Movimentos sociais urbanos nos novos espaços de participação popular: atuação e organização

Abstract

Capitalism development brings within it a necessity for organizing civil society by their dissatisfaction with the economic, political and social situation experienced. And thus, the social struggles are intensified in twentieth century in the 1970s and 1980s, having as major subjects of this process the urban social movements. With the country's redemocratizantion, it is created new spaces for participation (Forums, Conferences, Counsels, among others), in which the urban social movements are inserted as main "voice" of the people with lower income. In this sense, this research aimed to analyze the operation and organization of urban social movements in Belém/PA nowadays (2003-2013) in the spaces of Forums, Conferences and Councils related to Urban Policies. Accomplished by means of the Materialist Historical and Dialectical Method, in a descriptive and explanatory research; and a qualitative approach, therefore was divided into bibliographical, documentary and field research, followed by data analysis and processing. It is showed in the discussions of this research classical and contemporary authors that deal with the theme researched, among them, it can be highlighted the sociologists Manuel Castells and Jean Lojkine, as well as the studies of Maria da Glória Gohn, Ilse Scherer-Warren and Ermínia Maricato. In the documental analysis were consulted reports, records and, meeting frequencies of the spaces of participation analyzed. For the field research, it was used as instrument the participating-observation in the meetings of the working spaces, the appliance of semi-structured interviews with representatives of the articulated urban social movements in active conferences, in counsels and forums in Belém during the investigated period, and reports of experiences with representative subjects among the chosen for interviews. This research had as main result that the operation and the organization of urban social movements nowadays have been in the spaces of conferences, councils and forums. But it was also concluded that there is a weakening in the struggles of these collective political subjects, as well as street protests. And also it can be seen that the main advances of urban social movements are related to housing policy.