This thesis sheds light on the social relationships, work practices and identities that shape the small scale sector of independent game production. Harnessing elements of the Production of Culture and Cultural Industries/Work perspectives, it aims to clarify the specifics of independent game production and its relationship with the large-scale sector of the industry. Drawing on a multi-sided ethnography, the thesis captures gamework practices, motivations, ideas and conventions deployed in a diverse range of online and physical spaces where independent developers interact. Given the complex relationships and messiness found in the industry, the results of the thesis initially clarify general aspects, characterising both the corporate structure of the games industry and its independent sector. It then examines the cultures that inform independent work as well as emergent 'indie' praxis. After a historical review of the digital games industry, the thesis addresses how the corporate structure of the industry has created a viable game producing field, with a highly rationalised but not unproblematic process of game production. The independent sector is then analysed in relation to this material culture. The thesis discusses the technologic affordances, structural relationships, market approach and organisational forms supporting the production of independent games. It also examines the motivations, ethics and general culture informing independent developers work, as well as the emergence of independent networked scenes as social spaces where creative, organisational, technical and cultural aspects of independent game production are shaped. The analysis of empirical evidence reveals how the uneven struggle to control or access the means for game production, distribution and reproduction, in both retail and digital distribution business models, shapes the material conditions of the small scale sector game production. The thesis highlights the relationship between production, independent developers' preferences, and their identity as 'indies' as central in understanding how this novel sector of the games industry is being structured. By understanding both the structure and informal practices of independent production, this research offers novel insights in this under-researched area, insights that reveal the intricacies of processes of social change and cultural diversification within the digital games industry as a whole.

The aim of this dissertation is to explore and understand three important social contexts for the becoming of an artistic subjectivity: education, work and family life. The empirical data consist of interview material with alumni from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, staff of the institute, and a survey material from the Swedish National Artists Organization (KRO/KIF). Generally, the thesis employs a theory of conflicting understandings of labour as well as the importance of discourses and narratives for the formation of subjects. The contribution of the thesis is the analysis of a continuing conflict between being and working as an artist actualized in the social contexts explored. The arts education encouraged a romanticized understanding of art as unrelated to market value, which clashed against societal norms of career progression, survival and supporting a family. This conflict informed the subjective way in which the respondents related to their activities as artists, workers and relatives. The concept of freedom can be understood as mediating this conflict in the sense of forming the basis of attraction to the arts but also a burden as it relates to insecurity. The analysis found several subjective representations of the artist that indicate strong norms of individuality and self-direction, understood as the outcome of a working life fraught with personal responsibility for coping with insecurity. As such, the thesis is part of ongoing research on changes in working life towards non-standard and sometimes precarious working conditions. / Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka och förstå tre betydelsefulla sociala kontexter för konstruktionen av en konstnärlig identitet: utbildning, arbete och familj. Avhandlingens material består av intervjuer med alumner från Kungl. Konsthögskolan i Stockholm, undervisande personal på skolan, samt ett enkätmaterial från Konstnärernas riksorganisation KRO/KIF. Teoretiskt utgår avhandlingen från olika forskningsperspektiv på arbete samt diskursiv och narrativ konstruktion av subjektivitet. Avhandlingen påvisar en kontinuerlig konflikt mellan att vara eller att arbeta som konstnär. Den konstnärliga utbildningen positionerar konsten enligt romantisk tradition i motsättning till marknadslogik vilket efter utbildningen skapar en konflikt för konstnären som måste förhålla sig till normer av karriär, överlevnad av arbete och försörjning av familj. Denna konflikt påverkar hur konstnärerna subjektivt förhåller sig till sin konstnärliga aktivitet, totaliteten av sitt arbete och sin roll som anhöriga. Frihetsbegreppet kan förstås relatera till denna konflikt dels genom att utgöra en attraktion till konsten, dels genom att relatera till osäkerhet. I analysen framträdde flera konstnärliga subjektspositioner vilka alla indikerar starka normer av individualism och självtillräcklighet. Dessa kan relateras till ett arbetsliv karaktäriserat av eget ansvar för att hantera osäkerhet. Avhandlingen är därför del i en pågående forskning kring ett arbetsliv i förändring mot atypiska och även mer prekära arbetsförhållanden.

The collaboration forms between communities and institutions of culture and art. Key words: community, culture, social-cultural work, national minority. In the process of forming democratic and public policy of nation it is extremely important that every member of it completely would feel himself the part of the society. National minorities and their cultural self-expressions, that perform both the role of spiritual movement and strengthening national identity, are analyzed in this work. This work is based on the research of collaboration between national minorities and both culture and art institutions (66 Karaiten, Tartaren, Jews and Romany minorities’ persons were polled). The date of the research illustrates the cultural and social situation of national minorities, the spiritual demands of community members, qualities and weaknesses of their cultural life. Also the importance of this cooperation to the individuals and all the ethnic communities is emphasized as well as that essential changes in the process of cultural and spiritual live determine participation of the numbers of community in the cultural activities. The results of the research show how creative work in the community and cultural institutions stimulate the integration of national minorities, the internal socialization inside the community and emphasize the gaps and perspectives of the cultural cooperation. Hopefully, that members’ spiritual experience of communities will enrich the life of the community... [to full text]

This dissertation conducts in-depth inquiries into the practices, nature and theory of post-industrial cultural work and the humanities- and arts-based civic dialogues which cultural work promotes. Given the broad neglect of utopian thinking in the mainstream of critical social science and in an attempt to sketch out a vision of an alternative future, the aim of this thesis is to outline an “epistemology” for post-industrial cultural work as well as to reflect upon the outlook for educational cultural work practices and their function as a catalyst for civic dialogue and cultural change. The main concerns are the signification, interests and aims embodied in cultural production touching on issues of cultural and scientific learning, alternative modes of democratic governance of science and technology (Felt, Wynne et al. 2007), industrial society’s logic of accumulation and market rationality, the primacy of contemporary instrumental and capitalist values, neoliberalism, globalization and cosmopolitanism. With a view to addressing elementary questions regarding the future of cultural work, which are explored and theorised alongside future perspectives of a new form of knowledge work for the humanities and the arts, the actual challenges of cultural work are considered from within the wider context of the risk society (Beck 1986) and the threats which affect everybody today. In relying on Beck’s (2009) conceptualization of the world risk society as a “non-knowledge society” characterised by the global existence of incalculable risks/threats and non-knowing, the thesis addresses the problem of non-knowledge and unrecognised contingencies as a challenge for cultural work to design processes of (un)learning in civic dialogues. In exploring the social, cultural and political relevance of three empirical case studies, the thesis ventures into the prospects of a new socio-epistemological perspective for cultural work and workspaces for knowledge. The studies investigate three different (techno-)socio-cultural spaces of knowledge: a public exhibition about the new Gotthard Base Tunnel currently under construction in the Swiss Alps, Jennifer Baichwal’s film Manufactured Landscapes (2006) about the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and China’s industrial revolution, and the living intervention Fairytale at Documenta 12, 2007, which brought 1,001 Chinese citizens to Kassel, Germany. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is employed as a tool for the analysis of the material-semiotic properties of differing knowledges, the heterogeneous relations of socio-economic networks, and the global and uncertain conditions of the post-industrial world in which cultural work is embedded. What is colloquially referred to as post-industrial cultural knowledge work in this thesis is elaborated in the context of a propositional socio-epistemological second-order framework (Von Foerster 1984; Pakman 2003) for cultural work and its entanglements with ethics, aesthetics, pragmatics, politics—and biopolitical production (Hardt and Negri 2000; 2009). In order to build “third spaces” of knowledge (Turnbull 2000) and to nurture uncertainty-oriented approaches and contingencies, the findings propose the development of more open, (self-)reflexive and anticipating forms of thinking and acting in cultural production fields with the aim to catalyse societal developments, to foster intrinsic values and to create cultural workplace identities with a moral-ecological-political awareness (cf. Banks 2006; 2007) invoking new interactions between viewers, audiences and the environment.

Este trabalho investiga os processos constitutivos, as condições de atuação e o sentido político do que chama de novo engajamento cultural. Desde os anos 1990 surge na cidade de São Paulo um novo conjunto de experiências associativas informais, autodenominadas coletivos, que atualizam as formas de relacionamento entre o fazer cultural e a militância política. Essa nova configuração político-cultural notabiliza-se por se aliar a temáticas cotidianas que emanam do meio social dos públicos ou territórios com que estão envolvidos ao mesmo tempo em que direciona seus esforços para fazer do coletivo um espaço de experimentação de novas relações produtivas. Do mesmo modo, o fenômeno parece desenvolver-se nos termos de novas modalidades laborais, já que a formação de coletivos aparece também como via alternativa de acesso a subvenções públicas propiciadas pelas novas políticas culturais estruturadas por sistemas de financiamento direto a projetos selecionados através de editais públicos. A hipótese é de que a emergência do novo engajamento cultural é estreitamente vinculada com o paradigma antropológico de política cultural que se firmou no país ao longo dos anos 2000, favorecendo-se das modulações políticas operadas pela era de hegemonia dos governos progressistas. Para tanto, privilegia como arco histórico de análise os debates, formulações e impasses enfrentados pelas instâncias organizativas de dois movimentos culturais que se formaram ao redor de dois programas públicos municipais: o Fomento ao Teatro para a Cidade de São Paulo, de 2002, e a breve experiência do Fomento à Cultura da Periferia de São Paulo, de 2016. Isso é feito através de observação direta participante (no período 2011-2017) em espaços organizativos dos movimentos; análise de dados secundários compostos por atas, legislações, projetos e outros documentos atinentes à relação entre coletivos e poder público; e pesquisa bibliográfica que permitiu pensar, por diferentes perspectivas, o atual papel da cultura frente às transformações mais recentes do sistema capitalista. Em seus resultados, a pesquisa sugere que a agenda cultural antropológica, forjada em sintonia com as novas estratégias de gerenciamento político global e com a centralidade assumida pela cultura na nova etapa de acumulação, degenera o sentido político destas pequenas experiências ao instrumentalizar a capacidade mobilizadora e auto-organizativa demonstrada por elas. Intrínsecos ao novo paradigma, os sistemas de financiamento baseado na forma-edital serviram a que a norma competitiva neoliberal se infiltrasse nestes pequenos ensaios organizativos informais, o que reduziu o potencial emancipador aí presente a uma forma subordinada de trabalho e transformou os processos interativos por eles produzidos em novas espécies de mercadoria. / This work researches the constitutive processes, the conditions of action and the political sense of what it calls a new cultural engagement. Since the 1990s a new set of informal associative experiences, self-described collectives, has emerged in the city of São Paulo and updated the forms of relationship between cultural making and political activism. This new political-cultural composition is notable for its alliance with the everyday themes emanating from the social milieu of the public or territory with which they are involved. At the same time, there are direct efforts to experiment new productive relations inside the collectives. Likewise, the phenomenon seems to develop in terms of new forms of labor, since constituting collectives also appears as an alternative way to access public subsidies through new cultural policies that fund projects which are selected in open calls. The hypothesis is that the emergence of the new cultural engagement is closely linked to the anthropological paradigm of cultural policy that was established in the country during the years 2000, favored by political modulations operated by an era of hegemony of progressive governments. In order to do so, it analises the historical arc of debates, formulations and impasses faced by the organizational instances of two cultural movements that were formed around two municipal public plans: Fomento ao Teatro para a Cidade de São Paulo, established in 2002, and the brief experience of Fomento à Cultura da Periferia, established in 2016. This is done through participant direct observation in organizational spaces of the movements (during the period of 2011-2017); analysis of secondary data composed by minutes, laws, projects and other documents concerning the relationship between collectives and public power; and bibliographical research as subsidy to reflect, from different perspectives, on the current role of culture in face of the most recent transformations of the capitalist system. In its conclusions, this research suggests that the anthropological cultural agenda, forged in tune with the new global political management strategies and with the centrality assumed by culture in the new stage of accumulation, degenerates the political meaning of those small experiences by instrumentalizing their demonstrated mobilizing and self-organization capacity. The funding systems based on the open call form, intrinsic to the new paradigm, served to the infiltration of the neoliberal competitive norm into these small informal organizational experiments; reducing thus the emancipatory potential present there to a subordinate form of work and transforming the interactive processes they produced into new types of commodity.

This project, based on a study of television producers in Colombia, is an ethnographic exploration of the working conditions of cultural production within a highly contextualized environment such as public service television under state control, using Señal Colombia TV channel as case study. I examine how cultural production is affected by governmental structures and dynamics, whilst exploring the conditions and processes of public service television production, and how television producers experience these processes at an individual level. My primary question is to determine how the production of public service television under state control impacts producers’ practices and perceptions regarding the value and outcomes of their work. In this context, precariousness, autonomy, good work, power and public value have emerged as central areas of constant tension. I link issues regarding cultural work and public value in a media production analysis, obtaining direct empirical data that provides an in-depth description of the current public media production context under state control in Colombia. To explore these intersections, the project brings together interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. The findings exposed that the internal dynamics of both the nation and the organisation significantly affect the concept of public value, making it an ambivalent, uncertain and ill-defined notion. Where governance is state-driven, workers, regardless of their role, subscribe to dominant narratives and discourses that justify their work, and thus contribute to keeping themselves under prescribed creativity. In general, the present study provides a holistic account of cultural work study, focusing on what occurs to cultural work in various contexts of control, and the individual reactions to these contexts. The analysis of cultural work in this context, also broadens current knowledge on the concepts of network sociality and good work under clientelism, and in a non-free-market.

Este trabalho investiga os processos constitutivos, as condições de atuação e o sentido político do que chama de novo engajamento cultural. Desde os anos 1990 surge na cidade de São Paulo um novo conjunto de experiências associativas informais, autodenominadas coletivos, que atualizam as formas de relacionamento entre o fazer cultural e a militância política. Essa nova configuração político-cultural notabiliza-se por se aliar a temáticas cotidianas que emanam do meio social dos públicos ou territórios com que estão envolvidos ao mesmo tempo em que direciona seus esforços para fazer do coletivo um espaço de experimentação de novas relações produtivas. Do mesmo modo, o fenômeno parece desenvolver-se nos termos de novas modalidades laborais, já que a formação de coletivos aparece também como via alternativa de acesso a subvenções públicas propiciadas pelas novas políticas culturais estruturadas por sistemas de financiamento direto a projetos selecionados através de editais públicos. A hipótese é de que a emergência do novo engajamento cultural é estreitamente vinculada com o paradigma antropológico de política cultural que se firmou no país ao longo dos anos 2000, favorecendo-se das modulações políticas operadas pela era de hegemonia dos governos progressistas. Para tanto, privilegia como arco histórico de análise os debates, formulações e impasses enfrentados pelas instâncias organizativas de dois movimentos culturais que se formaram ao redor de dois programas públicos municipais: o Fomento ao Teatro para a Cidade de São Paulo, de 2002, e a breve experiência do Fomento à Cultura da Periferia de São Paulo, de 2016. Isso é feito através de observação direta participante (no período 2011-2017) em espaços organizativos dos movimentos; análise de dados secundários compostos por atas, legislações, projetos e outros documentos atinentes à relação entre coletivos e poder público; e pesquisa bibliográfica que permitiu pensar, por diferentes perspectivas, o atual papel da cultura frente às transformações mais recentes do sistema capitalista. Em seus resultados, a pesquisa sugere que a agenda cultural antropológica, forjada em sintonia com as novas estratégias de gerenciamento político global e com a centralidade assumida pela cultura na nova etapa de acumulação, degenera o sentido político destas pequenas experiências ao instrumentalizar a capacidade mobilizadora e auto-organizativa demonstrada por elas. Intrínsecos ao novo paradigma, os sistemas de financiamento baseado na forma-edital serviram a que a norma competitiva neoliberal se infiltrasse nestes pequenos ensaios organizativos informais, o que reduziu o potencial emancipador aí presente a uma forma subordinada de trabalho e transformou os processos interativos por eles produzidos em novas espécies de mercadoria. / This work researches the constitutive processes, the conditions of action and the political sense of what it calls a new cultural engagement. Since the 1990s a new set of informal associative experiences, self-described collectives, has emerged in the city of São Paulo and updated the forms of relationship between cultural making and political activism. This new political-cultural composition is notable for its alliance with the everyday themes emanating from the social milieu of the public or territory with which they are involved. At the same time, there are direct efforts to experiment new productive relations inside the collectives. Likewise, the phenomenon seems to develop in terms of new forms of labor, since constituting collectives also appears as an alternative way to access public subsidies through new cultural policies that fund projects which are selected in open calls. The hypothesis is that the emergence of the new cultural engagement is closely linked to the anthropological paradigm of cultural policy that was established in the country during the years 2000, favored by political modulations operated by an era of hegemony of progressive governments. In order to do so, it analises the historical arc of debates, formulations and impasses faced by the organizational instances of two cultural movements that were formed around two municipal public plans: Fomento ao Teatro para a Cidade de São Paulo, established in 2002, and the brief experience of Fomento à Cultura da Periferia, established in 2016. This is done through participant direct observation in organizational spaces of the movements (during the period of 2011-2017); analysis of secondary data composed by minutes, laws, projects and other documents concerning the relationship between collectives and public power; and bibliographical research as subsidy to reflect, from different perspectives, on the current role of culture in face of the most recent transformations of the capitalist system. In its conclusions, this research suggests that the anthropological cultural agenda, forged in tune with the new global political management strategies and with the centrality assumed by culture in the new stage of accumulation, degenerates the political meaning of those small experiences by instrumentalizing their demonstrated mobilizing and self-organization capacity. The funding systems based on the open call form, intrinsic to the new paradigm, served to the infiltration of the neoliberal competitive norm into these small informal organizational experiments; reducing thus the emancipatory potential present there to a subordinate form of work and transforming the interactive processes they produced into new types of commodity.

A presente Dissertação buscou compreender, a partir de uma pesquisa de campo, as visões que as crianças “urbanas” e “rurais” produzem sobre si e sobre os outros, procurando entender suas formas de falar, narrar, expressar para refletir sobre o quanto a polifonia de discursos sobre o que é rural e urbano reverberou em seus modos de pensar. Esta pesquisa movimentou-me por uma temática na qual eu estava envolvida, atravessada, mobilizada. Como professora-pesquisadora, articulei episódios que emergiram em minha experiência pedagógica, os quais me convocaram a problematizar posicionamentos e diferentes dizeres relacionados ao rural. Entendo que os discursos sobre as infâncias “rurais” disseminados em diferentes produções culturais provocam modos de vermos estas infâncias de uma forma um tanto semelhante e reiterada, colocando-a muitas vezes como uma infância em defasagem em relação à infância “urbana”. Além de me ater às produções culturais e alguns artefatos, realizo uma análise mais ampla de como as ideias sobre o rural e a infância “rural”, em especial, foram sendo constituídas na cultura brasileira ao longo da nossa formação social, política, cultural, discutindo sobre como a cultura, de um modo geral, define e nos ensina o que é rural e urbano. Tomo como ferramentas teóricas os Estudos Pós-Estruturalistas em Educação, em especial os Estudos Culturais e da Cultura Visual e dos Estudos Contemporâneos sobre as Infâncias. A investigação foi realizada com doze crianças com idades entre seis e sete anos de idade, residentes no meio urbano e no meio rural do município de Estrela-RS, no período de março a dezembro de 2008. Para uma melhor apreensão das concepções das crianças, criei, no desenvolvimento da pesquisa, uma proposta de intercâmbio de materiais entre elas e um conjunto de estratégias de comunicação entre as crianças: auto-retratos desenhados, fotografias, postais e vídeos. O início da pesquisa com as crianças apontou o quanto suas narrativas estavam marcadas por referentes, acentuados por binarismos que de certa forma inferiorizavam os saberes e as práticas do meio rural. A partir do intercâmbio dos materiais entre as crianças “rurais” e “urbanas,” algumas concepções que os diferentes grupos tinham um sobre o outro foram se modificando. As perguntas centrais do trabalho: Como as crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” narram a si mesmas? Como as crianças percebem o meio rural e o meio urbano? foram respondidas nas análises realizadas, que permitem argumentar que este espaço de “narrar o outro” e “narrar-se ao outro” mostrou o quanto a descrição das crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” foi marcada pelo “ser-ter-pertencer”. Pelo que se pode perceber na pesquisa, as formas de narrar das crianças estão relacionadas à questão de posse, das características físicas e intelectuais, através das formas de narrar o espaço e os saberes dos outros, a respeito dos lugares “rurais” e “urbanos”, da alimentação e da expressão verbal. Independentemente das crianças serem “urbanas” ou “rurais”, na contemporaneidade, percebi o quanto este “narrar-se” passa também pela aparência, pelo modo de ser, de se vestir, de ter, das brincadeiras e brinquedos. O “rural,” que apareceu inicialmente relatado nas vozes das crianças como espaço de atraso, do não ter as mesmas coisas que o “urbano”, como se o meio urbano fosse a fonte do ter, do saber, do lugar de consumo onde se pode adquirir as coisas “boas” e “importantes,” começou a ganhar outros contornos. Pude verificar que mudaram os dizeres das crianças a partir do momento em que as cartas, os postais e os vídeos foram chegando. Aquele olhar tão definido, estável, fixo, de certezas, deu lugar à instabilidade, a outras formas de perceber o lugar “do outro”. Ao intercambiarem os materiais por elas produzidos, crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” puderam perceber que cada lugar, seja ele na cidade ou no meio rural, tem suas particularidades. Nestas trocas as crianças passaram a conhecer outras narrativas, que apontaram o quanto há de diverso e semelhante entre elas. / This study, based on a field research, aims at understanding the views ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ children have on themselves and on others, in attempt to understand the way they speak, narrate and express as a reflection on discourse polyphony on how rural and urban reverberate their ways of thinking. The theme focused here involved me deeply. As a teacher-researcher, I articulated episodes emerging from my pedagogical experience, which made me problematize positions and utterances related to the rural aspect. I understand that discourses on ‘rural’ childhood found in various cultural works make us see it in a somewhat similar and repeated way, considering it as a childhood with discrepancies, when compared to the ‘urban’ one. Besides focusing on some cultural works and artifacts, I analyze more broadly how ideas on rural, and rural childhood in particular, were built in the Brazilian culture along our social, political, cultural formation, also discussing how culture, in general terms, defines and teaches us what is rural and what is urban. The theoretical tools used have been the Post-structuralism Education Studies, particularly the Cultural Studies, and those of the Visual Culture, as well as the Contemporary Studies on Childhood. The investigation approached twelve children between six and seven years old, living in the urban and rural areas in the municipality of Estrela – RS, between March and December 2008. For a better understanding of children’s conceptions, it was developed a proposition to exchange materials among them, and a set of communication strategies: drawn self-portraits, photographs, postcards and videos. The beginning of the research has shown how their narratives were marked with references, stressed by binarism that somehow degraded the rural knowledge and practices. Some concepts that these groups had one about the other started to change gradually, based on the exchange of materials between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children.The key issues dealt with in this work: how do ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children narrate themselves? How do they perceive the rural and urban environments? Through the analyses, the spaces related to ‘narrating the other’ and ‘narrating oneself to the other’ have shown to what extent ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children’s descriptions were characterized by ‘being-having-belonging’. It can be concluded from the research that the ways of narrating children is related to the issues of possession, the physical and intellectual characteristics, the ways of narrating others’ space and knowledge, about ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ places, the eating habits and verbal expression. Regardless the fact children were ‘urban’ or ‘rural, in present times it was noticed that this ‘narrating oneself’ pervades one’s looks, one’s dressing way, one’s possessions, games and toys. The ‘rural’ scope, that initially was reported by the children as outdated, where one could not find the same things as in the ‘urban’ scope, as if the latter were source of having, knowing, a place of consumption where one can acquire ‘good’ and ‘important’ things, started to be differently outlined. It could be noticed that the children’s utterances changed from the moment the letters, postcards and videos were shown. The viewpoint that had been so established, certain, gradually became changeable, enabling them to perceive the place of ‘the other’. Upon exchange of the materials they had produced, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children could perceive, that each place, whether in the city or in the countryside, has its unique characteristics. Through this exchange, the children became familiar with other narratives, which showed them what is different or similar between them.

A presente Dissertação buscou compreender, a partir de uma pesquisa de campo, as visões que as crianças “urbanas” e “rurais” produzem sobre si e sobre os outros, procurando entender suas formas de falar, narrar, expressar para refletir sobre o quanto a polifonia de discursos sobre o que é rural e urbano reverberou em seus modos de pensar. Esta pesquisa movimentou-me por uma temática na qual eu estava envolvida, atravessada, mobilizada. Como professora-pesquisadora, articulei episódios que emergiram em minha experiência pedagógica, os quais me convocaram a problematizar posicionamentos e diferentes dizeres relacionados ao rural. Entendo que os discursos sobre as infâncias “rurais” disseminados em diferentes produções culturais provocam modos de vermos estas infâncias de uma forma um tanto semelhante e reiterada, colocando-a muitas vezes como uma infância em defasagem em relação à infância “urbana”. Além de me ater às produções culturais e alguns artefatos, realizo uma análise mais ampla de como as ideias sobre o rural e a infância “rural”, em especial, foram sendo constituídas na cultura brasileira ao longo da nossa formação social, política, cultural, discutindo sobre como a cultura, de um modo geral, define e nos ensina o que é rural e urbano. Tomo como ferramentas teóricas os Estudos Pós-Estruturalistas em Educação, em especial os Estudos Culturais e da Cultura Visual e dos Estudos Contemporâneos sobre as Infâncias. A investigação foi realizada com doze crianças com idades entre seis e sete anos de idade, residentes no meio urbano e no meio rural do município de Estrela-RS, no período de março a dezembro de 2008. Para uma melhor apreensão das concepções das crianças, criei, no desenvolvimento da pesquisa, uma proposta de intercâmbio de materiais entre elas e um conjunto de estratégias de comunicação entre as crianças: auto-retratos desenhados, fotografias, postais e vídeos. O início da pesquisa com as crianças apontou o quanto suas narrativas estavam marcadas por referentes, acentuados por binarismos que de certa forma inferiorizavam os saberes e as práticas do meio rural. A partir do intercâmbio dos materiais entre as crianças “rurais” e “urbanas,” algumas concepções que os diferentes grupos tinham um sobre o outro foram se modificando. As perguntas centrais do trabalho: Como as crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” narram a si mesmas? Como as crianças percebem o meio rural e o meio urbano? foram respondidas nas análises realizadas, que permitem argumentar que este espaço de “narrar o outro” e “narrar-se ao outro” mostrou o quanto a descrição das crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” foi marcada pelo “ser-ter-pertencer”. Pelo que se pode perceber na pesquisa, as formas de narrar das crianças estão relacionadas à questão de posse, das características físicas e intelectuais, através das formas de narrar o espaço e os saberes dos outros, a respeito dos lugares “rurais” e “urbanos”, da alimentação e da expressão verbal. Independentemente das crianças serem “urbanas” ou “rurais”, na contemporaneidade, percebi o quanto este “narrar-se” passa também pela aparência, pelo modo de ser, de se vestir, de ter, das brincadeiras e brinquedos. O “rural,” que apareceu inicialmente relatado nas vozes das crianças como espaço de atraso, do não ter as mesmas coisas que o “urbano”, como se o meio urbano fosse a fonte do ter, do saber, do lugar de consumo onde se pode adquirir as coisas “boas” e “importantes,” começou a ganhar outros contornos. Pude verificar que mudaram os dizeres das crianças a partir do momento em que as cartas, os postais e os vídeos foram chegando. Aquele olhar tão definido, estável, fixo, de certezas, deu lugar à instabilidade, a outras formas de perceber o lugar “do outro”. Ao intercambiarem os materiais por elas produzidos, crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” puderam perceber que cada lugar, seja ele na cidade ou no meio rural, tem suas particularidades. Nestas trocas as crianças passaram a conhecer outras narrativas, que apontaram o quanto há de diverso e semelhante entre elas. / This study, based on a field research, aims at understanding the views ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ children have on themselves and on others, in attempt to understand the way they speak, narrate and express as a reflection on discourse polyphony on how rural and urban reverberate their ways of thinking. The theme focused here involved me deeply. As a teacher-researcher, I articulated episodes emerging from my pedagogical experience, which made me problematize positions and utterances related to the rural aspect. I understand that discourses on ‘rural’ childhood found in various cultural works make us see it in a somewhat similar and repeated way, considering it as a childhood with discrepancies, when compared to the ‘urban’ one. Besides focusing on some cultural works and artifacts, I analyze more broadly how ideas on rural, and rural childhood in particular, were built in the Brazilian culture along our social, political, cultural formation, also discussing how culture, in general terms, defines and teaches us what is rural and what is urban. The theoretical tools used have been the Post-structuralism Education Studies, particularly the Cultural Studies, and those of the Visual Culture, as well as the Contemporary Studies on Childhood. The investigation approached twelve children between six and seven years old, living in the urban and rural areas in the municipality of Estrela – RS, between March and December 2008. For a better understanding of children’s conceptions, it was developed a proposition to exchange materials among them, and a set of communication strategies: drawn self-portraits, photographs, postcards and videos. The beginning of the research has shown how their narratives were marked with references, stressed by binarism that somehow degraded the rural knowledge and practices. Some concepts that these groups had one about the other started to change gradually, based on the exchange of materials between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children.The key issues dealt with in this work: how do ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children narrate themselves? How do they perceive the rural and urban environments? Through the analyses, the spaces related to ‘narrating the other’ and ‘narrating oneself to the other’ have shown to what extent ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children’s descriptions were characterized by ‘being-having-belonging’. It can be concluded from the research that the ways of narrating children is related to the issues of possession, the physical and intellectual characteristics, the ways of narrating others’ space and knowledge, about ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ places, the eating habits and verbal expression. Regardless the fact children were ‘urban’ or ‘rural, in present times it was noticed that this ‘narrating oneself’ pervades one’s looks, one’s dressing way, one’s possessions, games and toys. The ‘rural’ scope, that initially was reported by the children as outdated, where one could not find the same things as in the ‘urban’ scope, as if the latter were source of having, knowing, a place of consumption where one can acquire ‘good’ and ‘important’ things, started to be differently outlined. It could be noticed that the children’s utterances changed from the moment the letters, postcards and videos were shown. The viewpoint that had been so established, certain, gradually became changeable, enabling them to perceive the place of ‘the other’. Upon exchange of the materials they had produced, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children could perceive, that each place, whether in the city or in the countryside, has its unique characteristics. Through this exchange, the children became familiar with other narratives, which showed them what is different or similar between them.

A presente Dissertação buscou compreender, a partir de uma pesquisa de campo, as visões que as crianças “urbanas” e “rurais” produzem sobre si e sobre os outros, procurando entender suas formas de falar, narrar, expressar para refletir sobre o quanto a polifonia de discursos sobre o que é rural e urbano reverberou em seus modos de pensar. Esta pesquisa movimentou-me por uma temática na qual eu estava envolvida, atravessada, mobilizada. Como professora-pesquisadora, articulei episódios que emergiram em minha experiência pedagógica, os quais me convocaram a problematizar posicionamentos e diferentes dizeres relacionados ao rural. Entendo que os discursos sobre as infâncias “rurais” disseminados em diferentes produções culturais provocam modos de vermos estas infâncias de uma forma um tanto semelhante e reiterada, colocando-a muitas vezes como uma infância em defasagem em relação à infância “urbana”. Além de me ater às produções culturais e alguns artefatos, realizo uma análise mais ampla de como as ideias sobre o rural e a infância “rural”, em especial, foram sendo constituídas na cultura brasileira ao longo da nossa formação social, política, cultural, discutindo sobre como a cultura, de um modo geral, define e nos ensina o que é rural e urbano. Tomo como ferramentas teóricas os Estudos Pós-Estruturalistas em Educação, em especial os Estudos Culturais e da Cultura Visual e dos Estudos Contemporâneos sobre as Infâncias. A investigação foi realizada com doze crianças com idades entre seis e sete anos de idade, residentes no meio urbano e no meio rural do município de Estrela-RS, no período de março a dezembro de 2008. Para uma melhor apreensão das concepções das crianças, criei, no desenvolvimento da pesquisa, uma proposta de intercâmbio de materiais entre elas e um conjunto de estratégias de comunicação entre as crianças: auto-retratos desenhados, fotografias, postais e vídeos. O início da pesquisa com as crianças apontou o quanto suas narrativas estavam marcadas por referentes, acentuados por binarismos que de certa forma inferiorizavam os saberes e as práticas do meio rural. A partir do intercâmbio dos materiais entre as crianças “rurais” e “urbanas,” algumas concepções que os diferentes grupos tinham um sobre o outro foram se modificando. As perguntas centrais do trabalho: Como as crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” narram a si mesmas? Como as crianças percebem o meio rural e o meio urbano? foram respondidas nas análises realizadas, que permitem argumentar que este espaço de “narrar o outro” e “narrar-se ao outro” mostrou o quanto a descrição das crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” foi marcada pelo “ser-ter-pertencer”. Pelo que se pode perceber na pesquisa, as formas de narrar das crianças estão relacionadas à questão de posse, das características físicas e intelectuais, através das formas de narrar o espaço e os saberes dos outros, a respeito dos lugares “rurais” e “urbanos”, da alimentação e da expressão verbal. Independentemente das crianças serem “urbanas” ou “rurais”, na contemporaneidade, percebi o quanto este “narrar-se” passa também pela aparência, pelo modo de ser, de se vestir, de ter, das brincadeiras e brinquedos. O “rural,” que apareceu inicialmente relatado nas vozes das crianças como espaço de atraso, do não ter as mesmas coisas que o “urbano”, como se o meio urbano fosse a fonte do ter, do saber, do lugar de consumo onde se pode adquirir as coisas “boas” e “importantes,” começou a ganhar outros contornos. Pude verificar que mudaram os dizeres das crianças a partir do momento em que as cartas, os postais e os vídeos foram chegando. Aquele olhar tão definido, estável, fixo, de certezas, deu lugar à instabilidade, a outras formas de perceber o lugar “do outro”. Ao intercambiarem os materiais por elas produzidos, crianças “rurais” e “urbanas” puderam perceber que cada lugar, seja ele na cidade ou no meio rural, tem suas particularidades. Nestas trocas as crianças passaram a conhecer outras narrativas, que apontaram o quanto há de diverso e semelhante entre elas. / This study, based on a field research, aims at understanding the views ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ children have on themselves and on others, in attempt to understand the way they speak, narrate and express as a reflection on discourse polyphony on how rural and urban reverberate their ways of thinking. The theme focused here involved me deeply. As a teacher-researcher, I articulated episodes emerging from my pedagogical experience, which made me problematize positions and utterances related to the rural aspect. I understand that discourses on ‘rural’ childhood found in various cultural works make us see it in a somewhat similar and repeated way, considering it as a childhood with discrepancies, when compared to the ‘urban’ one. Besides focusing on some cultural works and artifacts, I analyze more broadly how ideas on rural, and rural childhood in particular, were built in the Brazilian culture along our social, political, cultural formation, also discussing how culture, in general terms, defines and teaches us what is rural and what is urban. The theoretical tools used have been the Post-structuralism Education Studies, particularly the Cultural Studies, and those of the Visual Culture, as well as the Contemporary Studies on Childhood. The investigation approached twelve children between six and seven years old, living in the urban and rural areas in the municipality of Estrela – RS, between March and December 2008. For a better understanding of children’s conceptions, it was developed a proposition to exchange materials among them, and a set of communication strategies: drawn self-portraits, photographs, postcards and videos. The beginning of the research has shown how their narratives were marked with references, stressed by binarism that somehow degraded the rural knowledge and practices. Some concepts that these groups had one about the other started to change gradually, based on the exchange of materials between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children.The key issues dealt with in this work: how do ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children narrate themselves? How do they perceive the rural and urban environments? Through the analyses, the spaces related to ‘narrating the other’ and ‘narrating oneself to the other’ have shown to what extent ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children’s descriptions were characterized by ‘being-having-belonging’. It can be concluded from the research that the ways of narrating children is related to the issues of possession, the physical and intellectual characteristics, the ways of narrating others’ space and knowledge, about ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ places, the eating habits and verbal expression. Regardless the fact children were ‘urban’ or ‘rural, in present times it was noticed that this ‘narrating oneself’ pervades one’s looks, one’s dressing way, one’s possessions, games and toys. The ‘rural’ scope, that initially was reported by the children as outdated, where one could not find the same things as in the ‘urban’ scope, as if the latter were source of having, knowing, a place of consumption where one can acquire ‘good’ and ‘important’ things, started to be differently outlined. It could be noticed that the children’s utterances changed from the moment the letters, postcards and videos were shown. The viewpoint that had been so established, certain, gradually became changeable, enabling them to perceive the place of ‘the other’. Upon exchange of the materials they had produced, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ children could perceive, that each place, whether in the city or in the countryside, has its unique characteristics. Through this exchange, the children became familiar with other narratives, which showed them what is different or similar between them.