Recent debate on the importance of education for socioeconomic development has largely focussed on school achievement, as measured by international rankings. The pressures from governments to improve results has led to concerns about the consequences for teachers and students, and to counter proposals to value schools that promote the general good of the surrounding community and, in doing so, return to the idea of community schools that was much debated in the 1970s in the developing and developed world. In 2001, the Sao Paulo city government began building a network of Unified Education Centres (CEUs) in vulnerable areas. In addition to enhanced educational and sports facilities, they all have a theatre, library, swimming pools, a computer centre, and spaces for workshops and community meetings. Evaluation studies have mainly focussed on the experience of education staff in learning how to deal with the broader inter-sectorial aspects of the Centres. We look at the Centres from the outside; from the position of those who live and/or work in the surrounding streets and neighbourhoods. Based on 68 street level conversations, the analysis concentrated on four dimensions: the use made of the CEU in the day to day; new perspectives for the young; the CEU as a space for sport, leisure, and culture in a peripheral region; and the socioeconomic impact. Results show that whilst the impact of the Centres 'in the surrounding community' is significant, there is still much to be learned for them to be seen as part 'of the community'.

Recent studies have shown that higher education institutions play a significant role in national development and can modify the socioeconomic and cultural context of their surroundings when acting in a civically engaged manner. In this perspective, this article analyzes the new institutional design of the Brazilian Federal Institutes of Education (IFEs) and the process that gave rise to these institutions, highlighting the potentials and challenges for their civic engagement. The research consists of exploring the norms established by the IFE, outlining the way they operate and analyzing semi-structured interviews conducted with executives of the Brazilian Ministry of Education (MEC). We argue that the verticalization of teaching, research, and extension, and the emphasis on local development indicate that IFEs represent a new form of conception of technical and vocational education in Brazil. Behind the creation of this new institutional framework underlies the premise of difficulty of traditional universities in interacting with the territory in which they operate.

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion of the dynamics of trust in street-level public sector work, especially in settings where relationships between agencies, frontline workers, and society are fragile. Data was gathered in different vulnerable areas of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil using interviews with frontline workers and complemented with field notes from a five-year longitudinal study in one high-density area with a history of violence. Concern was to understand how, despite a lack of reciprocal trust, citizens and service providers create ways of meeting daily demands and how, in doing so, they see each other. Results show that in vulnerable settings, issues of inter-agency cooperation and territorial connectivity between different public sector services can be more important than individual agency performance in helping citizens find solutions to the problems they are facing. In the absence of an effective inter-institutional framework, trust is quickly eroded.

Public policy is an expression that has come to dominate the way people talk about doing government and public administration and is seen as a central component of the modern democratic order. Adopting an innovative 'public action languages' approach, Beyond Public Policy shows how policy is only one of many powerful social languages (budgeting, planning, rights, directives and protests, amongst others) used to make things happen in the ever-changing arena of public affairs; where they may cooperate, compete, or just go their own way.

We report a field research that aimed to map actors and social relations that characterize the Solidarity Economy of the South Zone of the city of Sao Paulo. We conducted thirteen Participative Mapping workshops in which participants located 150 social actors on the map of the region, including informal collectives, civil associations and state entities. The methodology of Social Network Analysis made it possible to identify, among social actors, the presence of more than 200 connections and twenty social connectors who act as territorial protagonists, promoting solidary relations and developing public actions in the areas of culture, education, health, food security, social assistance and urban waste management. Finally, we carried out a collective interpretation of maps and diagrams that demonstrate how people and civil associations create networks of solidarity relations, organize collective actions with a social and economic character, and finally, how some social practices are propagated throughout the territory.

We report a field research that aimed to map actors and social relations that characterize the Solidarity Economy of the South Zone of the city of Sao Paulo. We conducted thirteen Participative Mapping workshops in which participants located 150 social actors on the map of the region, including informal collectives, civil associations and state entities. The methodology of Social Network Analysis made it possible to identify, among social actors, the presence of more than 200 connections and twenty social connectors who act as territorial protagonists, promoting solidary relations and developing public actions in the areas of culture, education, health, food security, social assistance and urban waste management. Finally, we carried out a collective interpretation of maps and diagrams that demonstrate how people and civil associations create networks of solidarity relations, organize collective actions with a social and economic character, and finally, how some social practices are propagated throughout the territory.

A construção do poder local, a disputa pelos arranjos de governança dos espaços dentro dos quais se organiza a vida de muitas pessoas, é um longo processo sócio-histórico. No Brasil, estimuladas pelos avanços da Constituição de 1988, expressões como orçamento participativo, inversão de prioridades, gestão democrática e governo popular, usadas inicialmente por governos de perfil de esquerda, mas depois também pelos de centro-esquerda e de centro, são cada vez mais freqüentes em encontros e debates sobre a ação pública em âmbito local. Tais expressões demonstram a viabilidade de outra prática administrativa, voltada para os direitos individuais e coletivos. Local não é necessariamente sinônimo de municipal. Numa série de encontros recentes sobre a temática da redução da pobreza, a palavra que emergiu como mais adequada para aludir a esse espaço de ação é lugar, um horizonte de ligações, de produção de sentido e de lutas, que pode ser submunicipal, municipal, intermunicipal ou microrregional. Para a teoria organizacional, o foco no lugar como espaço de ação evidencia uma série de questões pouco abordadas. Este trabalho busca uma aproximação inicial com essa temática, para demonstrar seu potencial na reelaboração do fenômeno organizacional como um todo.

Resultados melhores serão alcançados se consideradas a heterogeneidade de estados e municípios, a intersecção de diferentes políticas públicas e a participação de atores organizacionais distintos.

Este artigo tem por objetivo discutir a trajetória que leva da inserção do cotidiano como foco de pesquisa às problematizações recentes sobre lugar e território. São abordados três momentos distintos de reflexão acerca do cotidiano, trabalhados como “viradas” conceituais com implicações metodológicas. Iniciamos abordando sucintamente a “virada para o mundo vivido” nas décadas de 1960-1980. A seguir, apontamos para uma segunda virada que provém de discussões na geografia e na teoria social sobre “lugar” e, mais tarde, sobre “território”, nas suas vertentes de “território vivido” e território de vivência”. Propomos que estamos vivenciando uma terceira virada, que tem por foco redes heterogêneas e cadeias de associações entre humanos e não humanos, decorrentes de aproximações com a Teoria Ator Rede e com a discussão atual na geografia a respeito de multiterritorialidades. Finalizamos comentando a importância de se repensarem as posturas de investigação quando localizamos a pesquisa no cotidiano.

The paper starts from the observation made by authors involved with different aspects of public action, that the State is not synonymous with public affairs. Given a more polycentric approach in which the public, or publics, are themselves key and independent social actors, amongst others, it questions the central role that public policy is assumed to take in articulating the discussion and provision of public goods and services. The paper takes a historical perspective on the emergence of policy at different moments in the English language and looks in more detail at three periods which are widely recognized as moments when English speaking democracies made significant steps forward in broadening the agenda of public affairs: Roosevelt’s New Deal, 1933; the 1945 British Labour Government; and the Johnson administrations (1963-1968). In all of these cases, there were very practical breakthroughs, with new approaches to some very difficult issues but with very little, if at all, discussion of policy. Given that action and talk go together, what other social languages (to use Bakhtin’s term, 1986) were available? In pointing out that these were many and most continue to be present and highly active today, the paper questions the centrality and inevitability of public policy and concludes by arguing for a public action languages approach to the study of public affairs.

Resumo Este trabalho analisa a trajetória de uma política pública municipal de saúde que organizou e sustentou uma rede complexa e intersetorial de cuidados a pessoas em situação de violência sexual no município de Campinas - SP. A partir da perspectiva de que, para cuidar das pessoas que sofreram violência sexual, faz-se necessário utilizar os diversos serviços públicos existentes, a rede foi articulada envolvendo vários segmentos, como saúde, segurança pública, educação, assistência social, sociedade civil organizada e universidades. O texto apresenta e discute os diferentes momentos desse processo durante o período de 2001 a 2014, desde a inclusão do tema de cuidado às pessoas que sofreram violência na agenda governamental local até as ações de disseminação da política para outros municípios. Busca-se analisar as estratégias-chave que garantiram a conectividade da rede e a sustentabilidade ao longo do tempo, bem como demonstrar a potencialidade do local na elaboração e desenvolvimento de politicas de saúde.

Psychologists in hospital settings are part of a complex network of professional relationships in constant negotiation. In addition, psychologists have skills that enable them to work with social phenomena and to act strategically within them. This is especially important in inter-disciplinary team work where professional boundaries can generate barriers to change. This article shows how psychologists of a maternity hospital in a working-class district of a large Brazilian city adapted to an integral approach to health care in a way that helped other professionals to rethink practices.

The paper starts from the observation made by authors involved with different aspects of public action, that the State is not synonymous with public affairs. Given a more polycentric approach in which the public, or publics, are themselves key and independent social actors, amongst others, it questions the central role that public policy is assumed to take in articulating the discussion and provision of public goods and services. The paper takes a historical perspective on the emergence of policy at different moments in the English language and looks in more detail at three periods which are widely recognized as moments when English speaking democracies made significant steps forward in broadening the agenda of public affairs: Roosevelt’s New Deal, 1933; the 1945 British Labour Government; and the Johnson administrations (1963-1968). In all of these cases, there were very practical breakthroughs, with new approaches to some very difficult issues but with very little, if at all, discussion of policy. Given that action and talk go together, what other social languages (to use Bakhtin’s term, 1986) were available? In pointing out that these were many and most continue to be present and highly active today, the paper questions the centrality and inevitability of public policy and concludes by arguing for a public action languages approach to the study of public affairs.

In recent years there has been a growing discussion of the lack of impact of organizational studies and, amongst other comments, on a drift away from the public sector agenda. Taking as a starting point two recent key addresses by James March and Jean-Claude Thoenig, both directed to organizational studies scholars, this paper seeks to contribute to this debate both in terms of focus and in terms of methodological approach. It argues in favor of a mid-range territorial focus on organizational affairs and to a place based action-investigation approach to methodology. In doing so it draws on the experience of the Center for Public Administration and Government of the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo with local level innovation during 1995 – 2008 and on a current project on urban vulnerabilities which has been largely shaped by these conclusions.