are rights, papers, and
magnetic strips. In reality, the whole financial system is basically
controlled by 147 groups, three-quarters of them represented by banks that
control the world system and reinvest in financial areas that are not geared
towards real transformation. An articulated world power belongs to
twenty-eight financial world groups deemed to be “systematically
meaningful.”
The 2012 world GDP was US $73 trillion, representing the production
of goods and services. But the right of access to these goods and services
occurs through different types of papers and financial resources. A good
part of these resources is placed in “fiscal safe havens.” There are around
sixty-five such “havens.” For instance, HSBC’s is in Switzerland; those of
the Brazilian banks Bradesco and Itaú are located in Luxembourg; and the
great world fortunes hide their money in the Cayman Islands, the Virgin
Islands, and other places out or reach from investigations of tax evasion,
but they are essentially administered by the financial groups based in New
York and London. The research presented by Nicholas Shaxson in
Treasure Islands and the studies done by the Tax Justice Network put all
the data within anyone’s reach. The Economist rounds up the resources
amassed in these “fiscal safe havens” to twenty trillion US dollars. These
 Ladislau Dowbor 13

are resources that, besides not being invested in development, also drain
wealth through the financial speculation that they make possible.
Today, money is magnetic; it circulates in light waves, moving through
the planet in fractions of seconds. And who controls it? We do not have a
world government. The existing regulatory systems are national systems,
fragmented and divided among the 193 central banks operating under
different types of laws. When a central bank decides, for instance, to lower
the SELIC (Sistema Especial de Liquidação e Custódia)4 tax because it is
important for the bank’s base country, this bank may suffer international
pressure as well as the threat of one more cyclical crisis. Nobody controls
the financial system on the planet. In the last three meetings of G20
countries—the group of governments that control practically eighty
percent of the world economy—the participants could not reach any
resolution to face the giant world finance systems. There are fragments of
regulation, such as the Dodd-Frank Law in the United States,5 the attempt
to control the dislocations of profit through Base Erosion and Profit
Shifting,6 but essentially we find ourselves impotent in ensuring that the
resources appropriated by the system of financial mediation are useful.
The three challenges—environmental, social, and financial—are
articulated because resources, technologies, and information exist.
However, we cannot direct them towards the solution of the existing
problems because the solutions go through the decision process of so-
called governance—that is, privatized policies, which are what we face at
the moment; these policies constitute the worst of all worlds.
Let us focus for a moment on the decision process of governance. We
study the government, which is the state machine, the political state,
because governance is a wider concept. In Brazil, for instance, governance
involves the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra [Movement
of the Landless Rural Workers] (MST), the Federação das Indústrias do
Estado de São Paulo [Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo]
(FIESP), the large banks, and the social actions that influence the process
of political, economic, and social organization. In a certain way, we need
to take the reins of these processes. It is not the case that we enter a
general discussion of the big solutions; rather, we can point out some very
real possibilities.
First, we need to analyse urbanization. Unlike what was the case in the
1950s, Brazil is no longer formed by scattered rural populations, and the
organized capacity to make decisions is not centred like in some capital
cities. The population currently is eighty-five percent urban, and each city
can reflect on how it organizes itself, how it builds its own quality of life,
economy, cultural wealth, and sustainability, and how to reduce or end
14 1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms

poverty. Context and outside support help, but the principal initiative has
to come from the local forces, especially when it is necessary to provide
the intelligent use of external resources.
In Brazil, urbanization is a recent phenomenon, basically the product
of the large rural exodus that took place between 1960 and 1980. People
came to the city not only because of the attraction of the urban space, but
also as a result of the expulsion of the population from the rural areas by
the large agricultural businesses (with the aid of strong repression). This
displacement of people led to the population explosion in cities like São
Paulo, whose peripheral areas grew by up to ten percent a year, fed by
waves of poor people who arrived basically destitute. Both the speed of
urbanization and the control by the elites prevented the creation of new
schools, sanitation systems, safety, and infrastructure in general. The
inheritance from this period is still reflected in the forms of inequality that
characterize our cities.
And yet, we can invert this reasoning and see the opportunities. When
populations are placed in close contact, an economics of proximity is also
generated. At this point, when São Paulo has clearly stopped expanding,
can we pause and think about ways to organize this city not as a way to
build more viaducts, but as a way to start living a better life? We can think
about topics ranging from a way to prioritize public transportation, to
create bicycle routes, thus increasing the number of trees lining the streets,
cleaning the rivers—which do not have to be seen and treated as open air
sewers—generalizing the open urban wireless system, and determining the
best places for the location of economic activities. We need to start
thinking in an organized fashion about the intelligent appropriation of the
territory by the communities, something that we have begun considering in
a creative manner only in the few last years.
The resident of São Paulo loses two hours and forty minutes in traffic
every day. This is a pathetic situation! In my study “Our São Paulo,” I
asked a series of people about what São Paulo could be in 2022. Judging
from the excellent proposals received, the number of highly capable and
sophisticated technical personnel who understand everything about the city
is impressive. The question is then why did any of these proposals not
become a reality? They were not put into practice simply because other
interests predominate—those of the elites, industries, contractors, and real
estate investors took precedence over the common good. Corruption is
only one of the dimensions of systemic deformity.
On the national scale, we have a congress with a rural wing, a big bank
wing, a contractor wing, and a big media wing. We can look with a
magnifying lens for the “citizen wing” but we will not find it. Of course,
 Ladislau Dowbor 15

this situation constitutes a great disrespect to the constitution—it is as if it

only contained the first article. Finally, the Superior Tribunal Federal
[Superior Federal Court] (STF) noticed the situation, but the losses have
accumulated since the approval of the 1997 law authorizing companies to
virtually “buy candidates” through the financing of their political
campaigns.
To once again recall the opportunities offered to the cities, we can rebuild
local spaces of governance, democracy, transparency, and participation. Not
everything has been captured by the elites. Why do we have these
deformations in the city of São Paulo? Have there always been alliances
among contractors, industries, and realtors in the city? There are some
people, such as Erundina,7 Marta,8 and Haddad,9 who think “outside the
box.” They can all be credited with many important and common-sense
achievements. So, we return to the idea suggested in several texts such as
O Que é o Poder Local [What is Local Power] (2008), where I look
beyond the national and world dramas—yes, it is possible, city by city, to
“take the reins,” to organize the spaces of our daily life in a sensible way.

Innovative Experiences and Cultural Wealth

Together with researchers from the PUC-São Paulo and the Fundação
Getúlio Vargas-São Paulo (FGV-SP), we have followed about eight
thousand innovative experiments all over Brazil. We have observed some
amazing facts. Our media loves the country’s capital, Brasília, and some
other main capital cities.10 Journalists simply like the capital cities and do
not travel much; as a result, the profound transformations taking place in
Brazil barely appear on their radar. But there are some people whose work
showcases these transformations.
André Trigueiro and the people from the Polis Institute have done
important work, for instance. Unfortunately, the Centro de Estudos e
Pesquisas de Administração Municipal [Centre of Study and Research
about Municipal Administration] (CEPAM), one of the few institutions to
provide technical support to cities, is being closed by the government of
the State of São Paulo.11 There are also people who have worked to open
spaces—Tânia Zapata and Tânia Bacelar in Pernambuco, Tânia Fisher in
Bahia, and Cunca Bocaiuva, Franklin Coelho, Caio Silveira, and others in
Rio de Janeiro—as well as important initiatives such as Sustainable Cities
as part of the “Nossa São Paulo” movement. However, these are
insufficient initiatives and provide insufficient support to ensure that the
5,570 municipalities of the country can become systemically productive
and developed. We need much more. The municipalities are the blocks
16 1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms

that constitute the country—if they are not well administered, the whole
country suffers.
In Sweden, a country with an old urbanization system, taxes are
elevated above fifty percent—Brazil’s is thirty-five percent. But in
Sweden, seventy-two percent of the public resources are funnelled into the
local governments because that is where daily life is lived. People say that
“everything is globalized.” Indeed, computers are global, but my
children’s school and the quality of teaching constitute a local reality that
is part of the culture of the city. The cultural wealth of my city—or its
lack—is something that can be organized. The existence (or not) of trees
on my street, a good recycling system—these are “local things.” The
quality of quotidian lives, a sense of safety, and a feeling of tranquillity are
predominantly locally based. I personally think it is a crime that children
of all social classes do not have access to free public swimming pools.
This is a fundamental aspect for a neighbourhood and a city. It is so cheap
to have one swimming pool in each school—it creates a space in which
youths can get together and share leisure activities, and all of this ends up
being far cheaper than an increased repressive apparatus.
It is essential to understand that our lifestyle depends only partly on the
expansion of individual buying power. In Canada, people’s income is
lower than in the United States, but the “indirect salary”—in the form of
day care, free schools and universities, universal health coverage, and
parks and green areas spread throughout the urban spaces that allow
people to walk and play together, for free—represents the social
investment, the universal access to the wealth of the land that creates more
solidarity and a more peaceful society.
The example of the swimming pool helps us to understand the
importance of collective, or public, consumption. To have a swimming
pool in one’s yard seems to be a symbol of status. In Brazil, anyone who
wants to have a family pool needs to have a lot of money. When we fly
over the city we can see those blue spots in the backyards of the rich
neighbourhoods. What is interesting is that hardly anyone ever enjoys
these pools because to be sitting around alone is very boring, so no one
ends up using their private swimming pool. But people like to say, “I have
my own pool,” “I have my this,” “my that,” or “my car.” In the meantime,
we do not have a reasonable public transportation system. And I have to
spend a long time inside my car, at a standstill on the Marginal Tietê,
because the traffic is so dense. So, to review: it is necessary for all of us to
realize that the balance between the individual consumption and the use of
the collective property and systems is crucial if we are to reduce inequality
and generate a climate more conducive to life together and to social peace.
 Ladislau Dowbor 17

In Equatorial Guinea, where I worked for the UN, the public electric
infrastructure was very precarious, so the people with money had their
own individual generators, and they said “I have my electricity.” When I
tell this to people in Brazil they find it ridiculous to have to generate one’s
own electricity, to own one’s own generator. And these are the same
people who spend hours in their cars on the Tietê road because, as they
say, “I have my own car.” When I worked in New York I did not use a car,
but the transit system. Today in New York, many people rent cars for the
weekend to go to special places or shopping, but they do not think about
using it to go to work. Indeed, it is essential that we adjust our vision as a
whole, with less ideological noise and with more common sense in terms
of quality of life for everyone.
Culture seen as an event or performance in the municipal theatre
constitutes a type of “elegant veneer” for stylish people to consume.
Culture is much more than this. I see the wealth of a culture in the creation
of social conditions that allow the awakening of everyone’s different
creative potential in their family relationships, their love relationships, and
their professional and intellectual relationships; indeed, there are many
“dormant” creative talents in everyone. There are privileged spaces for us
to build a better, more open, and more creative society—we just have to
apply our potential towards this goal.
The creation of a rich atmosphere around us at once empowers us and
opens spaces for the empowerment of others. Some examples come to
mind: several cities in the world, independently from their concern with
the great national and international problems, decided to do their own
“homework.” The city of Jacksonville, Florida, for instance, publishes a
yearly Quality of Life Progress Report that enables people to follow their
own social progress. In the townships around Johannesburg, South Africa,
instead of showing models trying to seduce people into buying things, the
billboards show the evolution, in columns, year by year, of the
performance of the neighbourhood in terms of child mortality, access to
basic sanitation, access to water, and so on. There is space for the residents
to discuss matters related to citizenship and progress instead of simply
encouraging material accumulation and consumerist competition. Our
problem is not lack of technical resources or financial resources; rather,
what we lack is an organized attitude of convivial life in order to “make
things work.” That is, what we need is a cultural change.
18 1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms

The Immaterial Economy

Focusing a little more on the solidarity economy and culture, the world of
those who work with economics faces a profound reversal. Taking the cell
phone as an example: it has five percent of physical work and raw
material. What are we paying for when we purchase a cell phone? We pay
for what is immaterial: the design, the research, the knowledge, all that
was required to produce it. We are entering an economy of knowledge
extremely fast. This is absolutely revolutionary. More than half of the
value created today in the planet consists of incorporated knowledge.
Why does this change so much in our universe? Because, in the era of
physical goods, all the economy is centred on the problem of lack. The
role of the economist is to organize the optimization of the distribution of
scarce resources. Physical goods are rivalling goods, whereas knowledge
is not. After you have created knowledge you can spread it throughout the
world. If I give Célio12 my watch, I no longer have it. Either I have the
watch or Célio has the watch. On the other hand, if I pass an idea to him,
or vice-versa, I continue with the idea. The only difference is that, in
Célio’s head, my idea will sound different because he has different
furniture “up there” in his brain.
At this point, I recommend reading Jeremy Rifkin’s 2014 The Zero
Marginal Cost Society: the Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons,
and the Eclipse of Capitalism. As Rifkin says, in order to produce more
watches for more people, I will need more raw material, and more work.
But if knowledge is put on the internet—as the MIT does with their Open
Course Ware, or the China Open Resources for Education (CORE) system
in China—millions of people can take possession of it, thus stimulating
new adaptations and more creativity. Knowledge can multiply itself to
enrich everyone without additional costs.
I am a professor, and therefore my work is to create, stimulate, and
transmit ideas, not produce watches. My site, www.dowborg.org, was
created by my son Alexandre eighteen years ago. All my books and
articles, as well as articles that people send me and authorize me to share,
are on the site, available for free thanks to the Creative Commons system.
Up to now, dozens of thousands of people have visited my site. I have also
uploaded my small 2013 book Tecnologias do Conhecimento: os Desafios
da Educação [Technologies of Knowledge: Challenges of Education]. I
received an email from Portuguese-speaking Timor-Leste. I have never
been there and I do not know anyone there, but someone read my book
and liked it. The person sent me an email asking for authorization to use
the book in teacher training. I answered: “I am very honored, please use
 Ladislau Dowbor 19

the material as you see fit.” The effort I made to produce this idea had a
cost, while the publicizing and use of the work do not increase the cost.
Now, we put these two things together. Today, the economy is
fundamentally based on a production factor called knowledge. The main
production factor in the modern economy is the production factor itself,
which is not reduced by its use. And the planetary connectivity allows
knowledge to circulate without cost in a way that it can be used by any
person, resulting in an unlimited multiplying effect. It is time we “wake
up” to new horizons and new rules of the game, along with its many
opportunities!

A New Cultural Paradigm: the Collaborative Economy

Through a system of cultural collaboration, we see the possibility of
democratization of the planet, of giving people the instruments to govern
themselves, of re-empowering people. Knowledge is certainly an
emancipatory and empowering factor, and this is profoundly radical. The
MIT recently made an inventory of the access to its scientific texts, and
they were downloaded about fifty million times throughout the world. Can
you fathom the contribution that this represents for all humanity? True, the
state and the universities cover the efforts to develop and research an idea.
In China, when a professor brings about an innovation or makes a
discovery, it is made public and the professor receives a bonus from the
university. From this point on, the new discovery becomes available to all
Chinese people and the world. And here, in our universities, we are still
“Xeroxing chapters of books.” This situation is really “pre-historic!”
Congressman Paulo Teixeira wrote an important bill, but, although it
has reached Congress, it has not moved from there for some years. It is
important to remember that this is our congress, elected with money from
corporations. According to this bill, instead of “feeding” the large
publishers hired to produce millions of school textbooks every year, the
Ministry of Education would buy the copyrights from the authors
themselves, and then allow free access to the text, thus decentralizing the
impression of the books and introducing updates and corrections whenever
they are deemed necessary.
These are different times; we are entering a new economy—the
economy of open access. I am evidently more familiar with what this
means in the academic area, while Célio Turino de Miranda is more
familiar with the cultural area. But the fact is that things are moving with
extreme speed nowadays. In economic terms, when I have this kind of raw
material, a production factor that can multiply itself through the planet
20 1.1 The Solidarity Economy: New Cultural Paradigms

without additional costs, the basic paradigm is no longer competition of

the “this is mine, that is yours” type, but rather of collaboration. The large
amount of research currently being done in the world involves distributive
research. The laboratories have opened their research results because what
one scientist invents helps the advance of others. Everyone can work on
the cutting edge, except those people who keep “reinventing the wheel.”
The reading of Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’s Wikinomics (2006)
helps us to understand these new dynamics better, so I also recommend
this book.
Confronting our great challenges—to stop destroying the planet, to
assure a decent life for everyone, and to reorient the resources hidden in
financial speculation so that these resources can finance the technological
advances needed to save the planet—is already a good plan. The work I
conducted with Ignacy Sachs and Carlos Lopes summarized this idea in
“Crises e Oportunidades em Tempos de Mudança” [“Crises and
Opportunities in Changing Times”] (2013). This text is available on my
site for free, of course, because a teacher’s task is not just to teach but to
communicate, to help in the construction of a better world.

Notes
1
Que horas ela volta? [What Time is She Coming Back?] (2015), written and
directed by Anna Muylaert, featuring renowned Regina Casé as the housekeeper in
the story. The film won several national and international prizes.
2
The situation of the Brazilian real has been quite precarious since 2015. By mid-
2016 it was worth US $0.278476.
3
The TJN is an international independent network dedicated to discussing themes
such as taxes, fiscal safe havens, and financial globalization.
4
SELIC is the Sistema Especial de Liquidação e de Custódia [Special System of
Liquidation and Custody]. This system was created in 1979, and its purpose is to
register, keep, and liquidate public titles issued up to 1992.
5
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has been in
effect since July 2010. This law aims to establish some regulation in the American
financial market after the 2008 crisis.
6
The BEPS is a project led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development brought to discussion in the G20 meeting in Lima, Peru in 2015. Its
purpose is to regulate the large corporations’ actions related to sending profit
overseas and other money transfers abroad.
7
Luiza Erundina de Sousa (1934), has been a politician since her days in her native
Paraíba. She was São Paulo’s mayor from 1989 to 1992, and is currently a
representative of São Paulo in the national congress.
8
Marta Teresa Smith de Vasconcelos Suplicy was mayor of São Paulo from 2001
to 2004. She is currently a senator.
 Ladislau Dowbor 21

9
Fernando Haddad was the Minister of Education in President Dilma Rousseff’s
first term, and is currently the mayor of the city of São Paulo.
10
Translator’s note: in Brazil, the capital city of each state is the largest city of that
state.
11
It is important to emphasize the similar kind of work done by the Instituto
Brasileiro de Administração Municipal [Brazilian Institute of Municipal
Administration] (IBAM) of Rio de Janeiro. So far, IBAM’s future seems secure.
12
Translator’s note: the author is referring to Célio Turino de Miranda, who was
present at the lecture, and who is the author of the subsequent essay in this book.
 1.2 CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP IN BRAZIL:
CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES

CÉLIO TURINO DE MIRANDA

Despite all difficulties, I trust that humanity—and Brazil—is living

through a turning point. I am a historian, so I have a historian’s
perspective, therefore I say that it is very difficult to recognize the changes
that are taking place around us in the exact moment we are living them. It
is not easy to be contemporaneous with our own time, because our lives
are informed by the conditions and references of the past.

A Turning Point
New forms of sociability and the relationship between humans and other
living beings spring up from below the surface of the visible social
relations. For instance, in a situation like the pre-collapse of the drinkable
water supply for the metropolitan regions of the cities of Campinas and
São Paulo, which have about twenty-five million residents, people feel the
lack of water. In the poorer neighbourhoods, water is not supplied every
day. And yet, despite the scarcity of water, millions of people pass our
rivers without even looking at them, without observing how dirty they are
and how badly they smell, and without realizing how we have transformed
these veins of life into dead rivers, filled with excrement and garbage. The
solution for many is to hoard more and more water in their houses, or to
buy water, or, for those who have more money, to open artesian wells that
will, in turn, extract more water from the aquifers until they dry out. In the
meantime, we also witness the shameless distribution of dividends to the
shareholders of the Companhia de Saneamento do Estado [São Paulo State
Sanitation Company].
And yet, we find collectives concerned about our water and the
protection of our springs, waterways, and sources—people who anonymously
plant trees and clean the beds of rivers and creeks. These are people we
will never meet because they are people who, instead of hoarding water
for themselves, spend their lives cultivating life in the form of water.
 Célio Turino de Miranda 23

There are also those who belong to collectives of solidarity economy, who
produce things from shared work, from just commerce and conscious
consumption by creating their own currency, planting community
vegetable gardens, practicing permaculture, taking care of people, and
doing art. There are countless people, groups, and collectives who decide
not to be a “thing!” I have been following this movement with the Pontos
de Cultura do Brasil [Brazil’s Points of Culture] which, since 2011, have
been persecuted and harassed by the federal government, attacked and
criticized in vile, technocratic forms. Even the small transference of funds
from the state for the maintenance of the Pontos’ activities—only five
thousand reals per month—has been systematically denied, since the logic
of the Pontos de Cultura is inverse to the logic of the state. Whereas one
wants to control and impose rules, society wants to dispose and distribute;
in spite of all these obstacles, of the more than three thousand Pontos de
Cultura that we had in 2009, at least one thousand are still resisting and
continue with their actions in autonomous and protagonist forms.
Throughout the world, in Greece, Chiapas, and Catalonia, there are
neighbourhoods and whole communities that have decided to self-manage
themselves in solidarity. This is a new (or perhaps not so new) form of
understanding the existence of life on the planet. Different from “taking
and taking,” the idea informing these neighbourhoods and communities is
to maintain, to ensure they leave something good for others, even though
they do not know these others. It is a new form of the search for identity
that goes beyond the individual, family, small group, class, invented race,
or nation. It is a search of identity in life. Even beyond the human life, it is
a search for the identity of life in the fullest form, which comprehends in
one communion the relationship and sociability among humans, animals
(not forgetting that we too are animals), plants, minerals, and all the other
elements that inhabit the planet. This is not a new form because the ancient
people discovered it millennia ago. Among the Sioux, the indigenous
people of the Unites State, each human intervention is taken considering
its effect on the seventh generation. They do not think about their children,
grandchildren, or great-grandchildren only, but about what the effect their
action will be beyond these generations. If we compare this form of acting
in the world to the Western capitalist model, we realize how far we are
from sustainable modes of life, because, engulfed in barbaric selfishness,
we are capable of stealing even clean air, clean water, good food, and joy
from the future of our own children.
But I realize that for myself and everyone else who is willing to look
and listen carefully from the heart, “under” the mere surface, new
economic social and cultural forms are beginning to take shape. In a
24 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

certain way, this phenomenon is similar to what happened in the European

Middle Ages in which, from the burgs, a new form of economy appeared
within the feudal system. It took some centuries before one system could
eclipse the other, but this is how history moves. In our current time, due to
the new means of communication and movement of ideas, these
relationships move much faster. Today, what is under scrutiny is the
model of humanity that we want: which one will be the civilizational
model that we are going to adopt, and what we want to make of ourselves
as a species. Our species is the Homo sapiens, which comes from the
Neolithic period, from the agrarian revolution, from the cities, from the
creation of the alphabet. We are the result of these ten thousand years of
self-cultivation. But now we may be seeing the appearance of another
species, unconnected to our physical beings, but in our form of
interpretation of the world. Since we do not know exactly what is to come,
we are allowing the “system” to control us, to direct us, in the same way
we allow a search engine to lead us to what it considers the best
information or source, or when we let ourselves be led by GPS. Thus, the
great challenge of our time is to answer the following question: “should
life serve the systems, or should the systems serve life?”

Economy and Culture

We can briefly define economy as the administration of resources (natural
resources, people’s time and work, creation, transformation and distribution
of goods). What about culture—what is it? It is the cultivation of people
and the cultivation of life. Among all the conceptual definitions, the one
that best enables us to have an approximation to life is the relationship
between culture and agriculture. Culture means precisely this: to put hands
to clay, to prepare the soil, to sow, to follow the growth of plants, to rid
fields of weeds, to harvest, to keep the best seeds, and then to do it all over
again. We are the result of this ten thousand year process which started in
the Neolithic period through agriculture and culture. Now we are at a
turning point. It may be that this process of cultivation—be it through
agriculture or through the culture cultivated by people—ceases to exist.
Transgenic seeds, for instance, cannot self-reproduce because they are
patented, and therefore they need to be bought because they have an
owner. This process will certainly alter the relationship with the autonomy
of food production, thus eliminating the possibility for humans to produce
their own food directly which, to be reproduced, will have to be authorized
by the owners of the patents of the seeds. The patents, as we know, are
concentrated in the hands of less than ten “megafood” companies.
 Célio Turino de Miranda 25

Since culture involves the cultivation of people, it has a direct

relationship with the constructions of “ways of being” of humanity. We
are what we make of ourselves; we can reinforce competitive and selfish
behaviours or we can cultivate ourselves from within the idea of solidarity
and compassion. The cultivation of people and the direction we are going
in is also a political decision, so it is up to humanity to decide which path
to follow. If economy can opt for different paths and choose cooperation
and sharing, so can culture because nothing is natural and everything can
be chosen, everything can be decided. Hence, while the exercise of culture
can allow people to free themselves, it can also imprison them. If we study
human history we can see that most wars and conflicts between and among
peoples have been the result of conflicts generated by power disputes and
intolerance, by forms of broad cultural thoughts that inform different
interpretations of the world, by the desire to ensure that our “way of
being” is imposed on others, by shutting ourselves into closed truths
isolated from others. This is how fundamentalism is born. Actually, in the
twenty-first century the great problem is fundamentalism in its many
forms: religious, market, lifestyles. There are truths that never change.
There is an incapacity to see oneself in another, and a refusal to feel
compassion, to share with others. Today we live in a contradictory phase
which includes the process of the reproduction of capital, which
reproduces itself through knowledge.
Knowledge flows more the more it is liberated, but knowledge is
currently becoming more and more closed off because of patents and
controls. What leads a company like Facebook, for instance, to become a
billionaire company in a short period of time? What is the patrimony of
this company to justify such an accumulation? Human desires and
subjectivity are given up to this company, just as the children in “Pied
Piper of Hamelin” gave themselves up and followed the music. When we
surrender our desires and subjectivity to this company, they become a
commodity and are commercialized. However, in this process of
surrender, our subjectivity and our desires also change because they are
oriented and directed according to the interests of the market in such a way
that a series of behaviours and lifestyles are being cultivated, such as
hedonism, narcissism, egotism, and immediacy which, in turn, generate
behaviours in groups which increasingly close themselves off to the
outside world, always sharing the same opinions until they believe that
they are the only valid ones and, worse, they believe that their desires were
spontaneously generated and not created by and directed to market and
ideological interests. As a result, these groups become more irritated with
others, especially those who think and act in a different form. We can
26 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

observe Bill Gates’s process of wealth accumulation that started with the
development of software. Unlike Santos Dumont, who donated his greatest
invention to humanity by making the plans, designs, and drawings of his
airplane available to anyone, the owner of Microsoft kept everything under
his control. With this scheme, all the people who use his operational
system become clients, even when they “pirate” the software because
when they steal it they help to create a monopoly for Microsoft.1

The Exercise of Alterity and Identity

Today we are at a crossroads. On one hand, we can opt to let ourselves “be
led” by increasingly more restrictive and monopolizing groups of control,
such as Monsanto in the production and commercialization of food, or of
Google in the search engines of the internet. On the other side, there is the
subterraneous birth of another form of society, one that rescues the values
of sharing and generosity, and which practices and exercises alterity,
which is the capacity of seeing ourselves in “the other” who resides
beyond our own identity.
Identities are fundamental for the formation of the personality of
individuals and societies, because, without knowing who we are, we
cannot establish communicative relationships with others. A study by
Jacques Lacan, the French psychologist who lived one generation after
Sigmund Freud, shows that there is a moment all of us experience in
which the infant sees their image reflected in the mirror and recognizes
that it is them. Everyone goes through this moment, and it is from this
moment on that the person can step forward in the communicative process.
Therefore, without an identity, without self-recognition, there is no way to
establish a more effective communication with “the other.” However,
staying at this stage does not allow us to take the next step that enables us
to participate in a larger cultural exchange and growth.
This step forward is precisely the exercise of alterity. As mentioned
before, alterity means seeing oneself in “the other,” but it is not easy to do
this. If even self-recognition is difficult, since we spend all our lives trying
to know who we are and do not reach a definitive conclusion, it is even
more difficult to know who we are taking as a starting point the
recognition of “the other,” because “the other” seems so different. If in the
individual plan the first great stage of self-recognition happens when we
identify the image reflected in the mirror as being of ourselves, in the
social plan this moment does not happen. A soap opera, for instance,
shows the man from the northeast of Brazil through a stereotypical
formula, or as a member of a folkloric group, as if the culture of the
 Célio Turino de Miranda 27

northeast were static, unchangeable. Even when the soap opera tries to
portray the people in a benevolent, solidary, and supportive way, it is still
a form of gaze at the other from “the outside in,” always portraying the
other from this alienating point of view.2 In order to enable this mirror
exercise in the environment of groups and societies, it is necessary to
ensure ways in which the projected image is created from “inside to the
outside.” In other words, “the Indigenous person by the Indigenous
person,” or more precisely, the Kuikuro by the Kuikuro,3 the Ashaninka by
the Ashaninka,4 the Ikpeng by the Ikpeng, the youth of the favelas and
distant neighbourhoods by the youth of the favelas and distant
neighbourhoods, gays by gays, and so on. Only through an exercise of
polyphony, of different gazes, realized from “the inside out,” will it be
possible to establish more horizontal, less hierarchical communicative
processes.
It is at this moment that art acquires a fundamental, unique role. What
is art? Art consists of human abilities. I was born in a proletarian
neighbourhood of Italian origin called Vila Industrial in the city of
Campinas. I remember that, when I was a child, it was very common for
people to ask “What is your art?” and the other would answer, for
instance, “I am a carpenter,” or “I am a bricklayer.” These answers meant
that a person’s occupation and abilities were considered art. Today, this
form of self-presentation has practically disappeared, and there are very
few people who recognize their abilities as their art. Actually, this
separation is a process that has been going on for centuries, leading to the
separation of art and technique, the same way that magic (a form of
magical, animal knowledge) separated itself from science. The more we
separate art from daily life, the more we distance ourselves from our own
abilities.
Art is indeed the point from which we can exercise our alterity. I
would say that art is probably the only human way to enact this exercise.
There are sensations, feelings, and forms of seeing the world that one
person can hardly ever experience in life in a complete way—sensations of
hatred, revenge, love, and, in the most extreme situations, ecstasy.
Knowing how to deal with sensations, desires, needs, and feelings is vital
for a healthy life. However, when we do not experience certain situations,
at least in their attenuated versions, it is possible to experience them
through art. We can listen to music and have a sensation of sadness or joy,
for instance. Sometimes, we hear a song in a language we do not know,
and yet we are touched by it, involved in the sensations, and can even sing
with words we invent ourselves. This happens because the sensation that
music brings to us is clearer and more potent that rational discourse. The
28 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

same can happen when we see a painting, or watch a play, or read a

literary work. Art has this capacity to transcend, to go beyond. This is
what makes art something so unique and necessary in this time in which
humanity is increasingly being taken over by hatred and fundamentalisms.
It is in the combination between identity and alterity that we can
actually listen, see, and feel the other, and thus exercise generosity.
Different from, and sometimes contrary to, what “common sense” (and the
dominant mode of education) tries to impose as the truth, the human
species is generous and was born under the sign of generosity. Let us try to
imagine the processes of transmission of culture one million years ago,
when people lived very short lives, always in very small groups, with very
few resources and subjected to thousands of dangers, since they did not
even have a language. But even then, our ancestors were generous with
one another and taught each other what they knew, from the simple
identification of the most adequate stones to kill animals, of how to find
shelter, of how to make and preserve fire, of how to cross a river when one
had to hold on to the hand of another so they could support each other on
the crossing, of how to hunt together, until when further ahead, in the
Neolithic period, when they created the communal work of agriculture. If
these first hominids had decided to keep their discoveries for themselves—
the discovery of a better stone for creating a sharper edge, for instance, or
if they decided to hide some edible leaf or animal meat to eat later—our
species would never have evolved. It was in solidarity and sharing that
humanity grew. However, what the current dominant culture tells us—and
convinces us—is the opposite: this culture convinces us, as well as we
convince ourselves, that we are selfish and competitive, and that it was
through conflict that humanity progressed. In reality, we are selfish as well
as competitive—but why? Because, inside each of us there abides a spirit
which is both generous and competitive. Victory for one of these will
depend on which one we cultivate more and better. For a while,
unfortunately, the winning side is that of exacerbated individualism, of
selfishness and competition. But it does not have to be this way.

Systems Should Serve Life

What is a system? It is the way to organize the whole, or a group of
interconnected elements. Life organizes itself in systems in such a way
that flux and structure combine and adjust each other, thus forming a
whole. Our body is a system that connects other systems (vascular,
respiratory, skeletal, muscular, etc.), the same way that the solar system
connects the Sun to the orbiting planets, and this system connects to the
 Célio Turino de Miranda 29

Milky Way, forming another system, which is contained in another, which

is the universe, or even the multiverse in which different universes (or
systems) superimpose one another. The Earth is also a system that contains
infinite systems, the same way it is contained in other systems. Life moves
and organizes itself in systems that contain and are contained in other
systems successively, in such a way that a system is the result of the
combination of chaos, order, and balance. Chaos resulting from explosions
that disrupt previous systems (the Big Bang, for instance, or revolutions
that break up old forms of government) creates new systems and new
orders until new explosions provoke new chaos, which brings a new order.
Balance results from the combination of chaos and order in such a way
that the addition of the forces applied to the system equals zero, thus
establishing a parity of force or power. One good example of order in the
universe is the fact that we can make such precise calculations that we can
place a probe or a small robot in the orbit of or even on the ground on
Mars, often within just a few hundred metres of the calculated area. If
everything were just disorder and chaos it would not be possible to send a
spaceship to a specific place within a specific timeframe. But we must
remember that this order could only be established from a previous
disorder that, with time, generated a balance of forces.
Therefore, every system presupposes stability. And what maintains
stability in a system? It is homeostasis that keeps “similar elements” in
equilibrium in such a way that, even in processes of change, the parts
recover their stability as a condition for their survival. Hence, the great
objective of a system is its self-preservation, which can be achieved
through the balance of competing forces. There are two ways to reach
balance: (a) when a force is so much more powerful than all the others,
and (b) when there is parity between/among competing forces.
Leaving the natural systems aside, we can think about conceptual or
historic systems such as the state, the market, the church, and education.
Since the order of systems is based on their permanence (or stability), as
they become more structured these systems created by us (and that should
serve us) also start acquiring their own internal operating systems.
Precisely like the natural systems, the human-made ones self-stabilize,
generating their own rules stemming from their own intrinsic dynamics.
Thus, each human system also creates very accurate regulators. For the
market it creates money; for the state it creates power; for the church it
creates faith; for education it creates teaching.
In the beginning of the market, the exchange of goods was more direct
and was done by equivalency. However, with time mediations appeared
via precious metals, coins, paper money, and, currently, virtual money.
30 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

Nobody “invented” money, and there is no way we can determine when

this invention took place; money simply “developed itself” from forces
emanating from market dynamics; the same is true of the “law of supply
and demand,” which was not originally theorized or written about
anywhere, but it has been in existence for millennia and everyone obeys it.
The logic of the “market system” gives rise to regulator “money” and the
“law of supply and demand.” They simply “develop themselves” until the
moment in which each conforms to these laws and regulations, and
everything then has an “exchange value” which in turn becomes more
valuable due to equivalencies (the balance of forces), until it becomes a
commodity, a thing. This logic is so strong that even people acquire an
“exchange value” and become things or means of buying and selling.
The same thing happens with the state. In the beginning, the state was
personified in a king, a pharaoh, someone chosen for being the strongest
warrior, or someone with divine attributes. Nowadays, the state is the
result of an enormous legal and powerful apparatus; it is based on
abstractions which are nonetheless respected and obeyed by all, or almost
all, either by acceptance or coercion. In any case, the mechanism is the
same—people transfer power to a being that they consider more capable,
and this being exerts power in the name of everybody, in favour or against
everybody else.
In order to assure the internal balance of churches, there is faith.
People believe and obey due to an unconditional adherence to a
hypothesis, and without the necessity of any criteria of proof; the only
requirement is absolute confidence in the idea that gave rise to the religion
and its dogmas. The regulation of the churches starting from faith is
present in all religions, no matter how different and antagonistic they may
be against each other. The person believes or does not believe, and
spontaneously adheres to its precepts, norms, and hierarchies so that faith
orients their life.
In a way, the acceptance of the educational system happens by the
same logic we see in the spontaneous acceptance, and people are directly
involved either as responsible parties or as someone who is still not in a
position to voluntarily accept to submit themselves to systematic and
uniform modes of transmission of knowledge and ways of being, thinking,
and doing. As a form of regulation, we can mention the teaching methods
which aim to level (or format) people and societies in socialization
processes. Of all these systems and regulators (market/money;
state/power; churches/faith), perhaps the educational system and the
regulator through teaching may be the ones that best allow the appearance
of a space which can break the balance of the system, but, even in this
 Célio Turino de Miranda 31

case, this space is very fragile because education and teaching exist under
the other regulators (money, power, and faith).
On the other hand, we have life. What is life? It is a miracle that
evolves from its own laws involving a sequence of phenomena, such as the
passage through distinct and sequential stages of development, in
processes of growth with the cumulative reorganization of matter and
energy and the elimination of excesses. The dynamics of life has an
intrinsic movement in which reproduction and the capacity of feeling and
acting interfere in life’s own evolution, always in continuous processes of
adaptation and transformation in which there are, as means of regulation,
the basic necessities, desires, feelings, and sensations (and do not think
that desire, feelings, and sensations are exclusive to the human race). What
happens is that necessities, desires, feelings, and sensations depend on
numerous regulators; however, hardly ever does one of these regulators
stand out in relation to the others. This explains why the balance of life is
more random and chaotic than the equilibrium of systems.
Whereas the systems have a single regulator to ensure balance, life has
numerous variables that, combined among themselves, become infinite,
thus making its balance unpredictable, unless it is captured by the logic of
systems and their regulators. When life is captured by the market, it
becomes an inanimate object, a thing, a means of buying and selling, and
at this point it is regulated by money; this is the case with a rotisserie
chicken exhibited in a window, fresh out of the oven, or with the means of
production and consumption of other things, and even with human beings.
Applied to human life, this process of capture by the logic of the market
conditions even wishes and needs, generating new values which we used
to believe were life itself, but which were in fact the market and its
internal mechanisms functioning as a system.
The same process occurs when life is captured by the state, because at
this point life starts being regulated by power. Power is relational and
results from a play between dependences and power among people and
social classes. One depends on the other, but in order for there to be
balance it is necessary that the authority of some of these elements be
established over the others. Since the power of the state is a lot more
authoritative and coercive than it is collaborative, this capacity to
deliberate, act, and give orders depends on the whole set of strategic
positions that a group—or a person, or a social class—has in relation to the
others (symbolic power, military power, social and legal power, economic
power). The occupation of this set of strategic positions determines the
relations of dependency and power among people and groups. In the logic
of power and the state, life progressively loses sovereignty, and this has
32 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

happened since the time when a king or a feudal lord had full domination
over the life of subjects and serfs, until our current political time in which
it is possible to define who will benefit, who will have the right to good
health insurance, good food, clean water, good air, good housing, good
education, culture, leisure—in other words, who will have the right to life.
The same can be said in relation to faith, which can blind or liberate, or
which, in relation to the learning system, can educate and form but also
deform people.
While on the side of life there are several regulators which, in turn,
generate a set of combinations, on the side of systems there is only one,
very precise regulator that works as a magnet in relation to the others,
imposing its logic, laws, and regulations. One example: creative artists
who used to produce very innovative art, as soon as they are absorbed by
the market, they start producing mediocre art in order to please a more
average taste so they can sell more. Another example can be community
leaders who are friendly, spontaneous, and generous. As soon as they take
a position with the government they change their attitude completely, and
forget those who put them in power.
The challenge, therefore, is to find a regulator in life that can exceed
itself in relation to all other regulators, and which can establish at least a
relationship of equilibrium in relation to all regulators of the systems. This
is possible and can be demonstrated both mathematically and by
anthropological experiments. Mathematically, when there is a regulator
that exceeds all the others, it will start an aggregating effect over all the
others, thus becoming a magnet as strong as or even stronger than the
attraction poles (because, in the case of life’s attraction pole, its force will
be increased by the aggregation of the other regulators of human life) and
the systems’ poles of attraction (which are structured from less diverse
aggregations).
 Célio Turino de Miranda 33

Life Regulators Systems’ Regulators System

Basic necessities (to eat, to Money Market
drink, to excrete, to have
sex, to work, to rest, etc.)

Desires (for sex, food, Power State

drink, dreams, work,
meditation, etc.)

Feelings and sensations Faith Churches

(love, hatred, passion,
solidarity, selfishness,
compassion, lust, laziness, Teaching Education
wrath, kindness, evil,
revenge, etc.)

We are what we make of ourselves. Perhaps this is the main

characteristic that differentiates us from other life forms—we are the
product and vector of our own evolution. Therefore, we can choose which
regulator we will cultivate more and better. In Mediterranean Europe and
among many indigenous peoples, some people chose vengeance as a
means to regulate social relations. Thus, for many centuries, societies
regulated themselves through their own unwritten laws, which stood
beyond market regulations or state laws, and these laws became
incorporated even in the religious dogmas (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth”) and learning processes in such a way that the desire for revenge
was understood and respected by everyone, and this desire determined the
social relations. We have also heard about love (“love one another”) as a
special regulator for life, but it seems that people heard this phrase and
repeated it a lot, but have not put it in practice much. In neoliberal times,
selfishness is the chosen law. If it is possible to choose an outstanding
regulator for our life that can establish a balance with the regulators of all
other systems, why then has humanity not chosen it, and instead prefers to
continue being dominated by systems instead of dominating them?
We could choose solidarity as the outstanding regulator of life. Why do
we not do this? Of course, we can continue with all the other determinants
and regulations, at least to simply keep life more surprising and attractive
(and poets and artists can continue with their stories and wonderful
interpretations of life). But why can we not cultivate one feeling more than
we do others? And why can this feeling not be a good feeling, a feeling
that elevates human value?
34 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

As I said in the beginning, solidarity and cooperation—and not

selfishness or competition—made us human. Why do we not find both
solidary and cooperation again in our social relations? Why do we not
choose solidarity as the strongest means of regulation for all beings on the
planet, and as a way to be in equilibrium with the Earth, which is our
shelter and home? Are we not ready for this civilizational shift? What is
missing for us to be able to do this?

Pontos de Cultura—Points of Culture:

Brazil from Bottom to Top
From 2004 to 2010 I worked as a secretary of cultural citizenship in the
Ministry of Culture. During that time, I had the opportunity to think about
and develop public policy in the program Living Culture, which is part of
the Pontos de Cultura. Living Culture later spread throughout Brazil and
Latin America (see Brasil 2015a). Today, the program is active in several
countries. As soon as I knew I was going to work in government as a
secretary, I gave myself a book that I now recommend to all of you,
Norbert Elias’s A Sociedade da Corte: investigação sobre a sociologia da
realeza e da aristocracia da corte5 (2001). Elias was a German sociologist
who started his academic work in Germany at the end of the 1920s, in the
Frankfurt School, but had to develop it in the United Kingdom due to Nazi
persecution. He undertook very original work that was only recognized at
the end of his intellectual life, when he was very old, in the 1980s. Elias
(2001) comments on the social atmosphere in the French court of Louis
XIV, the Sun King. While reading this book, I tried to understand what it
would be like in the atmosphere I was going to find in Brasília. It was
through the combination between the knowledge and interpretation that
the book suggested and from my actual life experience that I tried to orient
my conduct as a secretary in the Ministry of Culture in my functions of
public worker, formulator of policies, and social activist engaged with the
welfare of my people. Hence, I positioned myself beyond the mere work
within the ministry and tried instead to always travel throughout Brazil, to
meet people and get to know their stories, to walk with the indigenous
people and quilombolas, artists, and social activists.6 I had the opportunity
to visit, spend time, listen, and pay attention to about six hundred
communities. I returned to some of them a few times, and keep in touch
with them until today. From the recognition of these places and the actions
that take place in them—which I call “unhide Brazil”—I wrote the book
Pontos de Cultura: o Brasil de baixo para cima [Points of Culture: Brazil
from Bottom to Top].
 Célio Turino de Miranda 35

In these trips, I observed that these Points of Culture were germinating,

and I wanted to communicate to others what I saw, to show that these
Points were not isolated initiatives and that, from under that apparent
surface, a new, generous, affective, creative, and original Brazil was being
born. One example: in Chapada do Araripe, in the south of the state of
Ceará, there is an experience of solidarity economy led by children and
adolescents. They have a board in the entrance of the Ponto de Cultura,
which is the Fundação Casa Grande [Big House Foundation]. In the
Fundação, the organizers keep track of each revenue entry, which can
come from the sale of a fifty-cent piece of cake, as well as each
expenditure. Everything is written clearly on a very simple blackboard and
everyone has access to the information. Can you imagine what it would be
like if the national budget also had this type of transparency? With the
money they raised, children and adolescents built a very good theatre,
created a radio station, a television channel, an artisanal publisher, and a
beautiful museum. And all of this was accomplished in Nova Olinda, a
small town of eight thousand residents. When I visited the Fundação Casa
Grande the first time, the older members were not older than seventeen or
eighteen. This is only one example, but I could give dozens of others, and
some of these stories appear in my book.
Each time I travelled through this profound and hidden Brazil, a song
came to my mind—“Notícias do Brasil” [“Brazil News”] by Fernando
Brant and Milton Nascimento.7 Every time I went to these communities I
remembered the song. These visits led me to a deeper understanding of the
lyrics, so I decided to ask for authorization from the composers and
published the song in my book. This was a way to synthetize the thousands
of stories that I, as a member of the government, was helping make a
reality; it was also a way to share what I saw, what I felt, and what I lived
in this process. It was my way of introducing the reader to this Brazil that
is springing from the bottom to the top; it is a Brazil that originates from
relationships of affectivity, invention, and originality. I am an awful
singer, but I cannot tell this story without singing. So, I have to have a
dialogue with the song. Let’s see how this goes (and anyone who can,
please try to listen to this song at home while you read this story):

News is arriving in the hinterland (Araçuaí got a gift)

The news didn’t make it to the radio, newspaper or television (a movie
theatre)
To stand facing the sea with your back turned to Brazil (the only one in the
Jequitinhonha Valley)
36 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

Is not going to make this place a good country (a beautiful room, with a 35
mm projector, good sound quality, seating bought from the old movie
theatre that closed many years ago).
News is arriving from Maranhão (the movie theatre is very simple, but
very beautiful).
Nothing was mentioned on the radio, television, or in the newspapers
(everything was done by the Araçuaí boys and girls).
It came from a breeze blowing in from the seacoast (A Point of Culture
which, before being public policy, was already a Point of Culture).
From Fortaleza, Recife and Natal (work started with Tião Rocha, who
abandoned the career of a university professor to work with education in a
whole different way).
The good news was heard in Belém, Manaus (a starting point in Barbacena,
with the boys doing an artistic tour)
João Pessoa, Teresina and Aracaju (General Hinterland)
And from the North, the good news came to Central Brazil (with Milton
Nascimento).
It reached Minas Gerais, and even got to the South (when the tour was
over, the proceeds were enough for two thousand reals for each child and
adolescent, and the money even paid for courses in the cultural centre that
they support in their valley).
Here we have a people who deserve respect (the children and adolescents
preferred to gather all the money and give a gift to their city).
You know, people are as beautiful as love is beautiful (one movie theatre).
Here lives a people who are sea and who are river (but the money is
hardly enough).
And the destiny of this people is to get together some day (this is when the
first edits for the first Pontos de Cultura were made public).
Their song will be more beautiful and sincere (the communities had to
provide part of the money for the Pontos)
You know, everything that is beautiful will astonish everyone (it was
enough).
Here lives a people who cultivate quality (and in March 2008 I went to the
Jequitinhonha Valley to open the movie theatre).
People are wiser than those who want to govern them (the whole town
rejoices).
The news is that Brazil is not just the coast (they presented another show in
the park, “Canto para minha terra” [“Song of my land”]).
It is much, much more than any southern zone (thousands of people went
to see the show).8
There are so many good people everywhere in Brazil (people went to see
the work done by the boys and girls of their city).
These good people are going to make of this a good country (Araçuaí got a
gift).
 Célio Turino de Miranda 37

In a few years, hopefully I will sing better. I am embarrassed by my

performance. But singing for you was easy; you can imagine what it was
like when I showed this “conversation with the song” to Milton
Nascimento. Fortunately, he was generous and allowed me to use it.
Araçuaí, as you must have noticed, is a town in the Jequitinhonha Valley.
There, the adult males leave town to work in coffee farms in the south of
Minas Gerais and the sugar cane plantations in São Paulo. Araçuaí is a
town inhabited mainly by women, children, youths, and old people. The
money the participants in the tour received (two thousand reals) was not an
insignificant amount; it would be enough for each one to buy a used
motorcycle, for instance, which would be an object of desire for them,
considering that motorcycles are very popular in the interior of Brazil. But
these young people had a different attitude towards the money they
received—they gave it as a gift to their town, thus inverting a social
process. Today they are adults, and some attend the university and intend
to return to their hometown. I speak with Tião Rocha a lot, and I have
followed what is happening in Araçuaí. If you want to check on the
internet you can find the laboratory of pedagogic experiments that they
have done throughout these years. Experiments like this are not
uncommon, and that is why I wanted to tell this story and open the book
with the dignity that these young boys’ and girls’ attitude deserves.
There are many experiences like these in Brazil—there are people who
build community vegetable gardens; there is a trash collector who created
a film club in the town of Franco da Rocha; and another who created a
community library that everyone can enjoy.
One of the experiences that exemplifies this process is what happened
with the experience with the cinema of Pirambu, the biggest favela [slum]
of the state of Ceará, near the touristic beach of Iracema. This favela was
first occupied by waves of fishermen who lost the sea, and then by waves
of farmers who lost their land.
The first time I went to this favela, when I was promoting the idea of
Pontos de Cultura, after I spoke about the theatre program in Fortaleza,
some people approached me and invited me to “see and get to know
Pirambu’s Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts.” At the time, I thought,
“this is not exactly what I am seeking as a Ponto de Cultura,” especially
considering that the idea of an Academy of Letters, Sciences and Arts
reminds one of a conservative, elitist culture, so to speak. But they insisted
so much that I agreed to go and see the academy on a Saturday morning.
When I arrived by car there were lots of people on the street. I got in and
saw that it was a favela. And, in this favela, I saw a little, five-metre wide
yellow house with a long back yard. Inside the house was a library and a
38 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

dining-room, from which one could see the backyard. Then the folks there
told me, “we already have our Ponto de Cultura project, but we would like
to know if we ARE a Ponto de Cultura for you.” What on the previous day
was a source of great doubt for me (and yes, it was also a prejudice on my
part), on that Saturday morning revealed itself as a true Ponto de Cultura.
Organized by the favela residents, the ACARTES-Pirambu gathered social
work through popular education involving artists, young people, women,
and children.
When we had the selection of submissions for Pontos de Cultura, the
folks at Pirambu sent their project and were approved. After one year, I
went to visit them again. The little house continued being yellow;
however, in the backyard there was now a theatre. It was a simple, covered
auditorium with plastic chairs, and the members of ACARTES said, “we
need to receive the second part of the funds so we can work with film
editing.” One year later I visited them again. The theatre had a second
floor which housed the office of the production of film special effects.
And there are always inventors in the favela! By my fifth visit the building
had four floors. The last floor had two suites to house visiting artists who
participated in exchange programs. The ACARTES people even brought
some artists from Rede Globo.9 I don’t know if the Globo artists stayed
there, but many artists did. From these rooms one could see narrow, pre-
fabricated stairs leading to one more floor. When I asked them what was
on the other floor they asked if I wanted to see. I did, and went up, and
there was an astonishing view of the sea. To go up those steps was, for me,
a special adventure, a shock, because I always entered the favela from
downtown Fortaleza and had never noticed that the favela faced the sea.
Because there is a lot of wind in Ceará, the favela was built facing inland.
But, with this work, the people of the favela reconquered the view, the
ample horizon.
The experience of the Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of
Pirambu is an example of the solidarity economy and how it can be
impelled forward with a small governmental investment. A Ponto de
Cultura used to receive five thousand reals per month, and sixty thousand
per year. I have to say “used to receive,” because in the last years the
Federal Government practically abandoned the program (I hope the
government starts the program again and adjusts the value, because the
amount of five thousand reals was calculated about ten years ago).
However, far beyond the transference of resources, a Ponto de Cultura
puts in motion a set of social and creative relations which accrue an
exceptional value that cannot be perfectly understood merely in terms of
its market value. It is a logic quite different from Facebook; it is the logic
 Célio Turino de Miranda 39

of the intensification of desires, of the increase of people’s inventiveness,

because in these projects the starting point of the people’s relationship is
affectivity. In this way, there can even be a profound economic result, but
this result is obtained without the subordination of culture to economic
values; on the contrary, this process places economy at the service of
culture and life.

Tekó Porã, Pachamama, Ubuntu,

and a New Social Pattern10
To conclude, it is possible to say that the investments made in culture
reproduce themselves in exceptional form, opening new, more balanced
paths, and bringing together several functions, joining culture with
economy, education, and new forms of relationship between state and
society. All of these, together, serve to make life better, safer, more just.
The idea is to enable each Ponto de Cultura to connect with another Ponto.
From these connections, we can form a line. From this line emerges a
movement, and from a movement an idea. And the more connections there
are, the better.
The objective of the Pontos de Cultura is to encourage a platform of
collective intelligence, which is made real starting from each person’s
contribution, in a process of enchantment which will enable us to recover
concepts, ethical understanding, and the philosophies of traditional
peoples. There are ways of thinking that are kept at the bottom of our souls
and which sometimes surface, and we are not sure where they come from
or where they have been, but we can say that they are not lost. For
example, Tekó porã [living well] is a philosophy. Today, the great
challenge of the world is both to break with the anthropocentrism that is
destroying the planet and to practice the biocentric vision which the
Guarani Indians have practiced for thousands of years. Although the
Guarani are an ancestral people, they are not people of the past. The city of
São Paulo, this metropole with twenty-one million inhabitants, has three
indigenous lands. Some of them are very small, with an area of only four
hectares, but they exist and show us who first arrived in this land, and
demonstrate to us the possibility of new forms of social life. The Guarani
people have a very deep spirituality, which explains why their relationship
with the land is so vital. I imagine that here some of you have used the
name Guarani-Kaiowá in your Facebook family names, as a form of
solidarity to a people that has been exterminated and led to suicide in the
state of Mato Grosso do Sul. There have been more than eight hundred
suicides in the last ten years, mainly by young people. And why? Because
40 1.2 Cultural Citizenship in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

they are losing the perspective of a horizon, or a future, of the land, and
they fall into a deep depression. But when they notice that they are not
alone, when they receive a solidary embrace, even from people they will
never meet in person, they become vigorous again and return to their
ancestral values.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that respect for the land is a concept
respected not only by the Guarani, but by all Amerindians. In Ecuador and
Bolivia this idea is incorporated in the constitution, and is called “the
Rights of Mother Earth.” This concept is also at the root of our people, and
strengthened the experience of the children of Araçuaí or the folks of the
Pirambu favela, and is similar to the African ethic of Ubuntu, meaning that
“I am because we all are.” It is the idea of belonging, or unity. This
philosophy spread throughout Africa and it means precisely that “it is
impossible for anyone to be well when the other is not well.” This is
African philosophy of the highest category, just like Greek philosophy.
But we give Greek philosophy the status of philosophy, whereas we do not
do the same with Ubuntu, and neither do we treat Tekó Porã with the same
respect.
The reconstruction of a new scene for a civilizational leap requires us
to establish new economic patterns, along with a solidarity economy
consisting of fair commerce, conscious consumption, and collaborative
work, and to create new patterns of democracy and power sharing. But this
leap will only be possible through culture. Therefore, it is necessary to
break established cultural hierarchies and strengthen new legitimate
efforts. Only through these processes will a civilizational leap happen.
Perhaps we will not see it ourselves, but we are living in a historic moment
of great changes, and I am confident we will be able to make this leap, no
longer through selfishness but through ideas like “I am because we all
are,” or “living well,” and perhaps even through an “eco-socialism,” a
European idea that puts together socialism and ecology. At long last, a
new, never-before-seen Brazil is springing up from below. And when this
new Brazil becomes a strong tree trunk, it will enable us to forever free
ourselves from slavery to systems and instead put the systems to work for
life. These are the challenges and the perspectives of cultural citizenship in
Brazil.
 Célio Turino de Miranda 41

Notes
1
Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873–1932) was a Brazilian inventor and aviation
pioneer who flew his “14 Bis” plane around the Eiffel Tower—a heavier than air
machine—on October 23, 1906. He is widely believed to have been the first to
develop such machines, and is considered a national hero in Brazil.
2
Florestan Fernandes (1920–95) wrote extensively about Brazilian folklore,
focusing initially on the study of the Tupinambá indigenous people, but later
including research on African Brazilians and social classes. Of special interest in
his research about folklore is Folclore e mudança social na cidade de São Paulo
[Folklore and Social Change in the City of São Paulo] (1960). Another important
researcher of Brazilian folklore was the French sociologist Roger Bastide (1898–
1974), who published, among other works, O sagrado selvagem e outros ensaios
[The Sacred Savage and Other Essays], which was published in 1975.
3
The Kuikuro are an indigenous people located mainly in the state of Mato
Grosso. They share linguistic characteristics with other indigenous people of the
region of the Xingu river. The Ikpeng are also located in the vicinities of the Xingu
river.
4
The Ashaninka, an indigenous people who live in the forests of the state of Acre
and in Peru, were known to the Inca people, who called them Anti or Campa.
5
This book is available in English as The Court Society (2006).
6
“Quilombolas” are residents of Quilombos. Historically, Quilombos were
communities of escaped slaves who began to gather in different points of the
Brazilian territory. The most famous of the Quilombos was Palmares, located in
the current state of Bahia. Palmares is reported to have had around twenty
thousand inhabitants when it was destroyed in 1894. Currently, “quilombolas” are
residents of the former Quilombos.
7
This song is easily available on YouTube under “Notícias do Brasil (Os Pássaros
Trazem).”
8
“Zona Sul” is the rich part of Rio de Janeiro, which usually entitles itself as the
cradle and main site of Brazilian culture. Rio de Janeiro, because it was the seat of
the Brazilian government until 1960, until recently represented a magnet for many
Brazilian artists and intellectuals. This is no longer the case.
9
Rede Globo is the greatest producer of soap operas and miniseries in Brazil, and
has for many decades been one of the main sources of news programs in the
country. It has hired many important Brazilian screenwriters throughout the years,
and a great number of Brazil’s most famous actors have appeared in Globo
productions.
10
“Tekó porã” is a Guarany expression meaning “goodness” and “living well.”
“Pachamama” is an Inca word referring to a goddess that embodies, among other
things, “mother Earth.” “Ubuntu” is an ancient term of Bantu origin that
encompasses “humanity,” meaning that the good of one is the good of all.
 1.3 PLENARY DEBATES

Questions
(1) Culture needs to have equipment, managers, etc., but I believe that
these horizons would be significantly wider if we also focus on
lifestyle. After all, which lifestyle did we choose and which lifestyle do
we desire to have now? Some countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador,
have a different understanding of nature, considering it a subject that
has its own rights. I believe that this is a mental revolution in the
history of humanity. Would it be a cultural challenge to extend the
dialogue beyond the arts, beyond the usual values? Should culture take
into consideration nature’s principles?

(2) I am the first and only Ponto de Cultura in Santo André. I believe that
the incentive to culture, which currently takes place through
declarations, favours art to the detriment of culture in general, and this
ends up creating small artistic elites. The concept that culture is
something everyone can take part in and become a protagonist of is put
aside. Do you see it this way too? How can we discuss the solidarity
economy thinking about the arts only?

(3) I would like to congratulate the creation of Cultura Viva [Living

Culture]. I believe Cultura Viva represents a great advance. However,
there still are difficulties, mainly for the groups of solidarity economy
which usually cannot participate in the process due to the restrictions
of Law n. 8.666/93. Célio, can you please comment on the advances
regarding this issue, and about greater possibilities of a public policy to
encourage the economy of cultural solidarity.

Answers
Ladislau Dowbor

I am very critical of the GDP as an economic indicator. I believe it has

become an ideological weapon that has very little to do with the economy.
For instance, a production that causes great environmental damage can
 Chapter One 43

make the economy move forward and increases the GDP. For example, the
catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico increased the GDP of the United States.
The United Kingdom altered its way of measuring the GDP, including
prostitution and drug trafficking in this. I believe that we can have better
results if we go beyond the economic activity. For the Indian economist
and philosopher Amartya Sen, economy and development can be seen as
functions of the practice of freedom, that is, of the fulfilment of distinct
aspects such as the economic, creative, emotional potentials and the wealth
of their expressions. Today, we have indicators such as the Gross National
Happiness index, among others. I recommend reading the Atlas do
Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil [Atlas of Human Development in
Brazil].1 From 1991 to 2012, the life expectancy in the country went from
sixty-five to seventy-five. That is to say, in this period we gained ten years
of life, which is very important and cannot be measured by GDP.
About the Pontos de Cultura I think there is a displacement, because
they are turned towards the cultural industry. It is an economic,
remunerated activity, and that creates a complication—the cultural logic
within all of us is lost, and it turns towards an economic logic. It is necessary
to transform culture into something beyond production for consumption.
Culture is social interaction, a much richer social construction. In addition,
economy is not only what is transformed into money.
On my website there is an article about the Economy of Time in which
I ask: how do we spend our time?2 For example, many of us spend a lot of
time in traffic, but only three percent of the time of a middle-class family
is spent with their children. When we take the GDP and divide it by the
hours in a year, we have a GDP per hour. This way, we can calculate how
many hours housewives spend taking care of the children and doing other
things that, under the current logic, are not part of the economy. How
come they are not part of the economy? If the mothers do not take care of
their children, how can we have healthy people to work in the future?
Multiplying these numbers by the number of people, we have an idea of
the family economy. Utilizing this method, we can calculate in a different
way how we organize our activities.
Sometimes, companies invite me to give lectures. In some important
events, these companies pay a lot of money for famous people to give
lectures. This is useless. I have created a graph showing that the more
useful the lecture, the less the lecturer is paid. In other words—these
companies misuse their resources. The lectures for which they do not pay
anything are the most useful ones. We can only live better if there is a
cultural inversion. We need an economy that works for us, and to not
continue living to serve the economy.
44 1.3 Plenary Debates

Célio Turino

We did some research with the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada

[Institute of Applied Economic Research] (IPEA) to examine the impact of
the investment of the yearly sixty thousand reals in each of the three
thousand Pontos de Cultura. What the IPEA discovered is that each one of
these Pontos generated on average eleven work positions and reached
three hundred people in regular activities such as courses and workshops,
and that three thousand people participated in the activities in a more
sporadic fashion. Thus, the institute estimates that the Cultura Viva
program reached from eight to nine million people in 2009, the year it
reached the top investment of 110 million reals. We had this great success
because the program tried to invest in people, the affective networks, and
every person’s talents. The great problem for the Cultura Viva program is
that the amount invested in each Ponto de Cultura has been the same since
2004, without any readjustment.
We can mention the example of the Colombian city of Medellin, the
capital and biggest city of the province of Antioquia, and which has a
reality similar to ours. It was a city known for drug trafficking, until the
population decided to put a stop to it. In Colombia, there is a peculiarity—
each city can create its own municipal parties; thus, NGOs, base
communities, intellectuals, and militants from the pacifist left decided to
gather forces and create a party called Compromisso Cidadão [Citizen’s
Pledge], which existed only in Medellín. This party participated in the
election of 1998, but did not win. However, it persisted and created a
beautiful plan for the city; they then tried again in 2002, when
Compromisso won the election. Today, the UN considers Medellín the
most innovative city in the world, a title that belonged to Barcelona for
twenty years and now belongs to our neighbouring country, which was
able to reduce the number of murders from seven thousand in 2002 to
seven hundred in 2012. How did they accomplish this feat?
The transformation started with “small kindnesses” directed at the
population. For instance, the public restrooms are clean and have been
beautified with mosaic art created by the community. They built a five-
floor library where children can spend the day. They increased the
participation with culture in the city budget going from 0.7 percent to 5
percent, and with education to forty percent. Starting with the idea of a
citizen culture, they were able to invert the situation and become the most
innovative city in the world, a concrete objective and results that reflect on
its economy. Taking as its inspiration the idea of culture, Medellín went
 Chapter One 45

from a city dominated by guerrillas and drug cartels to an inclusive,

peaceful, more creative, and more innovative city.
Thus, when we speak about “living well” we are not speaking about
something that can be measured. For example, the Ubuntu philosophy was
used in the pacification of South Africa in the fight against Apartheid.
Without this philosophy, the country might have fallen into an endless
civil war. In addition, in Bolivia something similar is happening with the
pulse of Andean culture seen everywhere in the rights of the Earth, the
rights of the water, the rights of the stones, and the rights of nature in
general. We need to look at all these experiments, all these concrete
experiences, and build something from them, invert the usual logic, make
the system work for us. This inversion of logic is above all a change in
cultural attitude. We can make these processes work from the bottom to
the top, starting with the municipalities. It is a challenge, no doubt, but we
need to undertake these experiments—we need to try.
The participative budget was born of these experiments, but today it is
not sufficient. We need to take a second step. In Spain, a process of
change is taking place where the leader of the movement against
mortgages is the prefecture of Barcelona, and Madrid is following suit. We
will not be able to effectively make this transformation as long as the
regulator of our system is money and power. But society can choose the
variables that will be more prominent. Why, then, not choose solidarity?
We must realize that the great characteristic of all human beings is the
capacity we have to improve ourselves, to cultivate the best in ourselves.
The transformations our society needs to go through may not happen in the
span of a biological life, but they are possible in historical time. We can
still change what happens to our society; we can still stop climate change;
we can still stop economic crises that affect the most fragile segment of
the population the most.
Lastly, answering the question about Law n. 8.666/93: the expected
and necessary changes are taking place. This law regulates both bids from
a large and powerful company like Odebrecht, and requests for a Ponto de
Cultura in Sapopemba. Furthermore, for the work done for the World Cup
there was a differentiated regimen, which demonstrates that not even the
large corporations can quickly challenge the restrictions imposed by this
law. We have to get out of this procedural culture, because the
bureaucracy of real life is different. We could, perhaps, follow the Anglo
Saxon tradition, which favours measuring success by the results obtained;
we too could use the supervision of the results which are, after all, much
more important than anything else. We need to demystify a series of
discourses and highly oppressive bureaucracies, starting from language
46 1.3 Plenary Debates

itself, from our posture, from the knowledge of how the process works.
But we also need to change the state apparatus, to lead the state to learn to
speak with society. That is, we need society to take charge of the state
apparatus. If this happens, someday we will live by a logic in which
“society orders, and the government obeys.”

Notes
1
The Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil is an initiative of the IPEA and
of the Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento [United Nations
Program for Development] (PNUD). The Atlas brings information about cities and
states through reliable sources for 125 indicators of the social and economic reality
in the country. It is available in both print and virtual formats, and can be found in
Portuguese, English, and Spanish at atlasbrasil.org/2013.
2
See: http://dowbor.org/2010/05/o-valor-economico-do-tempo-livre-maio.html.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY OF CULTURE

AND CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP:
REFLECTIONS FROM EXPERIENCES
OF THE CULTURAL COLLECTIVES
IN THE CITY OF SÃO PAULO AND THE ABC
REGION
 2.1 THE EXPERIENCE OF COLLECTIVE
CULTURAL GROUPS

ASSOCIAÇÃO RIBEIRÃOPIRENCE DE CIDADÃOS

ARTISTAS [ASSOCIATION OF ARTIST CITIZENS
OF RIBEIRÃO PIRES] (ARCA)1

Fernanda Henrique Souza de Lima

First of all, I would like to thank the university for opening this space so
the cultural groups can come here to speak about their experiences and to
claim their participation in something that is inherently theirs—the
dialogue with the organized civil society. I am very happy to be here with
comrades who are also part of the Pontos de Cultura, and who represent
some of what I would like to speak about—the difference that public
policy makes to our cultural endeavours.
The Associação Ribeirãopirence de Cidadãos Artistas—ARCA—has
been in existence for thirteen years. It was born in Ribeirão Pires as a
result of the demand for bureaucratic support to the artists of the city. The
artists who worked in theatre workshops were very young, or were
recipients of scholarships, or were doing voluntary work in the city’s
cultural offices. It so happened that sometimes they wanted to sell their
work, their shows, but had no idea how to operate the bureaucracy of the
city. Then sometimes they would comment, “ah, I am going to sell an
idea!” However, they learned, “if you are not an established company,
there is no way for you to be hired,” and “if you cannot issue a legal
receipt, no one can hire you.” Therefore, the association was formed to
help the artists deal with the bureaucracy and with the work-related issues
because there simply is no support for this aspect of art as paid labour.
Unfortunately, the general idea is that artists either do not work at all or do
not make serious efforts, so they should work for free.
The association was created to ensure the value of the artistic work,
and from the beginning it included questions such as this: how can the
recently-graduated artist who has just finished their theatre course support
 Associação Ribeirãopirense de Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA) 49

themselves? Nowadays, this is still not possible, but it is possible to go

forward and fight so that it will be possible at some time in the future. The
association was created and immediately started gathering people. I
arrived soon after, and have been president and financial director since
then. But these titles are not very important for us. Besides being the
president, all of us know that we have to be custodians sometimes. We
also write projects, and that is why these collectives are here today. I am
sure that each member of the association performs a little bit of all these
tasks. People who are not in the capital city (São Paulo) suffer because
there is no public policy to subsidize the arts. The artists then live at the
mercy of the private sector, selling their work to businesses who determine
what the artists have to do, or they work “for free” for a short period of
time.
The fact that the association became a Ponto de Cultura, thus inserting
itself into a federal policy of support and appreciation of groups who have
a history of making art in their municipalities, was very important for us.
Unfortunately, they were a Ponto de Cultura from only 2010 to 2014.
Currently, our association is going through a very difficult time. Without
the aid of public policy, without any support, we cannot maintain our
headquarters. We intend to return it to the owners in August, but that does
not mean that we are quitting our artistic work. It is unfortunate that we
could not keep this space in Ribeirão Pires, because the city does not have
a policy of support for artists. There is no way to submit requests for funds
or any type of initiative that would allow public funds to return to artists or
the residents themselves, because, as I see it, “both are the same thing.”
I would like this gathering to unite participants from different
municipalities so we can gain access to and promote a real public policy to
support these artistic initiatives, otherwise we will end up just speaking to
one another. Let’s not forget that we became a Ponto de Cultura through
the Ministry of Culture, through the state government. The city of Ribeirão
Pires still, to this day, does not know that ARCA was a Ponto de Cultura.
The city probably does not know that it could be a supporter of the Pontos
de Cultura. I believe it is important to form partnerships beyond those we
form with other artists, and establish them with the public sector. For this
reason, I am very glad to see the secretaries of some cities here. It would
be extremely important for the secretaries of the seven cities of the Grande
ABC, of the Grande São Paulo, the cultural managers, to also be here so
that, from the different groups’ experiences, we could execute an effective
public policy.
We are not speaking about help, donation, alms for the artists. We are
speaking about the need to create a consciousness, to create mechanisms
50 2.1 The Experience of Collective Cultural Groups

so that the artistic work is given its due value. We are speaking about the
artists being able to support their families with their work. In sum, I expect
the public managers to pay special attention to the “artistic labour” of our
cities.

Coletivo de Consumo Rural e Urbano (CCRU)

Renata Silva
I am going to explain a little bit about the Coletivo de Consumo Rural e
Urbano (CCRU) network. This collective exists in the city of Diadema in
the Western Association, and also here at the university. Other collectives
are being formed in Jardim Miriam and in other places, and this is helping
groups to expand with autonomy. The collective that exists in the
university is called the Rural and Urban Consumption Collective—
Organic Solidarity, but it is better known as CCRU-Solo.
The CCRUs organize collective purchasing directly from family farms
that produce organic and ecologically sensible products. We organize the
collectives in financial, communication, and logistic subgroups. This way,
we organize the collective purchasing directly from the producers. The
objective of this collective purchasing is to finish with the capitalist model
of production and consumption of food by avoiding the middlemen. We
visit the producers, get to know their production and political formation,
and we speak with them. In other words, we maintain a very close
relationship with the producer, and we organize the collective purchasing.
CCRU is very important because with this collective we show society
that only the organization of the field workers and city workers can
remove the need for middlemen and for markets and companies that
exploit the producers’ work, and in the process damage our health and
harm the environment. The collectives are also part of the Pró Reitoria de
Extensão e Cultura [Vice Presidency for Extension and Culture] (PROEC)
and, besides counting on the support of scholarship holders, PROEC has
technical administrative personnel and maintains contact with society at
large and specialists in self-management, the solidarity economy, and
ecological agriculture. Besides its partnership with PROEC, the Rural and
Urban Consumption Collective also partners with other similar collectives
of the Sindicato dos Técnicos Administrativos da Universidade Federal do
ABC—SinTUFABC (Union of Administrative Assistants of the Federal
University of ABC).
 Associação Ribeirãopirense de Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA) 51

Ilú-Obá de Min
Baby Amorim and Lenita Sena
I am Baby Amorim from the collective Ilú-Obá de Min Black Education,
Culture, and Art. Our collective’s aim it to promote Brazilian black culture
and empower women through art. Our work has existed in the city of São
Paulo since 2004. Five years ago, we finally obtained our own space. I
should say “our” space in quotation marks because we just rent it. We are
always trying to find ways to guarantee our sustainability. This
sustainability comes from projects and public edicts of support. The fact
that we have a space helps us a lot; as a matter of fact, we were only able
to secure this space when we were selected as a Ponto de Cultura of the
state of São Paulo. This happened in 2010 when we had this “push” and
managed to obtain a space where we could increase our range and
performance.
Our work has always been done on the street and in partnership with
other collectives. We have always used other places to carry out our
projects. “Ação Educativa” [“Educational Action”] has been our partner
since the foundation of Ilú-Obá in 2004, and we have had an ongoing
relationship with them since then. For ten years, we have participated in
the Mesa, a program that takes place in their auditorium. This relationship
with Ação Educativa represents one example of what we do to be able to
work. For this reason, I believe that networks are extremely important; the
network we created when we were awarded the status of Ponto de Cultura
is a living, strong network we still maintain. This relationship is crucial,
because we have been able to direct some of our projects to other
collectives. For example, I can name the project “Ilú on the Road,” which
focuses on the development of Afro tourism. We took some people to the
Jongo Dito Ribeiro in order to participate in a party they promote every
year.2 It is a form of circulating values that are not simply affective but
also monetary values, because the monetary aspect is important for us as
well as for all who participate in the group.
We are a very large collective. This year, there were 250 people in our
street workshop. We already have a group offering us work. Then, before
we leave to seek any professional service we may need, we ask within our
own collective if anyone can do the work, and that means we do not have
to pay. Right now, we have two young women from the group creating our
internet site. Our economic support ends up coming from within our own
network, because even when we have to pay for professional work by
members of the group, their price is lower and their work sometimes is
52 2.1 The Experience of Collective Cultural Groups

paid for in exchange for something else, since all members of the group
have access to our courses and other activities.
Ilu-Obá de Min realized that, in order to keep our work alive, we
needed to keep it desirable and visible in the market. By market I mean the
cultural market, the one that buys shows, because our group has been
constantly hired by the Serviço Social do Comércio [Social Service of
Commerce] (SESC), as well as by other cultural institutions that include
musical presentations in their programs. Thus, the fact that Ilú is called on
to take part in these events helps us, because part of the money we receive
is used for the maintenance of our house. In addition, in our headquarters
our institution also provides courses on language, dance, percussion and
singing; the courses enable us to maintain the teachers who are also part of
our collective. We hardly ever hire someone from outside, because our
priority is the 250 people in the collective. The empowerment of the
women of the collective starts in our street workshops and continues inside
the headquarters, because it is there that they teach and learn. And, of
course, we are open to other proposals that knock on our door. We had a
course on history last year with two excellent teachers, and this was a long
course that lasted almost one full year. This is how we operate, opening
new possibilities.
Our network is formed by both the participants of the Afro Block
project and other collectives that we met when we became a Ponto de
Cultura. The fact is that we did not even know many of these institutions,
and had never even heard about them. But then, we created relationships.
When we have a new project, we articulate with these other collectives
and share the projects with them. We did this with the Association of
Citizen Artists of Ribeirão Pires (ARCA) at the time of the Pontos de
Cultura, when we went to Ribeirão Pires to do a presentation. And this
exchange is really cool; it strengthens us, because to do culture in Brazil is
not easy at all. The resources are minimal and smaller every day; the little
we used to have is now being mercilessly cut. Then, we are the heroes,
because we are not part of the entertainment industry, of the big shows,
and the small amount of funds thrown at the cultural collectives is
ridiculous. And yet, for the love of art, and because we know that through
art we change lives, we push forward. It is love and knowledge of the
importance of what we do that keep us in our daily struggle of working in
the most distant parts of the municipalities, taking our projects to the
poorest parts of the cities, because otherwise the people there would have
no access to any culture whatsoever.
I believe that we deserve to be paid for our work, because nothing is
possible without money. We do not buy clothes; we cannot buy food
 Associação Ribeirãopirense de Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA) 53

without money. Getting paid for our work allows us to pay the artist who
gives a workshop in our headquarters. This is right, because artists invest a
lot to be what they are so that they can share that knowledge with others.
So, the projects help us apply for funds and they also help us generate
income, which is also shared with others. In this process, we strengthen
these people, these artists who struggle to learn their trade and create their
workshops. Therefore, public support is essential. No matter how
complicated it may be to apply for public funds, it is worth it to continue
to apply. It is our own money that returns to us and enables us to continue
working.
One more thing I wanted to add about Ilú-Obá is that it is not easy. Our
monthly expenses amount to six thousand reals. To be able to take care of
this amount, we have to work a lot and do things as if we were a rich
NGO. Therefore, to pay for daily and monthly expenses, we invent things.
Leni, who is our teacher, always has great ideas. For instance, she created
a mandala made from fabric. We make things and sell them, and the
proceeds go to the collective. We also have the shows and courses, which
help. And we go on, creating other projects, because not all of those we
develop at Ilú-Obá receive any kind of support. For many of these projects
we give of our own personal resources, because we believe in fulfilling
our mission, which is promoting black culture and empowering women.

Circomunidade Ponto de Cultura

Hélio Costa
The Circomunidade Project is a Ponto de Cultura of the NGO Pró-Circo.
This NGO was created in 2009, when eleven circus artists got together to
found a legal entity, probably similar to ARCA, so they could have more
visibility and better bureaucratic support. You can imagine how wonderful
the experience of eleven acrobats, jugglers, and clowns managing
bureaucracies was! And it is still a lot of fun.
From 2009 to 2012, we did not have a headquarters or any funds. We
did a lot of things “by the skin of our teeth,” in partnership with groups of
friends. One of the groups participating in the NGO received a grant from
the São Bernardo Valorização de Iniciativas Culturais [Valorization of
Cultural Initiatives] (VAI) program, created by the Municipality of São
Paulo). With these funds, we purchased equipment and a sound system. So
this way, we went on forming our network.
Through partnerships, we started helping in the artistic endeavours that
were already taking place in the city. We took part in about four of them.
54 2.1 The Experience of Collective Cultural Groups

Now we have a permanent partnership with the Park Rafael Lazzuri in São
Bernardo. We take over the park every Saturday and Sunday when it is not
raining and our artists are not occupied with other work. We charge
basically nothing. How did this start? Simply because São Bernardo is a
very strong and highly recognized circus centre in Latin America, and
sometimes there are some “gringos” working with us too. There is a very
good practice space at Coordenadoria de Ações para a Juventude
[Coordination for Youth Activities] (CAJUV) in São Bernardo. But the
situation is the one we know—here in the ABC region there is a very good
program for the initiation of artists, but if artists want to become real
professionals and make their art their livelihood, they have to seek their
“own thing” in different venues.
At the beginning of 2013 we started a partnership with the Association
of Residents of Parque Havaí and were able to have a stable space. We
used that place to do shows as well as offer activities of artistic initiation.
At the end of 2013 we were awarded the status of Ponto de Cultura for the
Project Circomunidade. This was very cool. Two weeks ago, we officially
opened the Centre of Artistic and Cultural Research and a community
library focusing on artistic, cultural, and pedagogical research. We are
now working on the pre-production of the Fourth Circus Festival of São
Bernardo do Campo. These are actions of the circus collective, and they
are much bigger than the NGO based in São Bernardo.
As I mentioned before, we believe in networks. Because of them, our
actions are done in the “brother fashion,” through exchange, both with our
own labour in the production and the help with the artistic side as well as
the teaching of workshops. And this way we make life happen.
We also work on education. We are really emphasizing the circus art
and it is great to think about it in two aspects: the technical and the social.
The technical aspect is represented in a cool space we have here with the
acrobatic dialogues; this is a very well-designed space to be used by
people who want to train at a higher level. As for the social aspect, the
Ponto de Cultura Circomunidade is the space for the social educator who
teaches an art workshop. It is not just their art that the educator transmits
to the student; rather, it is a political formation. In among cartwheels and
other acrobatic movements, we discuss class, gender, and race. One
example that guides our discussion is the case of the young woman who
performed as a crucified person in a gay parade and was subsequently
attacked. These are debates that aim to extend understanding, and
empower the people who come to study with us.
Our action also includes our participation in the public policy debates
in the city of São Bernardo. We are involved in a discussion of the
 Associação Ribeirãopirense de Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA) 55

Municipal Cultural Plan, for instance. We understand public policy as a

horizontal process, and therefore we do not go to the city to defend the
circus’s share only, especially because I am absolutely against the
segmentation of languages. I believe we have to discuss and create a
public policy that is really public and not segmented.

São Mateus em Movimento

Aluízio Marino
My name is Aluízio. I am a student here at the Federal University of ABC
where I am studying to obtain a master’s in planning and territory
management. I also participate in the network of cultural collectives called
São Mateus em Movimento. In my studies I am developing a research-
action plan because at the same time as I study the action of the cultural
collectives I also take active part in this reality. For this reason, what I say
will have a more collective than individual characteristic.
In this presentation, I will give a little bit of the history of our main
objectives and cultural actions. At the end, I am going to speak about one
example of the interconnection between the solidarity economy and
culture, with a practical case represented by São Mateus em Movimento.
And what is São Mateus em Movimento? It started in 2008 as a result
of the local movement of young people in the region for the creation of a
community space to offer cultural events. It started mainly with capoeira
and graffiti. This community space—as other colleagues here at the table
already mentioned—was created within the logic of a network. It is not the
logic of the virtual network, but rather of a solidarity network of mutual
assistance, of people who meet each other, who converge, who exchange
ideas and, as a result of these meetings, develop plans, actions, and begin
to intervene in the reality of the neighbourhood where they live. Then,
beyond a community space, we are also a network of agents of cultural
collectives. Afterwards, working since 2008, “ourselves for ourselves”
without any financial help, in 2014 the São Mateus em Movimento
became a Ponto de Cultura, and that was the first time we received public
financial help for our work.
We have several main activities. The first one is the Galeria Céu
Aberto [Open Air Gallery], a project of direct contact with the territory, of
transformation of a neighbourhood into an art gallery, a graffiti gallery.
The people responsible for this project are of the Grupo Opni, which is
recognized in the national and international scene thanks to the work
developed since 1997. Grupo Opni has developed an inspiring language
56 2.1 The Experience of Collective Cultural Groups

that strengthens the image of the black woman, as well as celebrates

aspects of daily life in the periphery of the city. We also have a series of
cultural workshops such as capoeira, MCing, graffiti, and game development.
We have an evening community party that takes place every last Saturday
of the month called the Sarau Comungar. We also do a number of musical
presentations on the streets, and these are our general rehearsals gathering
local groups as well as groups from the most distant neighbourhoods. We
have a very good relationship with other collectives in the region. São
Mateus is a very large district, so we are always seeking relationships with
other cultural groups of the region. And finally, our more recent activity is
the Media Lab São Mateus em Movimento, which is a space for the
production and promotion of digital culture.
Our principal objective is to stimulate the artistic potential and critical
thinking of the young people through cultural activities that invite them to
reflect a little more on the reality in which they live and that of their
neighbourhood, their city, and so on.

Notes
1
Ribeirão Pires is a municipality located in the Metropolitan region of São Paulo,
and it currently has about 110,000 residents.
2
Jongo Dito Ribeiro is a community located in the city of Campinas in the state of
São Paulo. The emphasis of Jongo Dito Ribeiro is the promotion of African
Brazilian culture. See the Jongo’s website at https://comunidadejongoditoribeiro.
wordpress.com.
 2.2 PLENARY DEBATES

Questions
(1) Seeing all these organized and resistant initiatives, I find everything
very worthy and at the same time sad, because even though I am from
São Bernardo, I had never heard of many of these organizations. For
instance, I am an art teacher, and I should have at least a minimum
knowledge of these events so I am able to speak about what kind of
artistic events are taking place in my city, but this information never
reaches me. We know that many times the bureaucracy imposed on
culture forces us to become hostages to a system of public financing
that leads us to compromises, to a series of impositions so we can
obtain the grants, and all of these constraints end up making the
process much more difficult and inflexible. Therefore, I would like to
know if some of you have had the experience and what you think about
collective financing and crowdfunding. In São Paulo, there is a theatre
group I participate in that had an experience with crowdfunding
through the site of Catarse, and it was wonderful! We are able to
finance several things with the assistance of people who are willing to
embark on our dream, and finance it independently from the public
sector. So, how do you deal with the idea of collective financing?1

(2) I think that, in a certain way, we all act in networks, and act together.
We built the “Ponte Poética” [“Poetic Bridge”] that was the
presentation of four saraus of the ABC, and this was discussed with
SESC. Next, we discussed the Virada Cultural in a collective way and,
this way, thirty-six groups participated in the Virada. Afterwards, we
promoted the discussion with other Pontos de Cultura of the Law
Cultura Viva as a possibility of cultural processes. And we discussed
with the state government the ProAC Saraus funding, which previously
was destined for publishers, and from that time on has been directed to
the sarau groups. I think it is interesting that you are participating. I
believe we need to have a connection. We need to work together,
thinking about the policies and pressuring the cities. What do you think
we should do to start articulating ourselves and discussing the city’s
budget, which is something that does not exist at this point?
58 2.2 Plenary Debates

(3) I would like to share some impressions I had of this table, mainly in
relation to the theme of the whole meeting, the “Solidarity Economy of
Culture and Cultural Citizenship,” of how we identify the Living
Culture program as something that gives power to different actions.
And, in culture, we see a series of discontinuities. The Living Culture
program became one of the main projects that stimulate the solidarity
economy. So, my question is—how can we guarantee that these artists
can support themselves with their art through the solidarity economy?
How can we make this connection?

(4) You all have said many interesting things. This was indeed a very rich
discussion table. So, I want to ask two things. First, I want to focus on
the matter of the work, of the greater articulation within the network.
And afterwards, I would like to ask for your thoughts on how to really
develop the programs locally to ensure that people’s lives become
better. Do these programs make reading and writing better? Do they
affect people in their schools? Do the health indicators of a more
conscious consumption improve with your work? Can you evaluate the
impact for the development of different places, for a better quality of
life? So, I would rephrase my questions this way—how is this
“networking”? How do you evaluate the impact of your work in the
community?

Answers
Baby Amorim, Ilú-Obá de Min

We already had this experience in the current year. For the first time, it
worked well, although we started our campaign only to obtain financing
for a sound car for our group at the last minute. We are a bloco afro
[African bloc], and we needed a big car. Today we go out in the streets
and almost twenty thousand people follow our carnival bloc, so our
previous sound cars were not adequate. So, we started a campaign with
Catarse and it worked. The bill was really high, but we were able to obtain
almost all the money we needed. Although we didn’t get everything, the
experience was good. I think that we need to use this tool (Catarse), with
colleagues supporting one another. I have supported parties organized by
other groups I admire. I believe that this is a great network that goes on
strengthening all the groups so that they can fulfil their goals.
Each city has its own culture budget but, in some cases, this budget
does not even exist! I believe that the groups have to be more present in
 Chapter Two 59

the discussions of the cultural politics of their cities and their state. They
have to stand up. For instance, if today there are Pontos de Cultura, I am
sure that this was made possible thanks to the work done by the ten Pontos
de Cultura that resisted even when they didn’t have any money but still
continued the struggle to make sure the law was approved. The Cultura
Viva program is enormous, beautiful, and wonderful. From the program,
the only thing remaining is the Ponto de Cultura, because just about all of
the rest of the Living Culture program has been dismantled. So, I think
that it is worth it for the groups to impose themselves; we need to be
present in the political discussions. Sometimes, we do not participate in
these discussions. In my case, the reason for this is simple—I cannot be
everywhere at the same time. I try to be present in as many of these
occasions as possible, but we end up being distracted and absorbed by our
daily work routine and missing opportunities to demand that the
government pay attention to cultural policies, to a feasible budget for
culture, to the different initiatives, and for everything else.
I believe that there isn’t one single formula; however, if this program
didn’t exist we ourselves wouldn’t know what other groups are doing. I
think that there isn’t just one solution for self-sustainability. Each one has
a path to find. Ilú has a product that we were able to strengthen and
invested in with the formation of this cultural group. We rehearse and seek
more visual quality through our research. Each group thinks differently,
and there is no fixed formula that works for everybody. And, without
money, no matter how beautiful and wonderful the dream may be,
everyone will get to a point beyond which no one can go. Unfortunately,
not all groups manage to have a product that they can “sell,” something
that brings some “dough” back to the group. These are different realities.
Each group has its own reality.

Lenita Sena, Ilú-Obá de Min

I have worked as a community health agent, but, while I occupied that

position, I realized that we cannot focus on health only, because health is
connected to the way a person lives. I can say that happy people, at least in
the moments everyone is well and having fun, don’t get sick. Then, in a
certain way, people who are trying to take culture and art to the people,
even without being able to measure the result of this work, are
contributing to the health of the population. In other words, the public
power, the government, is saving money at the expense of people who
want to do art.
60 2.2 Plenary Debates

We don’t have indicators. Whenever possible, we do our projects in the

periphery of the city, for the most vulnerable public. And as someone said
previously, when you spend some time in these places promoting a
cultural activity, you leave something with those who attend. Sometimes
you can change some perceptions, and help a person come out of
depression. Many of the young women who come to our workshops suffer
depression. They can read and write, but they miss something. And we go
there and do our part. I believe that for many of these young women the
root of the problem is the matter of their identity—what does racism do to
the identity of a black person? In Ilú, the empowering of the black woman
is visible. When they start with us they look and behave one certain way
and, one year later, they are very different. For me, this is a great
accomplishment, because we are not giving assistance, we are not
providing food per se. What we give these young women is another kind
of support. We are strengthening them through our actions.

Hélio, Circomunidade

I am going to make three comments. First, I am going to speak about

collective financing. Who usually collaborates with these “crowdfunding”
efforts? Generally, those who end up helping are the partners and friends
of the artists. There is a very important culture behind this act, something
very profound. What is the culture of financing that we have here?
Unfortunately, financing has ended up becoming a form of dependence on
official edicts, on partnerships with the public sector and the government.
This is what usually happens. In the United States, in spite of the large
cultural industry, small groups can survive independently because there is
a different culture in that country, and they have a fiscal policy that
encourages anyone to sponsor small projects. So, that little grandmother
who is taking care of her grandchild while baking a cake helps the corner
choir, because she likes the choir. Here, we don’t have this culture of
helping one another because we created this dependence on governmental
edicts and similar sources of funds.
And then I bring back the issue of sustainability. What are we going to
do to support ourselves? Yes, I mean we, the NGO Pró-Circo, which is a
Ponto de Cultura. I, for instance, always wanted to be an artist, so I went
on to be a street artist for many years, but it was difficult because the
group I worked with hardly ever sold a show. So, I decided to go into art
education, and I fell in love with it. But art education ends up being
another source of events. We tried to sell it to SESC, tried to build an
 Chapter Two 61

agreement with SESC, and so we go, always trying to work and make do
with whatever appears, whatever we can find.
The last comment is about the matter of local development. We do not
have indicators. We do not have support to do it. We don’t know how to
do it. This is it.

Renata Silva, CCRU

The Rural and Urban Consumption Collective started without any money.
And how do we finance some of the expenses? Here in the Universidade
Federal of ABC (UFABC) we serve seventy families of students,
professors, staff, and the surrounding community. In Diadema and the
metropolitan region we serve other sixty families. From UFABC, we keep
twenty-five percent of the value of the basket of food; from Diadema, we
keep twenty percent. These percentages are used to pay for expenses such
as the producer’s transportation to the distribution centre, and the printing
of brochures and folders. But I believe that our support comes from the
organization of the group. Everyone who participates in the collective is
part of the activities that we started with “zero budget.”
Now, about the impact of the CCRU on the community, an interesting
indicator comes from the producers. There is a farmers’ association that
used to sell eighty percent of what they produced to third parties, and
twenty percent they sold directly to the consumers. Now this association is
selling ninety percent directly and ten percent to third parties. So, I believe
that our group encouraged and made the producers’ visibility possible,
thus enabling the increase of direct sales. And this is not even considering
that the consumers can purchase their food at a more just price, and that
the food is healthier. Yes, because nowadays the term “organic” has
become a kind of great fetiche, and people believe that because something
is organic it has to cost a lot of money! But that is not true! Even the
residents of the periphery of the city, of a place like Diadema, can eat
healthier food, grown without poison, and in the process we cut the third
parties out of the system. Another aspect of this exchange is that it brings
together the farmers and the working class. In order to make this a reality,
we have the support of the union of UFABC, which is part of the CCRU-
Soil.
62 2.2 Plenary Debates

Aluízio Marino, São Mateus em Movimento

First, I want to reply to Fernando about the need for institutionalization.

We are an association but we do not organize ourselves as one. Although
we understand the association as a tool for us to obtain financing and
partnerships, we organize ourselves as a group, a collective. We also have
an artistic producing arm which can emit receipts for services done. We do
not need to ask for receipts from third parties, from a cooperative, for
instance. We are a producer that draws up receipts for several collectives
in the region; so, for us this is a tool, not something to identify us as an
institution. As for the issue of collective financing, I follow
(Circomunidade) Hélio’s line. I think that collective financing works, but
it needs two things that are important and not everyone has: in the case of
Catarse, which is the main source of financing, the applying group needs
to have video, an audio-visual resource, and it has to be a good video. And
a good video is not easy to make; if you do not have a partner, then a video
is prohibitively expensive. And the second thing you need is to have a
well-articulated network. Now, think about the situation of people in the
periphery, where ten reals make a big difference for people, and no one is
used to shopping with a credit card through the internet, or writing a form,
or making a payment at the ATM. So, it is much more difficult to obtain
financing in this reality. It works, it is cool, it is a great experience, it is a
new experience, but I believe that it will not solve all problems.
As for Neri’s second question about the situation in São Paulo—yes, it
is a very favourable situation compared with other places, but it is still not
easy to work here. One example of such a reality is what happened with
the Valorização de Iniciativas Culturais [Valorization of Cultural
Initiatives] (VAI) program. 2 It is fantastic, great, and it should exist all
over Brazil. However, I know a lot of very good people who do wonderful
work but cannot even write the project for VAI; there are some others who
have written, but have never obtained any funds. The demand for financial
assistance is bigger than the public funds can support. And yes, I repeat
that we have had some great successes in São Paulo, but there is so much
more to do.
To Ana—how can we guarantee our sustainability? I do not have a
ready answer, but I would like to share some thoughts that bother me a lot.
I see the whole matter of financing culture as a gigantic problem. The
basic question is lack of money. The other problem is that most of the
financing available comes from incentive laws. Law N. 8.685/93—
Rouanet Law—moves about one billion and two hundred million reals
every year. It is three times the budget of the Ministry of Culture. And the
 Chapter Two 63

Rouanet chooses mostly projects that have a market value, because

companies are the ones which choose who is going to be financed (Brasil
1993). Imagine if all the logic of the Rouanet Law were reverted to the
Pontos de Cultura, for instance. It would be a great revolution! And I think
that the main measure for this issue is to break the logic of having to
present a project. Not only because it is difficult to write a project, but also
because projects privilege the result, those ideas that will have a
beginning, middle, and a necessary, expected, and measurable result at the
end. And culture, we must not forget, is a process. Therefore, financing
has to be seen as a process and not a result. For instance, let’s take a
quilombola community. What is the result of a quilombola community if
not the continuation of its existence? So, how can you finance a project for
a quilombola community? You have to obtain funds so that the community
can continue, and sustain itself for the next generations. It is a matter of
inverting the logic, of abandoning the idea of a result in favour of the
process.
Silvana, the articulation with and among networks, is crucial, and it is
not a new thing. In the 1980s, the hip hop movement in the periphery of
São Paulo already had networks of young people who met in public
squares to breakdance. The first “gangs” of hip hop—the DRR from São
Mateus, for instance, formed in 1992—were composed of young people
who usually met in the central square, and then went to play together in a
shack. Many rap groups that are well known today sprang from this first
movement. This is something that already exists in people’s logic and
social media can make the movement stronger. And when you speak about
indicators, in São Mateus we joke, saying that we are “the Triers” and that
we “try a lot.” Although we don’t know what is going to happen in the
end, we “are always trying.” We feel that this is a very important
contribution that we owe our city; we have the duty to provide this service,
because even the government has no precise indicator of the culture of the
city.
I see that all the groups, principally those from the periphery of the
city, act in a void which even the state cannot reach. We communicate and
articulate with actors, for instance; we have contacts with criminals; we
are in contact with kids who are smoking pot on the corner. No public
policy reaches these people, and we manage to reach them somehow. I am
not saying that I am going to save these kids’ lives, but these actors and
groups have the potential to speak with this public that the state cannot get
near. So, the same way, if we apply this logic to how we obtain financing,
perhaps we should start thinking about different forms of government.
Instead of creating a cultural public equipment such as Cidade
64 2.2 Plenary Debates

Tiradentes—that beautiful, wonderful thing that everybody thinks is a

hospital because the building is totally white—the public power could
identify the groups, create smaller equipment set ups, and allow these
groups to manage them. Not as a Ponto de Cultura, but as a public facility
that pays salaries. And the groups can get paid to maintain everything they
need, to maintain a much truer local identity—this will certainly be a new
form of management of the cultural wealth of each place.

Fernanda, Grupo ARCA

I share the opinion of the colleagues at this discussion table, but I would
like to remove from our shoulders the responsibility of creating policies
and opportunities. Our artistic responsibility is to make art, and be artists. I
will leave for the representatives of the government the responsibility of
discussing and creating public policy, because what Fernando said about
financing, as well as what Neri, Ana, and Silvana said, can be summarized
as related to public policy. The case of collective financing, Fernando, is
very interesting. But, as my colleagues said, we need to have “a product”
in order to obtain financing. The problem is that art is devalued; in
addition, artists are not considered workers when they are creating,
because outsiders can think that the creative process is mere leisure. So,
the process of artistic creation is not valued—it is only valued when it
yields a “product.” That is why we need public initiatives and policies to
guarantee this space for the artist. It is necessary to guarantee that for the
artists there is a time for them to be able to draw, maybe many times,
because this time they are drawing is their work, their labour. It is different
from the work of those who arrive at the office at eight am and leave at
five pm and can write a report about what they did. The artist needs to
have assurance of the right to go about doing art, and this is what all artists
lack. We must demand that the government be responsible for the creation
of alternatives for artists. What we have to do instead is go to the private
sector and say, “don’t ask for support from the government—let’s solve
this issue here among ourselves.” Every time we do this, when we appeal
to companies to assist and support our artistic work we are taking the
responsibility from the public sector.
I believe that the discussions in the groups should ideally create this
responsibility in the public sector. When a company establishes itself in a
city, the first thing it does is negotiate with the government of the city,
because of course the company wants to pay less taxes. It usually doesn’t
want to pay the occupation tax, and it wants its Imposto sobre Circulação
de Mercadorias e Serviços [Tax over Circulation of Merchandize and
 Chapter Two 65

Services] (ICMS) reduced, because the company says it is going to

generate jobs and income.
I think that the groups of resistance, the collectives that make art
independently from money, need to take this step, because our discussion
is still too simple. Yes, that is what it is!
I am Fernanda Henrique. I am from Ribeirão Pires. I am part of
ARCA—Ribeirão Pires Association of Citizen Artists—and I would like
financial support to decide what I want to do, because artists are like this:
they need to think about that they want to do. They need the space to let
things happen.
And the beauty of Cultura Viva, the beauty of the Pontos de Cultura, is
that we managed to be a Ponto de Cultura without necessarily giving
workshops, without needing to have a teacher, an educator, among us. But
our Ponto de Cultura didn’t have any paid artists, and that too was a
mistake. Everybody worked on a voluntary basis. The problem for us
when we had to give an account of what we had done was that we didn’t
have a workshop, or students, or a product to sell directly to the public.
We had our shows, our popular traditional games, our research on popular
culture. When the time came to give a report on what we had done, the
questions were: what kind of public did ARCA reach? How many people
attended your events?
So, your question about how we create sustainability should be
rephrased as: “how do we create a public policy?” I believe that it takes
time to negotiate a product, to make it “circulate.” Any artist needs time to
create their product. So, we will need to take some steps back in order to
go forward. Obviously, I am speaking about our regional reality. Here, we
have our colleagues from São Paulo; however, in the seven cities of the
ABC region, the situation is still “taking baby steps.” Here we have Santo
André, which is a pioneer. I have a degree from the Escola Livre de
Teatro, and I am very proud of having spent eight years of my life there,
because it is a public school of great quality located here in Santo André.
However, that school was only made possible because at some point there
was a public policy that allocated funds for the creation of the school. So,
we have to advance this discussion, and it has to be now so that, when we
have an election year, we can return to this discussion and know what
parties share our struggle. We usually separate ourselves from the parties,
but actually we should walk together.
66 2.2 Plenary Debates

Notes
1
Catarse has a website where they explain who can apply and how the system
works. More information is available at https://www.catarse.me.
2
For more information on the nature and scope of VAI see their website at
http://programavai.blogspot.com.
 2.3 CRITICAL READING:
THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY OF CULTURE
AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
IN THE ABC REGION

SILVIA HELENA PASSARELLI, RAFAEL SILVA,

RENAN MAGALHÃES AND THIAGO MARIANO

The collectives that took part in the discussion table are very diverse, and
this diversity reflects the plurality of the cultural artistic production of São
Paulo and the ABC region. We heard from graffiti groups, sarau groups,
representatives of organic agriculture, and people who deal with literature,
music, and theatre, all of them different. Beyond the different activities
and their places of origin, there are also significant differences in their
trajectory, the time they have been in operation, and their access or lack of
access to financial resources through the public calls for application or
edicts. In general, all groups resent the lack of funds for culture, which is
the result of both the cities’ budgetary limitations and the discontinuity
and absence of popular participation in the creation of public policy in this
area.
Because the access to public resources is possible only through edicts
that demand, among other formalities, the organization of the groups into
associations that must have existed for a predetermined minimum length
of time, many collectives developed survival strategies based on the
principles of solidarity economy. These strategies involve collective work,
ties with the community, the establishment of partnerships, and the
formation of networks.
Essentially, the organization as a collective includes the experience of
community practices which respond to the lack of resources to create
independent work. These practices seek the continuous exchange of
knowledge and experiences, and are strongly related to the dynamics of
the territory in which they take place. The groups build organizational
structures without hierarchies and formal registers, promoting debate and
cultural actions, especially in the periphery of the cities. Being officially
68 2.3 Critical Reading

institutionalized is not an essential component of the organization of the

collectives. This requirement is a demand that comes from the outside,
when the collectives want to participate in edicts to seek funds from the
public sector. This situation leads to the redesigning of new structures for
the groups’ financial maintenance through the sharing of spaces and
resources, through partnerships with local businesses, and through their
involvement with the community.

The Living Culture Program and its use of the Principles

of the Solidarity Economy
The institutional answer to this new logic of collaborative and solidary
action came with the creation of the Pontos de Cultura of the Living
Culture Program, which are represented by several groups present here at
the moment. The Pontos de Cultura are groups or cultural collectives
which have been certified by the public power through edicts from the
Ministry of Culture, or by the offices of secretaries of the cities or the
state. Once these groups or collectives are approved, they receive the
resources needed for their events. According to federal law, Pontos de
Cultura are “partnerships between the state and officially established
NGOs or groups and collectives without a legal profile which develop and
articulate cultural activities in their communities and thus contribute to the
advance of the cultural, social, environmental, economic and human rights
of the population” (Brasil 2013).1 They are structured based on the three
dimensions of culture adopted by the Ministry of Culture.2 In addition, the
program foresees the establishment of a network of cooperation that aims
to increase its reach through the combined work of the federal, state, and
municipal levels, as well as of the consortia among cities participating in
the Sistema Nacional de Cultura [National Cultural System] (SNC) in
thematic topics, with articulation around specific subjects (Brasil 2005).
From this point, it is possible to strengthen the integration within
networks, once those who have benefitted from state resources talk with
those groups that the state not only did not fund but also does not even
know exist. The strongest example of this integration in the region may be
the saraus. Inspired by saraus of the periphery of São Paulo such as the
Cooperifa, there are several saraus in São Bernardo do Campo which form
a network organized around this art form in the city. When the groups act
within the network, they try to gather participants of hip-hop in order to
help form cooperative ties through which the collectives participate in
each other’s events, organize joint events, and get together to plan events
that do not compete or conflict with other groups’ events. This coordinated
 S. H. Passarelli, R. Silva, R. Magalhães and T. Mariano 69

action means that the expansion of one sarau helps the expansion of all the
other saraus, because they are in fact interconnected. This strategy gives
autonomy to the groups so they can think about a diversified program of
events, as well as keep their independence both from the municipalities
(whose support is unstable at best) and private businesses (who demand
the addition of more commercial content). This independence does not
mean the absence of difficulties, but the example shows us that the groups
involved in the network can and do overcome immediate individual
interests, strengthening and expanding the reach of the saraus. The results
the groups obtained until now are very noteworthy, since groups such as
Sarau da Quebrada and the Sarau do Fórum reach the audience of the city
of São Paulo and participate in the Virada Cultural.3 In addition, this event
gave the groups more visibility and enabled them to petition to the state of
São Paulo for the creation of edicts to increase the saraus. The result of the
petition is the ProAC Saraus Culturais, which exists now in the Programa
de Incentivo à Cultura do Estado de São Paulo [Program of Incentive to
the Culture of the State of São Paulo].
Other groups participating in this roundtable discussion spoke about
the crucial importance of their participation in networks. Working in a
low-income São Paulo district that has a high population density, and
where the public powers have been mostly absent, the Ponto de Cultura
São Mateus em Movimento is inserted into a vast and complex network of
collectives that help each other on different fronts. Establishing an effective
dialogue with different social actors, the São Mateus em Movimento
performs an important role in the territory where it operates. As for the Ilú-
Obá de Min, which has headquarters downtown São Paulo, the collective
characterizes itself by the enormous energy of the one hundred women
who participate in the group. These women resolve, inside the institution
itself, many of the issues that might require external support.
In spite of the directives of the Programa Pontos de Cultura, the
solidary practices of the cultural groups respond more to the imperatives
of survival than the stimuli provoked by the regulating bodies. These
practices involve informal agreements made with the community, local
businesses, friends and supporters, and other collectives and artists. Such
ties of solidarity can also involve different collectives when there is the
need to solve common problems. This is a logic of mutual help that can
generate more promising results than the atomized cultural production.
70 2.3 Critical Reading

Disparities between the Cultural Policies of the ABC

Municipalities and among the Collectives
Although the Programa Pontos de Cultura is present in the history of
several of the collectives represented in this discussion, each of these
collectives expresses the need for more appreciation for their work and the
expansion of participatory spaces in their cities. The disparities among
municipalities’ budgets for cultural events and programs of support for
different cultural initiatives are enormous. The actions of the municipalities
in this area are usually intermittent, and the programs are short as well as
subject to interruptions caused by changes in government. Even though
some places already have their Municipal Culture Plans, the implementation
of such plans is very recent.
The collectives that receive funds from the Programa Cultura Viva
show a more visible capacity for action, either because they were
previously better structured or because they have public funds that enable
them to have more agility. However, several groups cannot have access to
the Programa, because they could not participate in the selection program,
which requires a lot of resources even for the application, and because
they are not formally organized as an association and do not have their
official numbers showing they have a legal profile.4 Even the groups that
receive the funds have difficulties ensuring that they have proper
documentation for their expenditures.
The Associação Ribeirãopirense de Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA), for
instance, was born out of the necessity the local artists felt to respond to
the formal requirements for anyone trying to obtain funds through
governmental edicts. These demands included the elaboration of an
adequate project or participation in projects in the city in the area of the
education/formation of other artists. However, even ARCA feels the lack
of dialogue between those responsible for the local cultural management and
the artists and educators who have tried—and many times failed—to
participate in projects developed by the municipal government.
Besides the difficulties in the formatting of projects and accounting,
the cultural collectives also resent the evaluation criteria. According to
Aluízio Marino from the Coletivo São Mateus em Movimento, the
assessment is based on results, and it is very difficult to work within this
logic, because “doing art is something based on the process and not on
results.” Since both symbolic contents and the artist citizen cannot be
easily measured, measurable results are necessarily limited.
One important fact that needs to be made clear is that only São
Bernardo do Campo has a municipal network of Pontos de Cultura, with
 S. H. Passarelli, R. Silva, R. Magalhães and T. Mariano 71

ten in total. The multiplication of these Pontos and their performance in

the network demonstrate a strong link between the cultural movements and
solidarity economy, and at the same time it shows a path for the
strengthening of cultural citizenship. The expansion of the Programa
Cultura Viva and the launching of a program of support like the São Paulo
VAI (a program for the valorization of cultural initiatives) represent
demands from the cultural groups, the consolidation of the presence of
cultural agents—producers and artists—in the region, and the expansion of
public spaces for the groups to present their creations.
The work of the collective Espaço 50 seeks to address this lack,
because, due to the fact that their events are either free or charge a
minimal entrance fee, the collective manages to attract a very large
number of people to the presentations of independent artists. Espaço 50 is
part of a larger network called Fora do Eixo, which is represented by
collectives all over Brazil, and their sheer size enables them to present
already famous artists as well as those who are beginning their careers.
Combining a variety of languages under different styles, Espaço 50
manages to attract different types of audiences; this type of approach
enables Espaço 50 to include artists who are not able to show their work
anywhere else in the ABC region, and this way they can reach their
audience through this important connection.

The Valorization of Cultural Initiatives Program

Beyond the differences among the municipalities of the Grande ABC
region, Neri Silvestre (a member of the Sarau da Quebrada) opines that
there is an enormous difference between the cultural policies of the city of
São Paulo and those of the region surrounding São Paulo. This fact can be
illustrated in the capital city by the presence of a program like VAI, which
was created by the Secretary of Culture of the city to finance cultural
projects with a focus on the periphery, using a simpler procedure than that
of the Cultura Viva. Although it still works within the logic of official
edicts, the program presents itself in two modalities: the first is reserved
for youth groups between eighteen and twenty-nine years old; the second
is open to groups of young people or adults who have performed for at
least two years in the area where they want to develop the proposed
project.
Among the practices that can be financed by the edict of 2015 are those
that, according to the São Paulo government, comprehend:
72 2.3 Critical Reading

(1) Actions of creation, production, fruition, and diffusion of artistic and

cultural expressions, such as: music, visual arts, fine arts, audio-visual
arts, performance, theatre, dance, fashion, circus, hip-hop, shows,
literature, poetry, crafts, traditional cultures, popular cultures,
interlanguages, digital culture, communication, LGBT culture,
processes that include the concept of culture in its anthropological
dimension such as lifestyles and consolidation of identities;
(2) cultural actions and/or events that take place regularly, in a formal or
informal format, and that are part of the local or municipal agenda;
(3) processes of the articulation of networks and collective forums
organized around cultural themes;
(4)
(5) management of cultural spaces and/or collective arrangements that are
a reference for their town, city, or municipality;
(6) initiatives related to the solidarity economy and the economy of
culture, generators of products such as books, CDs, DVDs, among
others, or productive local arrangements such as community studios
and cultural producers, among others;
(7) actions of cultural formation, including proposals of self-formation,
professionalization for various languages, formation for cultural
management and mediation, among others (São Paulo 2015).

The Programa VAI does not require the collectives to be a legal body,
and allows for a simplified accounting system. In addition, a managing
team assists the groups receiving the funds, thus avoiding eventual
difficulties in the organization of the groups’ activities. These
characteristics assure that fewer groups will default in their obligations,
and that more groups can be reached. One of the practices that the
Programa rewards focuses explicitly on projects of the solidarity economy.
Examples of such projects are the Agência Solano Trindade5 and the
Banco Comunitário União Sampaio.6
This model could inspire similar initiatives in the ABC region because
it bypasses a great obstacle to public resources and a great space in the
agenda of local public policy, which the groups speaking here have
mentioned—the controls and administrative procedures. Because it does
not require that the collective be legally constituted, and because it adopts
a simplified accounting system, the Programa VAI accepts a wider range
of participants. In addition, the presence of a managing team advising the
winning groups helps them to avoid defaulting in their accounting as well
as acquire managing skills.
 S. H. Passarelli, R. Silva, R. Magalhães and T. Mariano 73

Economy of Culture and Local Development—

Alternatives for the ABC Region
The current practices of financing for culture do not privilege the local,
community, and identity initiatives, and they organize themselves through
the game of hegemonic actors in which oligopolistic and monopolist (both
public and private) enterprises dictate Brazilian cultural policy according
to mercantilist criteria. These matters are clearer when we analyse data of
the Sistema de Apoio às Leis de Incentivo à Cultura [System of Support to
the Laws of Incentive to Culture] (SalicNet) of 1993 to 2010 in the
southeast region, which contains the oligopolistic television system and
the headquarters of the great conglomerates of the media and the cultural
industry of the country, with approximately eighty percent of all resources.
Of these, about fifty percent are concentrated in the hands of only three
percent of the proponents. In this case, eighty percent of the agents
involved in the process do not have access to any resources at all. To this
extreme concentration in the ability to obtain financial resources—a
process in which the so-called cultural industry obtains the biggest slice of
the pie—we can add a pronounced concentration of cultural equipment:
approximately ninety percent of the Brazilian municipalities do not have
cinemas, theatres, museums, or cultural centres.
The strengthening of the power and the ability to promote cultural
events at the local level is certainly the best path to revising such
distortion. This strengthening, which requires a relationship between social
society and public power, needs to be able to use democratic and
deliberative instruments. However, Law 8,685/93 (Lei Rouanet) does not
determine the creation of a federal council, and, although the law
stimulates the creation of state and municipal councils, it does not attribute
functions to these councils. In the administration of Gilberto Gil and Juca
Ferreira in the Ministry of Culture there were signs of a possible
strengthening of this relationship with the creation of programs such as
Cultura Viva, Programadora Brasil [Brazil Programmer], DocTV, and
Cultura and Cidadania ou Teia [Culture and Citizenship or Web], but these
initiatives remained subject to macroeconomic policies and the
idiosyncrasies of the local governments, thus making it difficult for the
cultural policy to become effective as a long-term development policy.
On the path to making the local power and actions stronger in the
cultural area in the ABC region, we can highlight the invigoration of the
Grupo de Trabalho de Cultura do Consórcio Intermunicipal [Culture
Working Group of the Intermunicipal Consortium], which comprehends
seven municipalities. The Culture Working Group has in its 2011 to 2020
74 2.3 Critical Reading

Regional Strategic Planning important guidelines for the restructuring of

the cultural polices in ABC. However, only very little has been done, in
spite of the directives of the guiding document.
Among the proposed actions, we can highlight the following: “to
perform sociocultural mapping,” from which a geo-referenced base of the
cultural spaces of artists and cultural producers of the region could support
the cooperation network formed by these actors; “to train managers,
producers and cultural mediators,” in order to invigorate the agents
involved in the cultural politics of the region, thus making it possible to
include new projects. Also important are “to create a Regional Cultural
Plan” and “to elaborate a project of study for the creation of a Regional
Culture Fund,” an instrument that could diminish the budgetary disparities
between the different secretaries of culture in the region, and which could
be used for the establishment of a municipal network of Pontos de Cultura
in other cities beyond São Bernardo do Campo, a project that could only
be viable with the adoption of the actions mentioned previously (Consórcio
Intermunicipal do ABC 2010). The Consórcio, however, cannot be seen as
the summation of all the demands from all municipalities, but rather as a
tool created with specific regulations and interests, as well as an
acknowledgement of the common problems and challenges.
Considering the three dimensions of culture—symbolic, civic, and
economic—proposed by the Plano Nacional de Cultura [National Culture
Plan], it is important to stress that, from an economic perspective, the so-
called cultural activities go beyond the management of culture, since these
cultural activities usually “spill over” to different areas. The complementarity
of guidelines and actions with different areas of government—both in the
vertical and horizontal sense—could favour a greater cooperation among
productive activities connected with culture, and perhaps attract more
attention to the economic potential of the economy of culture, which has a
great capacity for generating jobs. These guidelines could reduce some of
the pressures resulting from the historically low budget in the area of
culture.

Final Considerations
For cultural policies to be changed it is necessary to think about our
political culture. We need to analyse the traces of the authoritarian state
and propose administrative and organizational changes that will clarify
what the priorities are. According to Marilena Chauí (1995), it is necessary
that the workers in the public sector recognize themselves as citizens who
serve other citizens. This recognition will stimulate forms of self-
 S. H. Passarelli, R. Silva, R. Magalhães and T. Mariano 75

organization in society, especially in the poorer sectors of society, and will

promote a participatory citizenship. Inequality exists in the access to not
only culture but also fundamental rights. The path to this change in
perception requires an understanding that everyone has the right to access
culture in its multiple dimensions, not just as a consumer (right to access)
but also as a producer (right to experiment).
The cultural collectives in the region and the city of São Paulo have
given striking testimonies of the steps they have taken in this direction,
focusing on the local, the advantages of networking, solidarity, self-
management, and the active involvement in the local communities where
they work.
The reflections about the disparities in the distribution of public
resources for culture demonstrate that a great part of the difficulty the
collectives face originates in the paths taken by the state in relation to
cultural policies. The laws of support through fiscal incentives made more
dynamic the market of cultural goods and services, which used to be
concentrated and exclusivist and which considered the population as only
consumers of entertainment products. Therefore, it is important that there
be legal and democratizing instruments capable of reaching the local
communities so they can strengthen their diversity and become
protagonists of their own identities.

Notes
1
The cultural collectives understand that any group of people that produces culture
are Pontos de Cultura. Their only difference is that some of them do not receive
public funds. This is an increasingly frequent topic in the discussions about
cultural policy that have taken place since the Primeira Conferência Nacional de
Cultura [First National Conference on Culture] in 2005.
2
The dimensions of culture according to the Plano National de Cultura [National
Cultural Plan] are: the symbolic, civic, and economic dimensions, which will be
further discussed in chapter four.
3
The Virada Cultural was established in 2005, and consists of a twenty-four hour
festival that occurs in May each year. The event, which has grown every year, is
sponsored by the State Secretary of Culture. Now, several cities in the state of São
Paulo sponsor their own annual Virada, which has become an excellent
opportunity for different groups and collectives to present their work.
4
The cultural collectives are currently discussing with the regional government
bodies the possibility of eliminating the demand for the groups’ formalization as a
“legal person” as a condition for application to the resources made available
through the edicts.
5
The introduction on the website of the Agência Solano Trindade says that it “is a
cultural enterprise being built by young people who promote cultural events in the
76 2.3 Critical Reading

South region of São Paulo.” Its purpose is “to increase and strengthen a creative
cultural economy through the encouragement of the production and diffusion of
popular culture, creating organizational forms that enable sustainability and the
self-production of cultural actions.” More details about the Agência can be found
at https://agenciasolanotrindade.wordpress.com/quem-somos.
6
Bancos Comunitários are financial establishments employing people from the
community, which also manages the banks. The aim of these banks is not to obtain
profit but to be an instrument of organization and social development for the
community. For more information about Banco Comunitário União Sampaio see
http://bancocomunitariosampaio.blogspot.com.
 CHAPTER THREE

PATHS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION

OF THE REGIONAL AND NATIONAL
AGENDAS OF THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY
OF CULTURE
 3.1 THE ROLE OF MUNICIPAL
PUBLIC POLICIES

OSVALDO DE OLIVEIRA NETO

This meeting is very important for us to be able to augment and also share
knowledge about the strengthening of cultural citizenship. At this time,
two municipalities of the ABC, Santo André and São Bernardo, are in the
process of creating their Plano Municipal de Cultura [Municipal Culture
Plan], which will define their cultural policies for the next ten years.
I have a degree in education, theatre, and the circus, and run a street
circus company. I was invited by mayor Luiz Maranhão to be part of his
team, and am currently serving as São Bernardo do Campo Municipal
Secretary of Culture. In 2009, Mayor Maranhão already had plans for the
creation of the post of Municipal Secretary of Culture, which started its
activities in 2010. Of course, that was a very happy year, but, as I always
tell the staff and everyone else, the institutionalization of the Secretary of
Culture is not just an act of the executive or legislative branches. It is a
joint creation. For this secretary to work, it needs the participation of the
staff, the artists, and the whole society.
We work to reach certain goals. The first of these is the governmental
program itself, which is approved in the voting booth, allowing for the
creation of the directives for actions. The second is the Plano Plurianual
Participativo [Multi Annual Participative Plan] (PPA), which makes the
middle and long-term planning of investments in the city possible through
demands identified by the population.

Action Plans and Cultural Poles

The Secretary of Culture promotes conditions for the cultural and artistic
development of the city in a democratic and participatory manner. The
secretary’s task is to promote cultural inclusion, to generate income, and to
support economic development. Since the brand of culture and citizenship
was consolidated during the Plano Plurianual Participativo 2013 a 2017,
 Osvaldo de Oliveira Neto 79

the Secretary of Culture developed its public policy on three axes:

promotion, access, and preservation.
One common aspect of all the discussions involved rights, culture, and
cultural economy, which included questions such as: what is the duty of
the state? What does the right to cultural manifestation mean? What is
artistic labour? What is economic development?
Needless to say, the artistic quality of our city is expressed in various
forms. This success comes from the local practices and the cultural
identity of some communities, both of which prepare people for public
debate. This artistic manifestation—both in mine and the mayor’s
opinion—is a duty of the federal, state, and municipal governments which
need to promote ways to support and finance this type of manifestation so
that it does not cease to exist.
In São Bernardo do Campo we created cultural poles. Currently, we
have five poles functioning in different neighbourhoods of the city, and the
objective is to create a total of twenty. What are these cultural poles? They
are spaces which can be either a Unidade Básica de Saúde [Basic Health
Unit] (UBS) or a municipal school where a local cultural production takes
place. In the search for spaces to be used for these events, a team from the
Secretaria da Cultura has meetings with the population, aiming to inspire
dialogue to valorize and enable the circulation of the cultural actions.
These meetings provided an origin for the Centro de Referência das
Culturas Populares Traditionais [Centre of Reference of the Traditional
Popular Cultures], which is now housed in the remodelled building of the
Casarão do Parque Chácara Silvestre. This space is reserved for the
production, debate, reflection, promotion, and valorization of traditional
habits and customs of the city and the country. The Centro already possesses
one of the most expressive bibliographic and museum collections in the
region, and it partners with the Grupo de Pesquisa e Extensão “ABC das
Diversidades” [Group of Research and Development “ABC of Diversities”]
from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC).
The Center of Reference of Traditional Popular Cultures and the
cultural poles are programs that advance in direct relationship with the
residents of the city. That is, the violeiro1 can have the support of the
public powers in the recording of their first CD or presenting themselves
on a weekend in a neighbourhood that has a cultural pole, for example.

Official Edicts and Cultural Development

It is important to remember that we consider the economy of culture as
cultural development. We have, in our municipality, the Arranjo Produtivo
80 3.1 The Role of Municipal Public Policies

Local [Local Productive Arrangement] (APL) as well as the audio-visual,

design, and creative economy coordinated by the Secretary of Labour,
Tourism, and Economic Development. Among other actions, beyond the
support, the initiative creates an annual training program. There are also
the cultural edicts that democratize the process and provide transparency,
and constitute an instrument that offers real conditions for everyone to
participate. In São Bernardo do Campo, all the promotion activities start
with public edicts.
One example of the creative economy is the Audio-visual Centre
(CAV), which runs two classes in cinema, television, and animation. It is a
free school that works directly with technical knowledge and practice. We
recently finished the arrangements for a public grant for the Vera Cruz
Studios.2 And, as soon as the contract is signed, we hope the space will
once again be related to the great audio-visual productions of the country.
Besides the free courses, the centre will have a business incubator to
stimulate and promote the audio-visual market. Currently, the Vera Cruz
studios consist of big buildings where events and fairs take place. With the
revitalization, seven studios will be created.
In this network, I usually differentiate between cultural citizenship and
economic development. We will have an economic network in the city of
São Bernardo because, as far as I know, UFABC is discussing the creation
of ten undergraduate courses focusing on the discussion of the audio-
visual aspect of art; that is, the municipality can offer free technical
courses through the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial
[National Service of Commercial Learning] (SENAC), whereas UFABC
can offer extension and undergraduate level courses.
One example is a São Bernardo filmmaker who lives in Vila São
Pedro. He was approved in all the processes that the Secretary offered.
Initially, he won one of the edicts that gave him financial support; next, he
made a movie and is now promoting it. It is a great joy when this
filmmaker calls us and says, “I am going to Itaú Cultural” or “I am going
to Canal Brasil” to discuss and publicize the work. His success is a clear
sign that we can benefit different artists with our public policy actions.
Of course, public policy only becomes public when the people own it;
in order for the people to own policy, people have to discuss it and
conversations about it. The Municipal Culture Plan has to be created
collectively, because it depends on the organization and participation of
the different cultural segments and civil society. This discussion and
dialogue bring us closer and enable the creation of a plan that should really
reflect the desire of the people.
 Osvaldo de Oliveira Neto 81

Notes
1
A violeiro is an artist who plays the Brazilian “viola.” The “viola” in this case is
an instrument of Portuguese origin which looks very much like the acoustic guitar.
It is a very versatile instrument with ten strings, and is used in the música caipira
or música sertaneja [country music] of many states of the south and southwest of
Brazil, such as Paraná, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso, and Mato
Grosso do Sul.
2
The Vera Cruz Studios was a very powerful cinema company located in São
Bernardo do Campo. Founded by the Italian artist Franco Zampari (1898–1966)
and the Brazilian entrepreneur Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (1898–1977), the
Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz produced forty full-length films from 1949
to 1954.
 3.2 SOLIDARITY ECONOMY
AND THE ECONOMY OF CULTURE:
CONVERGENCES

GEORGIA HADDAD NICOLAU

I am originally from São Paulo, but have lived in Brasília for the past two
years. Here in São Paulo I was—and still feel that I am—part of a
collective called Baixo Centro. This is how I found out about this
workshop. The folks from UFABC invited Baixo Centro to participate,
and since I am still on their membership list I became aware of the event
and got hold of the organizers. The Ministry of Culture has a great interest
in being part of this discussion about the economy of culture, the solidarity
economy, and cultural movements.
In partnership with the university, we promoted a festival in 2011 in
the Minhocão region. It was all done in a collective—and quite anarchic—
form. We were living under the government of Mayor Gilberto Kassab and
we felt completely suffocated by the policies (and by the absence of
policies) aimed at benefitting the city. So, we decided to occupy the streets
of the city and test the system, because we thought, “After all, how far
does my right to be an artist and make art go? How late can we do it?” Our
motto was “the streets are for dancing.” The idea was to raise the issue of
“what you can and what you cannot do on the streets.” Looking at São
Paulo, it is easy to see that we have many challenges, but it is also possible
to see that the city is not the same anymore, because there are several other
movements happening. One influences the other. I don’t believe that we
need to be discussing “who invented what.” Rather, I think that one
influences the other, and one increases the potential of the other. And,
since I am on the membership list, and it is an open list, I invite whoever is
interested to participate in our events.

You Cannot Make Policy Alone

This is how I came to be here. It was all due to the active search for
understanding what is happening, because Brasília is strategically far away
 Georgia Haddad Nicolau 83

from everything. They did not put the capital city there by chance. Brasília
does not have a people, does not have a street, and does not have persons.
That is why we have this desire to walk around, to go places, otherwise, as
the Municipal Secretary of Culture Gil Marçal said so well, we end up
spending our time “only in our offices.” And policy is not made in the
office, and neither is it made alone.
It is a pleasure to be here with my colleagues, and I think it is very
important that the university is involved with this issue. As professor
Ladislau said earlier, the solution is increasingly coming from the “local
level.” The solution for the local problems comes from the collective
intelligence generated at the local level. Innovation comes from the
territory where it makes sense, and where it is the moving force that
should guide public policy. I think this is a phenomenon that has been
happening with culture for some years, although it is stronger in other
areas. For instance, in the Ministry of Development, Industry, and
Commerce they already have a policy of productive local arrangements
that has been institutionalized in the relationship with states and
municipalities. In the area of culture, we started speaking about territory.
One example of this development is the state of Bahia, where cultural
policies are determined by eight or nine territories, which are understood
not simply as institutional geographic limits but as spaces with their own
cultural identities. Another example is Cariri, a cultural territory that
encompasses two states: Paraíba and Ceará. It is also called a creative
territory. Culture was elected in this territory as the engine of the
development of the region. I like to be very close to reality, so I find that it
is extremely important to listen to the municipalities because our cultural
wealth comes from them. Since we cannot possibly know everything that
is occurring everywhere, it is very important to maintain an active
dialogue with people so we can strengthen the networks, including the
network of public managers, and to share good, practical information, etc.

Public Policy is not Only the State’s Duty

Here we are speaking about the solidarity economy and culture. This is an
important step because there are not many people talking about these
issues. The creation of the National Secretary of Solidarity Economy
during the Lula government, where Paul Singer has worked for thirteen
years, was possible only because there already existed a strong and well-
articulated movement of the solidarity economy with several different
people involved in it.1 This is a clear example that public policy does not
belong to the state alone; rather, it is done from the bottom to the top. The
84 3.2 The Solidarity Economy and the Economy of Culture

creation of the Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solidária [National

Secretary of Solidarity Economy] (SENAES) was the result of a historic
struggle of the movements of the solidarity economy. And why is this an
important step? Because institutionalization is important, although it is not
the solution to all problems. The existence of a National Secretary of the
Solidarity Economy enables the movement to have more bargaining power
and higher visibility, and it can also knock at the door of other ministries
and announce, “See, we have a National Secretary!” We can also go to the
planning department to defend some ideas, and when the time comes for
the discussion of a multi-year plan, our issues will be part of the
discussion. So, we must keep in mind that culture is extremely important,
and that it is still very “un-institutionalized!”
Often, we tend to value informality. However, we must remember that,
when something is institutionalized, we guarantee our rights. And what are
these rights? The cultural right is guaranteed in the Federal Constitution of
1988. When we have a National Cultural Plan, as well as a Municipal
Plan, we can make demands and we have ways to make demands. What is
different about the cultural and health services rendered by the state? For
me, this difference is very simple. The people know very well what is
necessary, what the state should provide, and what the rights and duties of
the government are. I can say, “I need to have health services; I have the
right to medicine, to medical treatment.” But what are our rights when we
speak about culture? It is imperative that we know what these rights are.
We do not necessarily need one single conclusion, but we need to promote
the debate to discuss what our cultural rights are. I believe that the plans,
the National Cultural System, and the municipal and states’ systems
enable us to have a direction. And then, when the time comes for us to
check the results—and we really have to check and demand results—I say,
“And the goals that were collectively discussed in the conferences—where
are they? What are you doing to reach the goals? How can I contribute so
we can reach them?” This process is important, because it is at this point
that we have indicators, a base to see what has changed in ten years. After
all, if we do not know where we are coming from, we do not know where
we will get to.
I just wanted to stress the value of this discussion that you are having
on this occasion because I think it matters, it is important, and it is a big
thing. We need to participate and to occupy spaces because “if we do not
occupy the spaces we want, we will end up occupied ourselves,” I am
insisting on this point because, yes, we must make demands. We cannot
exempt ourselves from responsibility. If we look at history we will see that
nothing was conquered simply because the state decided to do it. The
 Georgia Haddad Nicolau 85

program Cultura Viva became a state program not just because of one or
two administrators. It did so because of the efforts of the organized—and
even the disorganized—society. In the ten years of existence of the Cultura
Viva there have been many, many meetings, many political articulations
with other movements, a lot of struggles, etc. This is the only way for
anything to become a reality. And yes, it can be very tiring, because
sometimes we feel that we are stuck in one place, not advancing at all, but
this is not true. I am an optimist, and I believe that many things have
changed, and that we have conquered many important things. Yes, we still
have a lot more to conquer. And of course, that is just as well! If we had
already obtained everything we want we could just die and that would be
the end of it. We still have a lot to do and a lot to accomplish!

The Solidarity Economy and the Living Culture Program

The solidarity economy appeared for the first time in the Ministry of
Culture in 2004, when the first edict Agente Cultura Viva [Living Culture
Agent] was made public. Therefore, we cannot speak about the economy
of solidarity culture without speaking about the Living Culture program.
When Gilberto Gil became Minister of Culture in 2003, he started
speaking about culture. It is worth reading the text of the speeches by both
Minister Gil and Minister Juca Ferreira,2 gathered together in the book
Cultura pela Palavra, because what they say is very inspiring and
relevant.3 Gil proposes the formulation of culture in different dimensions:
symbolic, civil, and economic. The core idea is that these dimensions are
never separated from one another. For example, is VAI (a program of the
Municipal Secretary of Culture of São Paulo) a cultural citizenship policy?
Obviously it is, but it also generates economic development such as that
represented by the micro scholarships that make it possible for the winners
to develop their work. The Cultura Viva Program has these three
dimensions in its DNA. I think that this is the one program from the
Ministry of Culture which managed to best articulate its symbolic, civic,
and economic dimensions. And, in 2004, the Ministry of Labour and
Employment, together with the Ministry of Culture and the Cultura Viva
Agent, posted an edict that had a productive vision of young people’s
potential. In 2006 there was another important milestone—the TEIA,
Encontro Nacional dos Pontos de Cultura [TEIA, National Gathering of
the Points of Culture]. The first TEIA took place in São Paulo. It was the
result of a partnership between the Ministry of Culture and the National
Secretary of the Solidarity Economy. Located in the Bienal,4 the first
86 3.2 The Solidarity Economy and the Economy of Culture

TEIA represented the solidarity economy well, and many of the Points of
Culture could see themselves reflected in the events.
The solidarity economy, while public policy and a methodology of
intervention, has a great advantage in relation to culture, but this does not
mean that the movement has conquered all it wanted to conquer. There is a
series of tools that culture has not yet been able to incorporate. For
instance, today there are 130 community banks in Brazil, alongside
community rotating funds as well as solidary lines of microcredit. We still
have a lot to learn about the solidarity economy, and we need to inspire
ourselves regarding the tools and social technologies that the solidarity
economy has.
In 2009, another important milestone was the Economia Viva [Living
Economy] edict, which was a specific action of the Living Culture
program and related to economic issues. The Economia Viva program
rewarded some initiatives, one of which mentioned here, the Solano
Trindade collective, won the first edict of a Point of Culture. The
collective never won anything else, but its members continue to work with
the solidarity economy. Theirs is an example of an enterprise that sees
itself as an enterprise and articulates itself as an enterprise while
participating in networks. Of course, all of us have experiences to report,
and now there are people thinking about the experiences while trying to
document and share them.

The Economy of Culture

In the Ministry of Culture we do not refer to solidarity economy; rather,
we call it the economy of culture. This prevents us from fighting among
ourselves, and enables us to see the complexity of the cultural world under
an economic perspective. Ladislau Dowbor already spoke about this, but I
am going to give this same example: five percent of the value of an iPhone
is labour, the rest is intellectual property. So, the economy of culture,
including creative economy, includes the solidarity economy, as well as
the economy of feasts, the economy of carnival, and the economy of
tourism.
We need to mention that, within the economy of tourism, there exists
the economy of community base which also generates economic gains. I
usually repeat this refrain because, since I come from the culture field and
have worked with culture for many years, I feel it is my obligation to
speak a little bit about the economy. If we do not discuss what kind of
economy we want or what kind of economy of culture we want, rest
assured that someone else will make the choice for us. The person who is
 Georgia Haddad Nicolau 87

proposing a Projeto de Lei [Law Project] of creative economy in the city

of São Paulo is Andrea Matarazzo because he sees the potential for
creative economy in the city of São Paulo. What can we do? We must
discuss the project. What kind of project is this? Does it reflect São
Paulo’s cultural wealth? Am I included? Because, if we do not take part in
this debate, somebody else will do it for us.
It is important to add that, despite some discontinuities, many people
are concerned about our legacy and memory. And we need to be
remembered. I believe that debates are good as a space and opportunity for
ideas to circulate, and for conversations to continue. The time is ripe for us
to gather together.
We are in a tough fight for our values. I don’t know if you saw the vote
for changing the age of criminal responsibility. Young people invaded
Congress and prevented it. This is very important, because although so
many people speak about the problems with the executive branch, most
forget that we must also “keep an eye” on the legislative branch. There are
many laws being approved, so we must continue this debate so we can
fight against a regression that would remove the rights and benefits
already conquered.

Notes
1
“Lula” is the nickname of President Luiz Ignacio Lula, who stayed in power from
2003 to 2011.
2
The singer, songwriter, and guitarist Gilberto Gil was Minister of Culture from
January 1, 2003 to July 30, 2008, under President Lula. The sociologist Juca
Ferreira was Minister of Culture from July 30, 2008 until the end of the Lula
Government in 2010. Ferreira was Minister of Culture again from January 2015
until May 2016 under President Dilma Rousseff.
3
The book consists of essays, interviews, and speeches delivered during the period
that Gilberto Gil and Juca Ferreira were ministers of culture.
4
Bienal is the brainchild of Italian Brazilian industrialist Ciccillo Matarazzo, who
started it in 1951 to showcase Brazilian art. As the name indicates, bienal happens
every other year. Nowadays, Bienal is a Foundation located in the Parque
Ibirapuera in São Paulo. The foundation’s internet site reads, “Biennial’s initial
aims are to make contemporary art known in Brazil, push the country’s access to
the art scene in other metropolises and further establish São Paulo as an
international art centre. Biennial serves to bring Brazilian art closer to an
international audience, and vice-versa. The international exhibitions are held under
the direction of rotating chief curators.” For more details, see
http://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/sao-paolo-biennialv.
 3.3 CULTURAL RIGHTS AND CITIZENSHIP

GIL MARÇAL

This is the first time I come to this university, and I am very impressed to
see a place full of young people, a beautiful campus, and this auditorium.
It is great that we have a public federal university with this quality. But the
challenge today is to talk a little bit about the solidarity economy and
cultural citizenship. I currently work in the Municipal Secretary of
Culture, but I am soon going to the Regional Representation of the
Ministry of Culture here in São Paulo.

We Need a Better Understanding

of the Economy of Culture
We still have a lot to learn about the economy of culture. This subject is
still in its embryonic stage and requires a lot of discussion, research, and
clarifications before we can figure out the path we have to follow in order
to create a really effective economy of culture. The scene has changed a
lot in recent years, and several public policies, which did not exist before,
were launched in this period. Today we have national prizes, as well as
state and municipal programs.
The phenomenon of funk can be a good starting point for the study and
better understanding of the possibilities of the economy of culture.
Millions of reals are involved in the practice of funk in an absolutely new
form, and we do not know this format. It occurs in the form of the sale of
tickets to shows, food, drinks, and even the production of CDs.
A large number of young artists survive from these proceeds, and some
are doing so quite well. Some of them play two or three times on the same
night, and get paid two to three thousand reals each show—and this is a
small amount. However, if an artist does twenty shows, at the end of the
month they have generated a considerable amount of money and involved
many people in their work. I do not quite understand this economy, but I
think it may be a very interesting research subject. I believe that funk is
now a fixed form, and belongs to the mass economy. The “young folks”
go the shows to see funk; they pay two, three, or even five reals—that is,
 Gil Marçal 89

very affordable prices that allow for the participation of a large number of
young people who usually have little resources to access other cultural
goods.
There is a very interesting scene taking place mainly in São Paulo—the
literature of the periphery, which has several groups, collectives, and poets
producing books and promoting their distribution in saraus that take place
in social organizations, libraries, and frequently in bars. This process of
distribution and sale is sometimes stronger than what the established
publishers who have been in the market for many years can command. In a
sarau, the human relationship between author and the public is direct.
Some authors publish their work and sell thirty to forty books in one single
night. The literature produced and sold using this method is already very
extensive. These are paths, new threads that are taking place and forming a
new paradigm of economic production.
We still do not have the answer to artists’ existential questions: “How
can I make a living from art? How can I live from art while producing art?
How can I pay my bills with my art?”

Access and Experience as Dimensions of Cultural

Citizenship
There are two important aspects of citizenship and cultural rights. One is
the issue of access; that is, the access available to any person. When we
get to this point, we will have guaranteed the universalization of cultural
rights. This will mean that I have the right to artistic appreciation. I have
the right to go see a play, a movie, an opera, or a hip-hop show. When I
have all these rights I can say that I have the possibility to live and
appreciate art. A second fundamental step is that, if I am interested, I have
the possibility to experiment with all these things and many other forms of
art. It does not necessarily mean that I have the intention of being an artist,
but at least I have the possibility to experience all forms of art. I can have
the experience of theatre, of dancing, of composing music and, at the same
time, I can be a mechanic, or a taxi driver, or any other type of profession.
I defend culture as a right, as a form of participation. I also understand
that this idea will only be universal when it is as strong in people as the
right to health, education, and safety. Only when culture reaches this status
will it be possible to consolidate a cultural citizenship.
Without access and experimentation, we will not reach citizenship or
full cultural rights. And we are speaking about something human, because
since the beginning of humanity the references we have of the existence of
a human society is cultural, such as cave paintings and crafts, as well as
90 3.3 Cultural Rights and Citizenship

holding hands and dancing in a circle. So, before anything else, these are
our first historic references of society. And from these we have the
references to architecture, fine arts, socialization, and so on.

Culture as a Social Construction

Culture comes weighed down with intentionality and freedom. Art has the
need to serve as a mirror for the audience. It is important to see ourselves
in art, and once this happens art will influence our lives!
It is extremely important for us to be able to understand the social
relations that are being woven in the daily life of the population, the forms
of conviviality in the cultures we promote, the cultural flags, and the acts
that we discuss and divulge. I need to give the example of an awful
situation that is taking place in the south zone of São Paulo, principally in
some public schools in Grajaú and Parelheiros, called the “Top 10.”
The “Top 10” is an old game, but at the present time it has changed
due to the influence of social media. In this case, the list is of girls who are
called “sluts” in school. These lists are spreading through electronic means
and apps like WhatsApp. Of course, there is also a boys’ list. However, in
the boys’ case, the young men who appear on the list are proud to do so
because that means they are icons of masculinity. The opposite happens to
the girls. Some young women who appear on the list attempt suicide, some
leave school, and others do not want to leave their houses. The difference
in the treatment between the two genders is not new, but the point I want
to stress is that many of these women engaged in sexual acts were inspired
by songs that stimulate sexuality. If, on the one hand, art has this
characteristic related to the freedom of expression, the moral culture
intervenes as a judge of behaviour. As long as society does not agree to
discuss sexuality, gender and machismo, we will have unhappy cases like
this one. And yes, we must also include in the discussion the way the
teachers deal with their students, or the parents deal with their children,
and vice-versa.
Another emblematic example happened some time ago when I was
walking up a street in a neighbourhood at night and I saw that a young
man was coming down the same street. It was dark, and I started feeling
afraid. I started walking faster. When I crossed paths with the other man I
noticed that he was afraid of me. We were two black men, one going up
and one going down the street, one afraid of the other. This is culture. This
is the culture of fear. Society has conditioned us to be afraid of black
people. We cannot discuss culture without discussing this ingrained fear.
 Gil Marçal 91

It is “superficial” to understand art as a mere tool of social transformation

—I believe that practices that focus on this objective end up in racism,
Nazism, and other extremist forms of cultural patterns. The contrary
situation occurs when art springs up in a spontaneous and natural form
related, observed, and articulated with its context, and generating
movements like Tropilália, 1 Manguebeat,2 peripheral literature, and others.
In São Paulo currently, the greatest struggle is between the “automobile
culture” and the “culture of collective transportation.” The government of
the city fills the city with bicycle lanes and the population finds this
strange, because it is not used to this idea. This is also an interference in
the culture. Culture is related to our daily lives. Through the contradictions
revealed by cultural processes, we can start a process of reflection with an
idea or a context that presents itself.

Cultural Policies and Popular Participation

The Municipal Secretary of Culture of São Paulo develops programs that
are related to cultural citizenship. Hamilton Faria, who is here today,
collaborated in the creation of the VAI program, originally a policy of the
city of São Paulo that ended up becoming a reference for the whole
country.
When VAI was created thirteen years ago, one of the principal issues
was how we could give money directly to young people without any
intermediaries, without an NGO, without a managing system that could
guarantee that the money would be well spent. And, to our surprise, as the
years went by we realized that, for these young people, spending these
resources in a responsible way was the most important aspect. They
understood that this was a public resource, that it was necessary to keep
careful records and to account for each penny spent, and that it was
necessary to give the results of their work back to their community and
their territory.
Another experience is the Points of Culture, because it is an exemplary
policy and I find that the relationship between the Points of Culture and
VAI is very interesting. They are policies that appeared in the beginning of
the year 2000, both connected and both receptive to a diversity of
languages or cultural themes. They both encompass weekly or monthly
projects of theatre, hip-hop, peace culture, gender discussions, culture and
housing discussions, among other things.
When the government recognizes that the organized civil society
knows what is important for its territory and context, the impact of cultural
actions tends to be stronger. It is not the edicts that determine the action,
92 3.3 Cultural Rights and Citizenship

since the edicts are general enough to be able to accommodate the

diversity of the possible projects. If the community becomes involved and
thinks that the best place for a presentation is the corner of a street, an
alley in a favela, or an abandoned building that can undergo an artistic
occupation, all of these actions will be an improvement in the practice of
cultural policies.
I defend the cultural programs that understand the population and the
groups as partners performing actions in a cooperative form. This
situation, as we have seen, is different from the one represented by the
distant state, by functionaries within offices thinking mostly about elitist
policies that do not satisfy the needs and desires of the population.

Art beyond the Fine Arts

We are in 2015, and we have a very strong contemporary cultural scene
happening in different forms. The advent of the internet, the artistic
processes that young people recognize as theirs, or even the traditional
cultures—all of these things combined have radically changed everything.
It is a constant struggle to lead the programmers and curators to
understand art beyond the fine arts. No matter how impeccable and
wonderful a show of urban dances may be for many programmers and
curators, that specific dance is not something that can take place on a stage
traditionally occupied by the Fine Arts.
We are still tied to extremely old concepts and, with them, we miss the
opportunity of participating in the more dynamic and richer processes that
are happening today. I can single out the Serviço Social do Comércio
[Social Service of Commerce] (SESC) and the Instituto Itaú Cultural,
which have been able to make their programs more daring and closer to
the groups in the periphery, or the so-called “marginal” art. It is necessary
to give examples of other institutions to convince everyone that the
Batuque de Umbigada is an extremely cool event that gathers people and
involves not just the participating artists but also the public, who are
invited to participate and dance together with the artists.
So, there has got to be a change of attitude in our programmers and
producers in the process of financing cultural events through laws of
incentive to the arts, as well as in the heads of businesspeople. São Paulo
and Rio de Janeiro are the two states that benefit the most from tax
deductions for incentives to the arts. In the meantime, there is a whole
other portion of Brazil which is so rich in culture, but which this financial
benefit never reaches.
 Gil Marçal 93

As long as we do not create a mechanism that enables a more just and

balanced distribution in the area of culture we will not be able to surpass
the frontiers that understand art as an aristocratic endeavour or stop
considering the population as merely consumers of art. This is the reality
that I have tried to observe and the thoughts that I have tried to develop
through this. I hope I have contributed my small part to this debate.

Notes
1
Tropicália is a movement that proves that everything that was old can be new
again. Inspired by the Brazilian Antropofagista movement of the 1920s, Tropicália
covers a wide range of artistic expression, but perhaps the most well-known is the
musical aspect. Because Tropicália was created in the early 1960s, most of its
initial work expressed opposition to Brazilian ruling military dictators. Some of the
participants of the early Tropicália movement went on to become cultural icons in
Brazil. Among them there are Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Torquato
Neto, and the group Os Mutantes.
2
Manguebeat (mangrove beat) is a more recent countercultural movement. It
started in the 1990s in the capital of the state of Pernambuco, Recife. Combining
regional rhythms such as maracatu with rock, electronic music, funk, and hip-hop,
the main focus of the lyrics of Manguebeat music is the social situation of the poor
people of the region. Writ large, it is also a strong criticism of the fact that, in
Brazil, financial resources are concentrated in Rio and São Paulo, whereas the
“periphery”—that is, the rest of the country—languishes. This criticism is nothing
new in Brazil, and its roots go far back in the history of the country.
 3.4 PLENARY DEBATES

Questions
(1) Question for Osvaldo Oliveira Neto: there is some difficulty in
thinking about culture and its public policies from the anthropological
point of view. Instead, we still think about these issues through the
sociological point of view; that is, we think about culture only as art.
Sometimes, only the demands of the groups that “do” culture are taken
into consideration, but very little attention is paid to those who
consume culture. How can we overcome this difficulty? Is there any
synchrony between municipal policies and those of the Ministry of
Culture?
(2) Question for Gil Marçal: the area of culture is one of those which
suffers the most from lack of budget. What is the autonomy of the
cultural policies such as VAI and the Points of Culture? How are these
policies articulated? Do they follow guidelines from Cultura Viva,
something like empowerment, autonomy and activism, and do these
guidelines result in a renewed connection with the civil society?
(3) Question for Georgia Haddad Nicolau: I would like you to speak about
projects for the construction of instruments to think about culture
involving the civil society’s participation, and including the Municipal
Culture System and the Municipal Culture Plan. The participation of
the civil society is particularly important in this case, since most people
still see art as something that does not affect their lives as much as
health and education do. Society’s demands, as well as the dialogue
among the collectives, do not appear in the area of culture. Is it
possible to create an Incubator of Creative Economy and a partnership
with the Federal University of ABC? Do you know if there is an
attempt to create regional systems to reflect upon culture?

Answers
Osvaldo Oliveira Neto

There is lack of qualified personnel for the implanting of cultural policies;

in the Secretary of Culture of São Bernardo do Campo we are trying to
 Chapter Three 95

train people and promote an exchange of ideas. Another problem is that

some groups have conflicting interests and there are shocks among
different kinds of thinking. One example is the case of the Escolas de
Samba de São Bernardo [São Bernardo’s Samba Schools], which have a
high demand for resources. One of the ways to solve these conflicts is
through social participation. In São Bernardo, we have had two
conferences about Sports and Culture, besides discussions that occur in the
Orçamento Participativo [Participatory Budget] every year. In these
discussions, we keep a record of all residents who participate, so no one
can say we only pay attention to the opinions of those in the cultural
collectives. These discussions are part of the steps to grow and develop the
Secretary of Culture, which is in its first stages and will only reach the
desired level with a lot of work, meetings, and discussions.
Regarding the culture mentality, as far as the Ministry of Culture is
concerned we consider São Bernardo do Campo a portfolio for the
ministry, because the first Agente de Leitura [Reading Agent] project was
done here, besides other initiatives such as those connected to the
historical heritage and creation of film clubs.1 The city of São Bernardo
trained three hundred and fifty health agents and one reading agent, and
this is something we consider extremely important because all these agents
have direct contact with the population, thus enabling a direct
communication with the residents.
Speaking about financing, I have some questions myself: where is the
budget for culture in the Secretary of Social Development? Because it is a
point of connection among several secretaries, Culture and its budget
cannot be the sole responsibility of the Secretary of Culture. For instance,
in the Unidades Básicas de Saúde [Basic Health Units] of São Bernardo
there is a discussion about the cultural use of the Community Rooms, and
that can increase to thirty-four the number of such spaces that can be used
for cultural activities. All these activities encompass aspects that the logic
surrounding the official edicts cannot fully comprehend, because there is
no edict specifically destined to support production, circulation, or
training. This is a discussion that is taking place so we can create the Plano
Municipal de Cultura [Municipal Culture Plan].

Gil Marçal

I am very happy to hear that there is going to be a VAI in Santo André. I

want to use this opportunity to say that I want to be of assistance for
whatever is necessary, because I have already collaborated with the city of
96 3.4 Plenary Debates

São Bernardo using the tools we had in São Paulo and the documents that
came out of the mayor’s office, among other things.
Starting with the situation of culture in São Paulo, in 2015 we have
more than seven thousand artists’ applications to the twenty-four hour
festival, Virada Cultural, and, on average, eight hundred attractions will be
hired. In other words, the number of artists who want to participate is
higher than the number of spots available, due in part to budgetary
constraints. The idea of the Virada Cultural this year is to depart from the
model of concentration in the bigger and central spots and to privilege
popular culture and street events, and appropriate the idea of Virada in
relation to the occupation of the public space in order to transform it into a
meeting space, a space of influence and artistic appreciation, rather than
focusing on big international groups.
In addition, several discussions are taking place in São Paulo—
especially in the Mário de Andrade Library—about the Municipal Book,
Reading and Literature Plan, among other things. In these meetings, the
people from the saraus are very vocal about the need to include the word
“sarau” in the plan, thus recognizing the legitimacy of this form of literary
expression. As far as the funding goes, the city budgeted 550 million reals
for 2015, that is about 1.7 percent of the regular municipal budget. The
city foresees that this percentage will grow to two percent at the end of the
current government. Due to the current budgetary restriction, this budget
will be cut by 150 million reals, so we will only have four hundred
million. A great part of this budget pays for services and the maintenance
and safety of the culture equipment. Currently, we spend more on the
maintenance of our equipment than on culture itself. In spite of this
budgetary reduction, we are guaranteeing that our events will take place.
We guarantee VAI, the Pontos de Cultura, the Virada Cultural, the São
Paulo on the Street, and so on.
Throughout the years, we have been able to create an articulation
among the promotion programs of the Secretary around the theme of
Cultural Citizenship, thus enabling the groups to meet and become
acquainted with one another so they can share ideas and experiences.
Thank you for the invitation. It was a great pleasure to be here with you
today.

Georgia Haddad Nicolau

Speaking about the incubator, we know that 2015 is not a year of plenty,
but the idea of an incubator in the ABC region can be discussed, not
necessarily with the university, because sometimes the Ministry of Culture
 Chapter Three 97

partners with the state and not necessarily with the cities or with the
federal universities. Therefore, we can talk about and study a working
plan, as well as think about how to obtain resources for the incubator.
Actually, what I most want to do is express my gratitude. I am very
happy to see that there are so many people engaged in the discussion. As
we heard before, there are few people willing to face the difficulties, and
we also need people with technical knowledge. The career in the public
sector, at least in the area of culture, is not well paid. We also do not have
enough people to do everything that needs to be done. As a result, all of us
work to the limits of our strength. I would also like to meet more women
working in politics. Most times, when I participate in a gathering like this,
I am the only woman participating at the discussion table. I believe that
this situation began changing a short time ago, but we still have a lot to do.
However, the most important thing is that these changes generate a
collective construction, independently from the place where things happen.
So, I congratulate the Instituto Pólis and the Universidade Federal do ABC
for the important role that the third sector and the university plan in this
process of change. I also congratulate all the cultural initiatives that were
represented here today. I hope to see you all next time in Brasília!

Note
1
The Reading Agent project selects usually young people from a town or a
neighbourhood to visit houses in the community and encourage the habit of
reading books. In the State of Rio de Janeiro, for instance, the Reading Agent is
issued a bicycle and has the responsibility to care for one hundred books. Almost
every state has such agents, who receive training and a small salary.
 3.5 CRITICAL READINGS:
PERSPECTIVES FOR THE GREAT ABC REGION

ANDERSON SIMÕES COSTA

AND LARA RODRIGUES ALVES

When the Federal Constitution of 1988 instituted the tripartite model of

federalism, it provided a great challenge to the management of public
policies (Brasil 1988). The federative units have administrative and fiscal
autonomy, and this presupposes the distribution of competences. The
union is in charge of the “subjects of general interest,” the states take care
of “regional interests,” and the municipalities take care of “local issues.”
In the area of culture, as well as in others, there is the need for
complementarity among the different policy levels. The testimonials and
discussions that happened in this event at UFABC make it evident that
doing culture at the local level is important, and that the establishment of
partnerships and networks makes it possible for them to promote their
events and activities beyond the frontiers of their cities. In the basis of
these partnerships there are principles of the solidarity economy, such as
cooperation, self-management, and involvement with the community.
The reduction of the presence of the Brazilian state in the field of
cultural practices due to the predominance of neoliberal ideas in public
management at the end of the twentieth century led the area of culture
away from being an organic and integrative perspective that could develop
itself. This situation, which was informed by the market and centred on the
cultural industry and incentive laws, was altered in 2003 with the adoption
of public policies privileging the local efforts and creation of networks
when Giberto Gil was the Minister of Culture (Rubim 2011).
In the new model, culture came to be considered a vector of economic
growth and social inclusion, as well as every person’s fundamental right.
The importance of the state in the public management of culture was
reaffirmed, and its role better defined. In this model, the state provided the
planning and promotion of cultural activities and at the same time
respected the creative processes and appreciated the participation of
society, and therefore everyone had ample access to cultural goods and
 Anderson Simões Costa and Lara Rodrigues Alves 99

services. In addition, there was the consolidation of the role of the state in
the establishment of regulatory milestones for the economy of culture and
the preservation and appreciation of the material or immaterial cultural
heritage, taking into consideration public interest and respect to diversity
(Brasil 2011). The idea for a system of the cultural area was born in this
environment.
The Sistema Nacional de Cultura [National Culture System] (SNC)
was proposed in 2005 and instituted in 2012, although it has still not been
completely implemented. The SNC is a model of the management and
joint promotion of public policies that entails an organized action among
the federative entities, with special emphasis on the municipalities. The
SNC establishes as a priority goal to reach at least sixty percent of the
municipalities, which should adopt a Municipal Culture Plan. The main
mission of the SNC is to establish an inter-governmental coordination in
order to better use the public resources. Some of the system’s principles—
autonomy, cooperation, democratization, and transparency—are identified
with the solidarity economy.
Following SNC guidelines, the purpose of the Municipal Culture Plan
(PMC) is to reflect the wishes of the city for ten years through
participative planning, thus putting into practice a decentralized
management of cultural policies. The PMC allows for the joint creation of
strategies involving both the government and the civil society, especially
artists and producers, ensuring that democracy, cultural diversity, and
public interest are respected. The Municipal Culture Plan also makes it
possible for the cultural policies to be considered in their own context
while evaluating the local historic process. In the case of the ABC region,
the historical process is intimately connected with accelerated
industrialization, which Isaura Botelho (2001) considers crucial.
About cultural policy, Botelho adds:

if it is possible to maintain that culture, under an anthropological point of

view, is an expression of the relations that every individual establishes with
his/her closest universe; in terms of public policy, culture’s own nature
requests a privileging of the action in a city or in the municipal level. (75)

The municipality is the administrative organ closest to the cultural

creation, and it is also the most susceptible to the population’s demands
and pressures. And yet, support from the federal and state level is
important, because the municipal policies must be based on ideas and
guidelines coming from these other two higher levels of government.
100 3.5 Critical Readings

Working with Local Culture, and the Solidary Economy

of Culture
The plural and participative construction of cultural policies obeys the
principles of solidarity economy, especially the principles of cooperation,
solidarity, and commitment to the community. According to Paul Singer
(2002), the solidarity economy—which has other pillars such as self-
management, economic activity, and commitment to the defence of the
environment—is clearly opposed to the individualist spirit and competitiveness
of the capitalist system. When applied to culture, solidarity culture means
being able to form a chain of production and cultural enjoyment which is
alternative to the cultural industry formed and maintained by large
corporations geared towards the market.
In addition, the solidarity economy of culture can “dialogue with local
residents, with the territorial styles, and with the diverse ways of knowing.”
Culture “can also promote conscious consumption, enable the distribution of
resources, and help discard the logic of production/exploitation” (Gabriela
Stanghero Lotta 2009, 7). Because it is deeply connected to the local ways
of being and doing, the solidarity economy of culture is already
remembered, although in very incipient and timid forms, in the municipal
culture plans of the region.

The Solidarity Economy in the Municipal Culture Plans

in the ABC region
In the ABC region, two municipalities already have their own completely
designed Municipal Culture Plan (PMC). Diadema and São Caetano do
Sul established their plans in 2012 and 2013 respectively through
participative processes that characterize themselves through the
“empowering” of the civil society and the strengthening of democracy.1 In
spite of these efforts there are questions, such as: can the ongoing PMCs
embrace and encourage cultural movements organized according to the
principles of the solidarity economy? Were the groups organized in a
solidary form heard in the consultations that took place in the process of
creating the PMCs? Are the cultural groups organized in this form strong
enough to defend their interests when dealing with the government? Is the
solidarity economy also taken into account in the cultural events of the
cities? Are there resources earmarked for this policy? Is this policy part of
a broader public debate as a relevant aspect of the solidarity economy of
the country?
 Anderson Simões Costa and Lara Rodrigues Alves 101

Although it explicitly quotes the development of the Economy of

Culture as a general objective, the PMC of São Caetano do Sul (2013)
does not mention the solidarity economy. The encouragement of the
artistic/cultural creation and production, the incentive to the distribution
and circulation of these goods and services, as well as the increase of the
productive chains are listed in the specific objectives of the PMCs.
Furthermore, as one of its goals is to reach the development of the
Economy of Culture, the PMC establishes a joint effort with the Municipal
University to create a cultural incubator in order to enable the
professionalization of producers, associations, and artistic groups, and to
train managers.
The absence of any mention of the solidarity economy is indirectly
related to the low expression of cooperative and self-managing movements
in the municipality which, according to the 2010 data from the United
Nations Development Program (PNUD), presents the best indices of the
human development of the country. On the other hand, the solidarity
economy of culture has not been conceptually taken into account enough
as a way to make possible the leverage of experiences articulated with the
processes of the cultural economy (PNUD 2013).
Diadema has a very different situation. The city has a public centre
dedicated to the solidarity economy which was opened at the end of 2014.
Its mission is to stimulate solidarity enterprises and, at the same time, be a
space dedicated to education as well as the discussion of technical and
political articulations aimed at strengthening cooperative forms of
production and distribution. The creation of the centre through the Law n.
081/2014 added to other initiatives already existing in the area, such as the
Public Incubator of the Solidarity Economy in the municipality, which
houses dozens of enterprises, and the theme of solidarity action discussed
in classrooms in municipal schools.
This tradition is made clear in the Municipal Culture Plan of Diadema,
which mentions the solidarity economy directly when dealing with the
Program for Artistic and Cultural Training:

Training for Cultural Producers: divided into modules that can be taken
separately. The training includes the development of projects, financing
mechanisms, fundraising strategies, the solidarity economy, and the
economy of culture (until December 2012, annual program). (Diadema
2012, 10)

By treating the solidarity economy as a topic of training for cultural

producers, the Municipal Culture Plan of the city of Diadema addresses
the topic as an educational issue, thus showing it to be an alternative to
102 3.5 Critical Readings

capitalist production. The chapter “Sustainability and Strengthening of

Cultural Production” also adds the possibility of the “creation of a Law
similar to the Living Culture Program, through public debate.”2 Such a
reference corroborates Luana Vilutis’s opinion (2011) that the solidarity
economy runs across the Living Culture Program, and that both have
common objectives.
The city of Santo André has in turn been creating its Municipal Culture
Plan since April 2015. Resulting from debates that took place in the
thematic and territorial meetings, the text of the Culture Plan showcases
the importance of the people’s participation, and it was open to
contribution from all citizens through the municipal conferences or
electronic means made possible by the Digital PMC (Santo André 2015).
The progressive increase of the resources of the Secretary of Culture, the
implementation of a free pass, and the creation of a self-managed “Galpão
Cultural” are specific details of Santo André’s PMC, which also defends
the solidarity economy as a strategy to develop the economy of culture
through an Incubator of Cultural Enterprises.3
In addition to important cultural spaces such as the Municipal Theatre,
the Casa do Olhar,4 the Casa da Palavra,5 the Escola Livre de Teatro,6 the
Escola Livre de Cinema e Vídeo,7 and the Centro de Dança [Dance
Centre],8 Santo André also has a Centro Público de Economia Solidária
[Public Centre of Solidarity Economy] that offers training, specialization,
shows, and the sale of crafts made by the members of the Rede Andreense
de Economia Solidária [Santo André Network of Solidarity Economy].
In São Bernardo do Campo’s case, the collective creation of the
Municipal Culture Plan in 2015 brought together representatives of the
government and the civil society. The most varied demands for cultural
expressions—music, theatre, cinema, crafts, and capoeira, among others—
were registered through regional and territorial plenary sessions. Among
the main guidelines that appeared as a result of these debates are: digital
culture, the promotion of projects of local interest, the financing of the
cultural sector, and the participation of the civil society in decisions related
to the subject (São Bernardo do Campo 2015).
São Bernardo do Campo, a city that was the main stage for the
workers’ struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, also has a tradition of the
solidarity economy, which was developed with the experience of the self-
management of falimentares companies.9 The city is the headquarters of
the Central de Cooperativas e Empreendimentos Solidários (Unisol Brasil)
[Centre of Cooperatives and Solidarity Enterprises], and, in 2012, the
Unisol also started housing the Incubadora de Empreendimentos Solidários
(SBCSol) [Incubator of Solidarity Enterprises] of São Bernardo do Campo.
 Anderson Simões Costa and Lara Rodrigues Alves 103

In addition, there is also the Fórum Municipal de Economia Solidária

[Municipal Forum of Solidarity Economy], which gathers militants and
other interested persons in monthly meetings to discuss alternative
practices that the solidarity economy makes possible. The strength of the
solidarity economy in the municipality was a key factor determining that it
was one of the most important parts of the city’s Municipal Culture Plan.
There have not been meaningful movements in the other municipalities
of the ABC region towards the creation of the Municipal Culture Plans,
although all municipalities have several cultural groups organized
according to principles of solidarity culture.

Final Considerations
Although culture is not a central issue in the agendas of the cities of the
region, it is important to note the presence of solidarity cultural
movements, as well as an effort by the government in the democratization
of the access to culture and the “culture making” process through the
preparation of Municipal Culture Plans. However, when we consider the
subject through financial lenses—which determine which sides and
interests can express themselves—it is quite clear that culture participates
in a very modest way. In 2013, the expenses for culture in the municipalities
of the region was at most 1.04 percent, in Santo André’s case, and was
only 0.13 percent in the city of Mauá (Meu Município 2013).10 The lack of
resources for the area has two effects: on the one hand, it limits the
capacity of the government, especially in relation to the promotion of
activities; on the other, the lack of resources forces the cultural groups of
the region to seek other survival strategies, and that makes them more
autonomous.
The objective of a public cultural policy should be to promote
experience, and to deepen the relationship of the people with the arts and
culture in general beyond pure entertainment. From this perspective, the
public is not seen as a mere consumer; rather, it gains access to the
different cultural languages that, for Isaura Botelho (2007), can be
facilitated by the existence of multidisciplinary cultural equipment.
104 3.5 Critical Readings

Notes
1
About the establishment of the Municipal Culture Plan in the city of Diadema see
Araújo and Zin (2012). For more details about the process in São Caetano do Sul
see Azevedo (2013).
2
Plano Municipal de Cultura of Diadema 2012–21, according to determinations of
the Municipal Law n. 3.214, of April 2, 2012 (Diadema 2012, 11).
3
A Galpão Cultural is both a space and a philosophy. Sometimes, the Galpão can
start in the space of a school, or a club, or even in the social area of the city’s
administration. Many Brazilian cities already have their dedicated building for
their Galpão Cultural. The place is used for interested residents to both discuss
subjects related to the cultural events that they want to suggest, organize, and
support, or for performances by local (or regional) groups or individual artists.
4
The Casa do Olhar [Looking House] highlights the visual arts, and has more than
five hundred pieces of contemporary Brazilian art. It also promotes shows of
newer visual artists. The building is located on 414 Rua Campos Sales in Santo
André. The house itself is a historic building dating from 1920, and has been used
by different city organs since 1968. More information about the institution can be
found at http://www2.santoandre.sp.gov.br/index.php/faq/33-secretarias/cultura-
esporte-lazer-e-turismo/181-casa-do-olhar-luiz-sacilotto.
5
The Casa da Palavra [House of Words] focuses on literature, and the spoken arts
in general. Located on 171 Praça do Carmo, the institution is dedicated to “ao
conhecimento, ao pensamento que se produz pela linguagem, a palavra escrita ou
falada” [“the knowledge, the thought that is produced by language, the written or
spoken word”]. For more information about “Casa da Palavra” see
http://www2.santoandre.sp.gov.br/index.php/cidade-de-santo-andre/turismo/33-
secretarias/cultura-esporte-lazer-e-turismo/180-casa-da-palavra.
6
The Escola Livre de Teatro [Free Theatre School] of Santo André has existed for
the past twenty-seven years, always maintained by the city, and always dedicated
to the discussion of issues related to theatre and the training of theatre actors and a
variety of theatre personnel. The School has ten research centres, and different
courses and training programs are usually offered in the evening to allow working
students to participate. For more details about the school and the duration of
different courses see http://escolalivredeteatro.blogspot.com.
7
The internet site of the Escola Livre de Cinema e Vídeo [Free Cinema and Video
School] of Santo André says that it “propõe um curso livre e gratuito na área de
audiovisual, trabalhando com recursos digitais e com produção de baixo orçamento
buscando a vivência prática e artística desta linguagem” [“proposes a free course in
the audio-visual area, working with digital resources and with productions
requiring a low budget, always seeking a practical and artistic experience of this
language”]. See more about the school at
http://elcv.art.br/santoandre/a_escola.php.
8
Located at Rua Eduardo Monteiro 410, the Dance School of Santo André
supports the formation of dancers and artists, as well as a series of courses
dedicated to people older than twenty-five. In this case, the activities are offered
with the understanding that dance promotes health, “freedom of creation and of
 Anderson Simões Costa and Lara Rodrigues Alves 105

expression,” as well as “individuality and body knowledge.” See more about the
Dance School at http://www2.santoandre.sp.gov.br/index.php/conselho-tutelar/33-
secretarias/cultura-esporte-lazer-e-turismo/182-centro-de-danca.
9
From the 1980s to the current time, the ABC Region of São Paulo has gone
through a severe process of deindustrialization due to the closing of companies and
the transference of many industries to other parts of the country or even other
countries. As an alternative to closing, several of these companies were taken over
by the workers themselves, organized in cooperatives. This movement, which gave
the name of “empresas falimentares” to these companies managed by the workers,
was very important for the history of the solidarity economy in the region and the
whole country. Some of the companies made products that are household names in
Brazil, such as Cobertores Parahyba [Parahyba Blankets] and Wallig Fogões
[Wallig Stoves].
10
These figures were obtained through the Siconfi [National Treasury]. Because
the website for the National Treasury of Brazil is plagued by constant blackouts, it
is not placed here for reference.
 3.6 CRITICAL READINGS:
THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY
AND THE CONNECTIONS WITH CULTURAL
POLICIES

NEUSA SERRA AND SIMONE PELLIZON

The National Culture Plan (PNC) was created by Law n. 12.343 of

December 2, 2010, and the guidelines, strategies, and actions stipulated in
the law are to be followed until 2020 (Brasil 2010). The text makes clear
the importance of the solidarity economy as a path for the structuring of
the creation of culture in a sustainable form. The annex to chapter one
mentions the guidelines, strategies, and actions of the PNC:

To structure and regulate the economy of culture, building sustainable

models, stimulating the solidarity economy and formalizing productive
networks, increasing the labour market, generating income, promoting
regional balance, as well as the isonomy of competition among the agents,
principally in fields where culture interacts with the market, the production
and the distribution of goods and internationalized cultural contents.
(Brasil 2010)

The incorporation of the solidarity economy as a strategy for “doing

culture,” although present in the PNC, still encounters difficulty for its
consolidation due to the predominant vision of culture as something
separate from people’s daily life. In this vision, which privileges the great
spectacles, the population is seen as spectators not participants who can
actually “do art.” The conditions of incentive to culture, based on edicts
and fiscal incentives, even though they increase the access of the
population to cultural goods and services, are not capable of encouraging
experimentation, as Gil Marçal pointed out in his lecture. A program that
distinguishes itself for trying to break this barrier is Cultura Viva [Living
Culture], which tries to synthesize the three dimensions that guide the
PNC.
 Neusa Serra and Simone Pellizon 107

The three dimensions of culture

The tridimensional vision represented by the symbolic, civic, and

economic dimensions is highlighted in the recent effort to institutionalize
the cultural activity in Brazil. The Portal of the Ministry of Culture
presents these dimensions in the following way:

The symbolic dimension comprehends the aspect of culture that considers

that all human beings have the capacity to create symbols that are
expressed in different cultural practices such as language, mores, culinary,
clothing, beliefs, technologic and architectural creations, and also in the
artistic languages of theatre, music, visual arts, dance, literature, circus, etc.
The civic dimension considers the aspect in which culture is understood as
the citizen’s basic right.
Thus, it is necessary to guarantee that Brazilians participate more in the
cultural life, creating and having more access to books, dance shows,
theatre and the circus, shows of visual arts, national films, musical
presentations, expressions of popular culture, and museum collections,
among others.
The economic dimension involves the aspect of culture as an economic
vector. Culture as a place of innovation and expression of Brazilian
creativity is part of a new economic development scenario which is fair
and sustainable. (Brasil 2015)

The symbolic dimension relates to the new meanings of the cultural

symbols that are already present in society and that express society’s roots,
institutions, daily practices, lifestyles, and forms of development. The
bases that sustain the imaginary of a society are present in its symbolism,
cosmology, and forms of seeing the world. Therefore, valuing the debates
and initiatives around cultural citizenship, not only in artistic languages
but also in the different forms of expression, creates the context for the
agendas of a solidarity economy of culture, which need new forms of
interaction between the government and society.
The expansion of the debate about cultural citizenship, understood not
only as access but also as effective experimentation with cultural goods
and services, offers new horizons to the civic dimension. The right to
create—and not just to enjoy the existing culture, which may not be
embodied by representatives of our cultural diversity—is the founding
moment of cultural democracy. The strengthening of cultural diversity in
society and the stimulus to intercultural actions give new frontiers to the
civic dimension, as the PNC expresses it (PNC 2010). Additionally,
dialogues with other kinds of knowledge and dimensions are present not
only in the area of culture but also in the environment, health, urban
108 3.6 Critical Readings

design, education, and many other areas that need to be considered in the
process of creating a cultural citizenship.
The understanding of the cultural activity in its economic dimension
brings to the forefront issues related to the differences among the
processes of individual creation and their products, and the processes of
production called the “cultural industry” and its products. The cultural
industry, geared towards a much larger public, is inserted in the logic of
the market, guided by issues such as competition, cost, production volume,
and sale price. This industry, usually very lucrative, operates in the field of
the production and reproduction of audio-visual content, large spectacles,
theme parks, and entertainment in general. The cultural goods and services
produced outside this logic can belong to either the field of erudite
production, which usually has among its producers and users its own criteria
of evaluation and value, or the field of artistic and cultural production devoid
of its own sources of financial support, and therefore highly dependent on
help from the government and other external sources.1 The cultural
collectives of the region are inserted in this last group, and the movement of
the solidarity economy has affinities with them.
The Programs VAI I and II, the Community Culture Agent, and the
Young Cultural Monitors Program of the Municipal Secretary of Culture
of São Paulo are examples of public initiatives focusing on this last group.
In the region called Grande ABC, several governmental initiatives
privileging this part of the public, as well as artistic experimentation and
access to culture, deserve to be highlighted. In São Bernardo do Campo
there are five cultural poles which are public spaces for discussion and
cultural experiments. There is also the Centro de Referências de Culturas
Populares Tradicionais [Centre of References for Traditional Popular
Cultures] and the Centro Audio-visual [Audio Visual Centre] (CAV),
which offers free courses on cinema, television, and animation.
The city of Diadema recently opened the Solidarity Public Centre, an
addition to the already-existing Public Incubator of the Solidarity
Economy, and both represent an effort to strengthen this way of
production which reaches the cultural area. In Santo André there are some
examples of the same kind of effort: the creation of the self-managed
“galpão cultural,” the Public Centre of the Solidarity Economy for training
and qualification, and the show and sale of crafts produced by members of
the Rede Andreense de Economia Solidária [Santo André Solidarity
Economy Network].
 Neusa Serra and Simone Pellizon 109

The Solidarity Economy and the Living Culture Program

One example of public policy also geared towards the cultural producers
who do not benefit from fiscal incentives and who are dependent on public
support is the Living Culture Program, which was created in 2004 to
incorporate three dimensions of the National Culture Plan (PNC), and
which brings the solidarity economy to the centre of the cultural debate.
The connection between an economy based on culture and on
solidarity and self-management was clearly expressed in the choice of
community projects that can generate jobs and income, and that can
strengthen the symbolic contents. The document “Por dentro dos
programas—Programa Cultura Viva” [“Inside the Programs—the Living
Culture Program”] reads:

To be eligible to apply to the Program, the projects must function as an

instrument of recognition and articulation of actions that already exist in
the communities, thus contributing to social inclusion, the construction of
citizenship, and the promotion of diversity through the generation of jobs
and income or the strengthening of cultural identities. (Brasil 2015c)

The appreciation of already-existing artistic and cultural efforts in the

communities is vital for the deepening and consolidation of the different
cultural expressions. According to the document that structures the
program, “the Points of Culture are acute interventions in the depths of the
rural and urban Brazil in order to awaken, stimulate, and project
everything that is singular and more positive in the communities, in the
distant regions, in the quilombos, in the villages: the local culture” (Brasil
2005, 8). Hence, three dimensions are contemplated: (1) the symbolic
dimension represented by the cultural expressions of diversity, which then
obtain a space to manifest themselves; (2) the civic dimension, because
culture is a basic right, enunciated in the principle of autonomy, of
enabling each person to be the protagonist of their own history, and of
sharing in the self-management of the networks (these actions were
effectively implemented in the first years of the program); (3) the
economic dimension, through the recognition of artists and cultural groups
as potential agents of regional economic development. With such breadth,
the Points of Culture became important actors in the strengthening of the
means of enjoyment, production, and cultural information (Barros and
Ziviani 2007). With the amplification of its reach, the program will
establish a cooperation network including the federal and state
governments, as well as the municipalities and the intermunicipal
consortia through the National Culture System.
110 3.6 Critical Readings

Another aspect of the Living Culture Program connecting with the

solidarity economy is the privileging of vulnerable populations. Whereas
the projects of the solidarity economy mostly shelter the unemployed,
women, and the most vulnerable segment of the population in general, the
projects of the Living Culture Program are destined to the community
working with popular culture, traditional culture, or indigenous culture,
and who have a low recognition of their cultural identity, LGBT groups,
people with physical deficiencies or psychological difficulties, women,
children, young people, and the elderly. The Living Culture Program has
officially implemented 4,500 Points throughout Brazil, and the plan is to
implement 10,500 more until 2020. However, it is important to keep in
mind the discontinuities highlighted by Célio Turino de Miranda and Gil
Marçal that only around one thousand of the existing Points are active at
the moment.
In the vision of Georgia Haddad Nicolau—the representative of the
Ministry of Culture—the themes of culture and economics cannot be
treated separately. For her, the current Minister of Culture, Juca Ferreira,
reinforces this understanding when he calls attention to the need for data
collection, indicators, and methodologies that allow a more correct
evaluation of the role of culture in social and economic development.2 The
connections between the principles and practices of the solidarity economy
exemplified by the Living Culture Program can extend to many other
initiatives.

Final Considerations
The solidarity economy movement gave impetus to the creation of the
Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solidária [National Secretary of Solidarity
Economy] (SENAES) in 2003. The SENAES, which is connected to the
Labor Ministry, developed and put in practice a series of strategies for the
generation of work and income, among them micro credit, social banks,
production and consumption cooperatives, and exchange clubs. At the
same time, SENAES developed several management tools generated
through the principles of solidarity and democracy, which can be used to
administrate both large falimentares companies and small craft associations.
This movement, which was already gathering strength in Brazil in the
late twentieth century, gained more visibility after 2001 when the first
Worldwide Social Forum took place. Fernando Farias Valentin (2014)
writes:
 Neusa Serra and Simone Pellizon 111

Countering the hegemonic economic positions of the large capital,

crystallized by the Worldwide Economic Forum of Davos, the Worldwide
Social Forum started encompassing a large diversity of groups … mainly
interested in discussing the new models of economic development in a
more sustainable, less predatory and more egalitarian basis. (45)

In the commemoration of the ten years of the existence of the SENAES

in 2013, there were around twenty thousand solidarity economy
enterprises in the country, according to Valentin’s data collection from
2007–12. In A economia solidária no Brasil: a autogestão como resposta
ao desemprego [Solidarity Economy in Brazil: Self-management as an
Answer to Unemployment] (2003), Paul Israel Singer and André Ricardo
Souza write:

The solidarity economy appears as a form of production and distribution

alternative to capitalism; the solidarity economy was periodically created
by those who find themselves (or fear being) marginalized in the job
market. The solidarity economy unites the principle of unity between
possession and the use of the means of production, and distribution (of the
simple production of merchandize) with the principle of the socialization
of these (capitalist) means. (13)

The main characteristic of the solidary enterprises is self-management,

and that means that administration and control are democratically
exercised by the workers themselves.
In a cultural plan, the solidarity economy initiatives are well known in
culinary or crafting activities, for instance, but we are still taking the first
steps in the construction of conceptual and practical references for the
applications of this model to the artistic field. The cultural collectives have
been very liberal in their examples of how to establish partnerships,
support the involved communities, and form networks, both for their
economic and financial support and the expansion and strengthening of the
movements. On the other hand, according to their testimonies, several
groups have not even been able to articulate themselves in order to
formulate consistent proposals that follow the guidelines of the Ministry of
Culture or of possible local donors.
The paths travelled by the movement of the solidarity economy in its
search for institutionalization can be inspiring for the collectives that are
not identified with either the cultural industry or the authorial art market
that tends to be extremely expensive and excludes a large part of the
population. The articulation among the cultural groups acting in solidarity,
society, and the state can only happen in a context marked by the
strengthening of cultural citizenship. In relation to the government, as
112 3.6 Critical Readings

Célio Turino de Miranda points out, it is necessary to review the “culture

of procedures” that makes it difficult for the groups of the solidarity
economy to access the resources available to culture.

Notes
1
For a more detailed analysis of the value of cultural products see Serra and
Fernandes’s article “Economia criativa: da discussão do conceito à formulação de
políticas públicas” (2014).
2
Juca Ferreira was Culture Minister from January 1, 2015 to May 12, 2016.
 CHAPTER FOUR

UNIVERSITY AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

DANIEL PANSARELLI

The scenario of higher education in Brazil has gone through many

transformation in the last decades, as if the change to a new century also
marked a sensible, notable, and unique change in the educational field of
undergraduate and graduate studies. The history of this educational level is
very peculiar in our country. It started late, even when compared with
other Latin American nations. It started with isolated undergraduate
schools which needed a lot of time to become real universities. Both
models—isolated schools and universities—always served the elite of the
population in a restrictive form in such a way that, in the imaginary of the
common citizen, higher education has always been considered a right for
the few.
If, in the 1930s, the Manifesto dos pioneiros da educação nova
[Manifesto of the Pioneers of the New Education] defended a free and
universal university as a utopic objective in what we call the Elementary
Level, almost a century later a similar defence of a free higher education
would sound equally as utopic. This is so because the right to a free higher
education has not yet been assimilated by a great part of the Brazilian
population, mainly those with less financial resources.
The census data from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística
[Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] (IBGE) paint a picture of
this situation, enabling us to identify both the still elitist character of
higher education in Brazil and the moment of change we are currently
living. The 2000 census showed that only seven percent of young people
between eighteen and twenty-four—the age range considered appropriate
for higher education (no matter how debatable this notion may be)—were
actually studying in an institution of higher education. Not all of these
students graduated, according to the traditional attrition indices. That is,
throughout the twentieth century in which, although late, we saw the
consolidation of higher education in the country, only seven percent of the
114 Chapter Four

college population was studying in the isolated colleges and universities

(IBGE 2000). In the subsequent ten years, as the data collected in the
census of 2010 show, this number doubled to fourteen percent. In absolute
numbers, this amount represents more than double if we take into
consideration the population growth during the same period (IBGE 2010).
The data reveal an ambiguous scenario, perhaps reflecting this moment
of transformation. One the one hand, we can see the strong democratization of
the access to higher education in the first decade of the twenty-first
century, when the percentage of young people attending higher education
courses doubled. On the other hand, however, even with this fast change
of access to the highest level of learning, in 2010 eighty-six percent of the
young, college-aged people were deprived of the right to access either
public or private higher education.
Although this is not the objective of this reflection, in order not to omit
something important I must add a word about the advance of public higher
education in the same period of 2000 to 2010. Unlike what happened in
the last decades of the twentieth century, the beginning of the current
century represented a time in which the public higher education system
expanded. Ten new federal universities and dozens of new university
campuses were created, if we consider the reformulation and implementations
of the institutos federais de educação [federal institutes of education].
With this change, despite the meaningful growth of the institutions of
higher education during that period, we can finally witness a new
improvement in public higher education, something we have not seen in
decades. More importantly, this improvement had characteristics that have
been part of the sector of public education in the country, with several
kinds of innovations, among which I want to highlight two: the first is
pedagogical, caused by the fact that, in their structure and principles, some
of the new federal universities have opted for a rupture with the Brazilian
pedagogical tradition that was instated in the 1930s; the second is
geographic and is characterized by the university’s move towards the
interior of the country with the creation of university campuses or federal
institutes in several regions which had been devoid of other public
educational institutions of any kind. It is not rare that the campus is the
only place where the population can get care, acquire culture, and conduct
research in the region. In spite of all these efforts, the last census shows
that only fourteen percent of our college-age youth have access to higher
education (IBGE 2010).
From this brief reflection, I want to point out three developments that I
believe favour the dialogue among this new Brazilian university of the
twenty-first century, solidarity economy of culture, and cultural citizenship.
 Daniel Pansarelli 115

The first of the developments relates to the social transformation which

the institution of the university is going through. It is time for the
university to find a new meaning. Concepts such as inclusion are now part
of the social content of other ideas more traditionally consolidated in the
Brazilian higher education, such as excellence. If the Brazilian public
universities have dedicated themselves to excellence, now the they
understand that excellence cannot be reached if the price is the exclusion
of an immense part of the population. The idea according to which
excellence without inclusion is not really excellence starts to permeate the
constitutive values of the new public universities and, through this means,
starts to affect the principle of the other, older, more traditional and
consolidated universities.
At the beginning of this century, the Brazilian university is finding new
meanings, building a new identity—a task which is not completely
finished—and, in this moment, the dialogue with more innovative,
generous, more inclusive forces of the economy can influence the face of
this university, which is still defining itself. Thus, a very promising
dialogue is emerging between the institution of the university—and not
just between one and another university—and all the apparatus that is
being developed in Brazil in recent decades about the solidarity economy
in general, and the solidarity economy of culture in particular. After all, is
the culture not exactly one of the most important constitutive elements of
the university life? This is the second aspect I want to point out.
For many decades, the university was a profoundly elitist institution
and did not need to take time to offer a cultural experience to its students.
As members of the national elites, those students naturally had an intense
cultural life, with international experiences and access to several cultural
manifestations, from the most sophisticated to those of mass culture.
However, this is no longer the scenario for the students in a Brazilian
university. Fortunately, the university now receives students who did not
previously have this opportunity. These are young people from poorer
parts of the city, and public schools of the most varied regions.
Furthermore, it is important to point out that these students are also
deprived of a broader cultural experience in the places they live and where
they studied previously.
Therefore, if one objective of the university is to offer a broader
formation to its students—in the sense that the old Greeks called Paideia
and that the contemporary Germans call Bildung—then it is the task of the
university to provide a cultural citizenship to all students in different
forms. I believe that this is one of the relevant roles that the contemporary
116 Chapter Four

Brazilian university has to fulfil in the process of social transformation

which our country is undergoing.
Finally, I want to highlight the role of the university itself as an agent
of social transformation. Through actions of extensão universitária,1 it is
many times up to the university to promote and offer cultural opportunities
to different communities, especially in the context of the new effort for the
university to reach the least well-served areas that I referred to previously.
There are conglomerates of small cities in which the university campus is
the only cultural centre available. It is worth repeating that eighty percent
of the college-age youngsters still do not attend university. In this
scenario, the activity of extensão universitária becomes the only and
indispensable form for reaching large parts of the population and, at the
same time, the extensão is a privileged vehicle enabling the circulation of
diverse cultural forms, which can then reach the previously excluded
population. More than that, the extensão gives the university the
opportunity to have a more direct and organic contact with the different
cultural forms practiced in the surrounding communities which in turn can
and should influence the university’s development plans, not just in the
pedagogic projects but also in the institutional identity of the university.
Here, through an example of extensão universitária, the dialogue among
university, cultural citizenship, and the solidarity economy is opportune
and capable of boosting the social transformation happening in Brazil.

Note
1
Extensão universitária [university extension] is a concept that is widely used by
the Brazilian university. It consists of offering courses that directly benefit the
community, sometimes the immediate community surrounding the physical space
of the institution. The nature and duration of the courses vary, but they are usually
offered on weekends or at night to enable the working population to attend.
 CONTRIBUTORS

Lara Rodrigues Alves is an undergraduate student in the Program of

Economics of the Federal University of ABC.

Baby Amorin is a producer and coordinator of projects of Ilú-Obá de Min

since the creation of the group in 2004.

Eva Paulino Bueno is professor of Spanish and Portuguese at St. Mary’s

University, San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of nine other books on
subjects ranging from Brazilian and Latin American literature, women’s
literature, popular culture, and Brazilian cinema.

Anderson Simões Costa is a student in the master’s program of Human

and Social Sciences of the Federal University of ABC.

Hélio Costa is a circus art educator and has been the president of the NGO
Pró-Circo since 2009.

Ladislau Dowbor is a doctor in economics, a professor of the graduate

school at the Catholic University in São Paulo, a former UN counsellor,
and a current counsellor for the Instituto Pólis and the council of the city
of São Paulo.

Fernanda Henrique Souza de Lima is a professional actor who graduated

from the Escola Livre de Teatro (ELT). She has been the financial director
of ARCA since 2006.

Hamilton Faria is a poet and a researcher. He has been the coordinator of

the Extension Project “Economia Solidária e Cidadania Cultural” of the
city of São Paulo. Faria has published eight books of poetry, starting with
Emoções (1983). His most recent book is Memória de Frutos (2012).

Renan Magalhães is a student of Public Relations of UFABC, and

volunteers with the Project of the Solidarity Economy of Culture and
Cultural Citizenship.
118 Contributors

Gil Marçal is the coordinator of cultural citizenship of the Municipal

Secretary of São Paulo.

Thiago Mariano is a student of Sciences and Humanities of UFABC and

the recipient of a scholarship from the Project of the Solidarity Economy
of Culture and Cultural Citizenship.

Aluízio Marino is a researcher and a cultural projects manager, as well as a

member of the network São Mateus em Movimento since 2012.

Célio Turino de Miranda is a historian and writer. He was secretary of

Cultural Citizenship of the Ministry of Culture (2004–10) and created the
Programa Cultura Viva [Living Culture Program].

Osvaldo de Oliveira Neto is the Secretary of Culture of São Bernardo do

Campo.

Georgia Haddad Nicolau is the director of the economics of culture at the

Secretary of Cultural Policies of the Ministry of Culture.

Daniel Pansarelli is a professor and current assistant rector for extension

and culture at the Federal University of ABC.

Silvia Helena Passarelli is a professor of both the undergraduate degree of

Territorial Planning and the graduate program of Planning and Territory
Management of UFABC.

Simone Pellizon has a master’s in Humanities and Social Sciences, and

works at the Federal University of the ABC. She is also part of the
Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship project.

Lenita Sena is an art teacher and has participated in the Ilú-Obá de Min
group since 2007.

Neusa Serra is a professor at UFABC, where her teaching concentrates on

public policies and sustainability. Serra coordinates the Solidarity
Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship project. She has published
several essays and book chapters on subjects including technology,
ecology and sustainability, creative economy, and public policies.
 The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship 119
in the ABC Region of São Paulo, Brazil

Rafael Silva is a public relations student of UFABC, as well as a recipient

of a scholarship from the Projeto Cartografia Cultural of ABC region.

Renata Silva is a public worker connected with the Universidade Federal

do ABC (UFABC), and a member of the collective since its founding.
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 INDEX

“Ação Educativa” 51 Banco Brasileiro de Descontos

Africa 11, 40 (Bradesco) 10
West Africa 9, Banco Comunitário União Sampaio
African migrations 24 72, 76
South Africa 17, 45 Barbacena (state of Minas Gerais)
African ethic of Ubuntu 40 36
Afro Block project 52, 58 Barros, José Márcio 109
Afro tourism 51 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting 13
Agência Solano Trindade 72, 86 Batuque de Umbigada 92
Agente Cultura Viva 85 Belém (state of Pará) 36
Agente de Leitura 95 bicycle lanes 91
alienating point of view 27 Bienal 85
Alves, Lara Rodrigues 98 Bildung 115
Amerindians 40 Bocaiúva, Cunca 15
Amorim, Baby 3, 51, 59 Bolivia 40, 42, 45
Apartheid 45 Botelho, Isaura 99, 103
Arab world 10, 11 Brant, Fernando 35
Aracaju (state of Sergipe) 36 Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Arranjo Produtivo Local (APL) 79- Statistics (IBGE) 113, 114
80 British Taxes Justice Network
art as labour 1, 48, 50, 79 (TJN) 11-2
Ashaninka 27, 41
Asia 11 Campinas (state of São Paulo) 22,
Associação Ribeirãopirense de 27
Cidadãos Artistas (ARCA) 48, Canada 16
49, 52, 53, 64, 65, 70 Canal Brasil 80
Atlas to Desenvolvimento Humano “Canto para minha terra” (song) 36
do Brasil 43 capoeira 55, 56
Audio-visual arts 72 Catalonia 23
Audio Visual Centre (CAV) 80, 108 Cariri region 83
audio-visual resources, the Casa do Olhar 102, 104
production of 62, 80, 104, 108 Casa da Palavra 102, 104
“automobile culture” 91 Casarão do Parque Chácara
Aymaras 10 Silvestre 79
Catarse (site) 57, 58, 62, 66
Bacelar, Tania 15 Cayman Islands 12
Bahia, state of 15 Ceará 3, 35, 37-8, 83
Baixo Centro (collective) 82 cell phone 18
 The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship 127
in the ABC Region of São Paulo, Brazil

Central de Cooperativas e Cultura e Cidadania ou Teia 73, 85-

Empreendimentos Solidários, 6
Unisol Brasil 102 “culture of collective transportation”
Centro de Dança 10, 91
Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas de Cultura pela Palavra 85
Administração Municipal Cultura Viva 42, 44, 57, 59, 65, 70-
(CEPAM) 15 1, 73, 85, 94, 106, 109
Centro de Referência de Culturas cultural poles 78-9, 108
Populares Tradicionais 79
Centro Público de Economia depression 40, 60
Solidária 102 Diadema (state of São Paulo) 50,
Chapada do Araripe (state of Ceará) 61, 100-1
35 Digital PMC 102
Chauí, Marilena 74 DocTV 73
Chiapas region 23 Dodd-Frank Law 13
China (country) 18, 19 Dowbor, Ladislau 8, 42
China Open Resources for drug cartels 45
Education (CORE) 18, see also
MIT and Open Course Ware the economy of culture 72, 74, 79,
Cidade Tiradentes (state of São 82, 84, 86, 88, 99, 101-102, 106
Paulo) 64 The Economist 12
Circomunidade Ponto de Cultura 53, “eco-socialism” 40
54, 60, 62 economic dimensions of culture 85,
circus art 3, 54, 78 107
circus collective 54 Economy of Time 43
Circus Festival of São Bernardo 54 Ecuador 40, 42
civic dimension of culture 74, 107, Elias, Norbert 34
109 entertainment industry 52
coal and oil groups 8 Equatorial Guinea 17
Coelho, Franklin 15 Erundina (Luiza Erundina de Sousa)
Coletivo de Consumo Rural e 15, 20
Urbano (CCRU) 50 Escola Livre de Cinema e Vídeo
collective financing 57, 60, 62, 65 102, 104
community banks 86 Escola Livre de Teatro 65, 102, 104
Companhia de Saneamento Básico Escolas de Samba de São Bernardo
de São Paulo (SABESP) 8, 22 95
Compromisso Cidadão 44 Espaço 50 71
Coordenadoria de Ações para a extensão universitária, cursos 116
Juventude (CAJUV) 54
Cooperativa Cultural da Periferia, Facebook 25, 38-9
COOPERIFA 68 falimentares companies 102, 105,
Costa, Anderson Simões 98 110
Costa, Hélio 3, 53, 60, 62 Faria, Hamilton 91
Crises e Oportunidades em Tempos Federaçao das Indústrias do Estado
de Mudança 20 de São Paulo (FIESP) 13
crowdfunding 57, 60 Federal Constitution of 1988 84, 98
128 Index

Ferreira, Juca 73, 85, 110 hip hop 63, 68, 72, 88, 91, 93
Fiscal incentives 75, 106, 109 Homeostasis 29
“fiscal safe havens” 11, 12 Homo Sapiens 8
Fisher, Tania 15
Fora do Eixo 71 identity and alterity 26, 28
Fortaleza (state of Ceará) 3, 36-8 identity of a black person 60
Fórum Municipal de Economia identity initiatives 73
Solidária 103 identity, the search of 23
Fourth Circus Festival of São identity of the university, the search
Bernardo do Campo 54 for 115-6
Franco da Rocha (state of São Ilú-Obá de Min 3, 51-3, 59, 60
Paulo) 37 Imposto sobre Circulação de
Frankfurt School 34 Mercadorias e Serviços (ICMS)
Freud, Sigmund 26 64
Fundação Casa Grande 35 inclusion versus excellence 115
Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV-SP) Incubator of Creative Economy 94,
15 96-7
Fundamentalism 25, 28 Incubator of Cultural Enterprises
funk (musical genre) 88, 93 102
fear of black people 90 Incubadora de Empreendimentos
Solidários 102, 108
Galeria Céu Aberto 55 India 9
Gates, Bill 26 institutionalization, the need for 62,
GDP as an economic indicator 42, 84, 111
43, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica
gender treatment, differences of 90- Aplicada (IPEA) 44
1 Instituto Pólis 15, 97
global warming 8 International Labor Organization
Google 26 (ILO) 10
graffiti 55-6, 67 Iracema (beach in Fortaleza, Ceará)
Grajaú (state of São Paulo) 90 37
Greece 23 isonomy of competition 106
Gross National Happiness Index 43 Itaú (bank) 12
Grupo de Trabalho de Cultura do Itaú Cultural, Fundação Itaú 80, 92
Consórcio Intermunicipal 73-4,
109 Jacksonville (Florida) 17
Grupo Opni 55 Jardim Míriam (São Paulo) 50
G20 countries 13, 20 Jequitinhonha Valley (Brasil) 35
Guarani Indians 39, 40 João Pessoa (State of Paraíba) 36
Guarani-Kaiowá people 39 Johannesburg (South Africa) 17
guerrillas 45 Jongo Dito Ribeiro 51, 56
Gulf of Mexico catastrophe 43
Kuikuro 27, 41
Haddad, Fernando 21 Kassab, Gilberto 82
higher education, impact on society
113-5 Lacan, Jacques 26
 The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship 129
in the ABC Region of São Paulo, Brazil

Law N. 8.685/93 62, see also Movimento dos Trabalhadores

Rouanet Law Rurais sem Terra (MST) 13
Lima, Fernanda Henrique Souza de
3, 48 Nascimento, Milton 35, 36, 37
Living Culture program 34, 42, 58- Natal (state of Rio Grande do Norte)
9, 68, 85-6, 102, 106, 109-10 36
London 12 National Culture Plan, PNC 74,
Lopes, Carlos 20 106-7, 109
Lotta, Gabriela Stanghero 100 National Secretary of Solidarity
Louis XIV (the Sun King) 34 Economy (SENAES) 83-4, 110
Luxembourg 12 Neolithic period 24, 28
New York City 11-2, 17
machismo 90 “Notícias do Brasil” (song) 35
Magalhães, Renan 67 Nova Olinda (state of Ceará) 35
Manaus (state of Amazon) 36
Manguebeat 91, 93, Odebrecht 45
Manifesto dos Pioneiros da Open Course Ware (from MIT) 18,
Educação Nova 113 see also China Open Resources
Maranhão, Luiz 78 for Education (CORE)
Maranhão (state) 36 organic food 3, 23, 50, 61
Marçal, Gil 83, 88, 94-5, 106, 110 organic food as “fetiche” 61
“marginal” art 92
Marginal Tietê 16 Pachamama 39, 41
Mariano, Thiago 67 Paideia 115
Marino, Aluízio 55, 62, 70 Palestinian population 12
Mario de Andrade Library 96 Pansarelli, Daniel 3, 4, 113
Matarazzo, Andrea 81 Paraíba (state) 83
Mato Grosso do Sul 39 Parelheiros (state of São Paulo) 90
Mauá (state of São Paulo) 104 Parque Havaí (São Paulo) 54
Medellín (Colombia) 44 Parque Rafael Lazzuri (São Paulo)
Media Lab São Mateus em 54
Movimento 56 Passarelli, Silvia Helena 67
Meu Município 103 Pearce, Fred 9
Microsoft 26 peripheral literature 91
migration of Africans into Europe “Pied Piper of Hamelin” 25
12 Pirambu (slum in Fortaleza, state of
Ministry of Culture 34, 49, 62, 68, Ceará) 37-8, 40
73, 82, 85-6, 88, 94-6, 107, 110- Pirambu Academy of Sciences,
1 Letters and Arts 3, 37-8
Ministry of Development, Industry Plano Municipal de Cultura (PMC)
and Commerce 83 78, 95 101-2
Miranda, Célio Turino de 3, 6, 7, Plano Plurianual Participativo
19, 22, 42, 44, 110, 112 (PPA) 72
MIT 18 Pontifícia Universidade Católica
Monsanto 26 (PUC) 10, 15
130
Pontos de Cultura: O Brasil de
Baixo para cima 34, see also
Miranda, Célio Turino de
“Por dentro dos programas—
Programa Cultura Viva” 109
ProAC Saraus Culturais 57, 69
Pró-Circo 53, 60
Programa de Incentivo `a Cultura do
Estado de São Paulo 69
Programadora Brasil 73
Program for Artistic and Cultural
Training 101
Pró-Reitoria de Extensão e Cultura,
PROEC 50
Quality of Life Progress Report 17
O que é o poder local? 15
Que horas ela volta? (film) 10
quilombolas 34, 41
quilombos 41, 109
Recife (state of Pernambuco) 36, 92
Rede Andreense de Economia
Solidária 102, 108
Rede Globo 38, 41
refugees 12
Ribeirão Pires (state of São Paulo)
48, 49, 65
Rifkin, Jeremy 18
“The Rights of Mother Earth” 40
Rocha, Tião 36-7
Rouanet Law 62-3, 73, see also Law
N. 8.685/93
Rubim, Antonio Albino Canelas 98
rural exodus 14
Sachs, Ignacy 20
Santos Dumont, Alberto 26
São Mateus em Movimento 5-6, 62,
69, 70
Sapopemba (São Paulo) 46
Sarau Comungar 56
Sarau da Quebrada 69, 71
Secretaria Nacional de Economia
Solidária (SENAES) 84, 110-1
Sen, Amartya 43
Index
Sena, Lenita 3, 51
Serra, Neusa 106
Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem
Comercial (SENAC) 80
Serviço Social do Comércio (SESC)
52, 57, 60, 61
Shaxson, Nicholas 12, see also
Treasure Islands
Silva, Rafael 67
Silva, Renata 50, 61
Silveira, Caio 15
Silvestre, Neri 72
Sindicato dos Técnicos
Administrativos da UFABC
(SintuFABC) 50
Singer, Paul 83
Sioux 24
Sistema de Apoio `as Leis de
Incentivo `a Cultura (SalicNet)
73
Sistema Especial de Liquidação e
Custódia (SELIC) 13, 20
Sistema Nacional de Cultura (SNC)
68, 99
“small kindnesses” 44
Smith, Adam 9
Social media 63, 90
A Sociedade da Corte: investigação
sobre a Sociologia da realeza e
da aristocracia da corte 34, see
also Elias, Norbert
Souza, André Ricardo 111
Starvation 11
stable source of income, the need
for 10, 12, 53, 65, 78, 106, 109-
10
The State (as an apparatus) 46
suicide (of indigenous people) 39
suicide (of young women) 90
Superior Tribunal Federal (STF) 15
Sustainability 13, 51, 59, 60, 62, 65,
“Sustainability and Strengthening of
Cultural Production” 102
Sustainable Cities 15, 23, 111
Sweden 16
swimming pools 16
 The Solidarity Economy of Culture and Cultural Citizenship
in the ABC Region of São Paulo, Brazil
Switzerland 12
symbolic dimension of culture 70,
74, 85, 107, 109
Tapscott, Don 20
Tax Justice Network 12
Tecnologias do Conhecimento: Os
Desafios da Educação 18
Teixeira, Paulo 19
Tekó porã (living well) 39, 40
Teresina (state of Piauí) 36
Timor-Leste 18
“Top 10” list of girls 90, see also
gender treatment
transgenic seeds 24
Treasure Islands 12, see Shaxson
Trigueiro, André 16
Tropicália 93
Ubuntu (African Ethic: “I am
because we all are”) 39, 40-1
Unidades Básicas de Saúde (UBS)
95
United Kingdom 34, 43
United Nations Development
Program (PNUD) 101
United States 11-13, 16, 60
United States GDP 43
urbanization, urban space 13-4, 16
Valentin, Fernando Farias 110-11
Valorização de Iniciativas Culturais
53, 62
the value of artistic creation 1
131
Vera Cruz Studios (cinema studio)
80-1
violeiro 79, 81
Virada Cultural 57, 69, 75, 96
Virgin Islands 12
wall between Mexico and the
United States 12
wealth inequality 10, 14, 16, 75
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water,
the Defining Crisis of the
Twenty-first Century 9, see also
Pearce, Fred
Wikinomics 20
Williams, Anthony 20
World Bank 11
World Cup 45
World Trade Center (in New York)
11
Worldwide Economic Forum of
Davos 111
Worldwide Fund for Nature 10
Worldwide Social Forum 110-1
Young Cultural Monitors Program
108
Zapata, Tania 15
The Zero Marginal Cost Society:
The Internet of Things, the
Collaborative Commons, and
the Eclipse of Capitalism 18
Ziviani, Paula 109