Orientador: Bernadete Aparecida Caprioglio de Castro / Resumo: Esta pesquisa se propõe analisar os processos formativos e de consolidação do Coletivo Nacional de Cultura do MST. Para tanto, visamos buscar os primeiros elementos estéticos relativos aos processos iniciais, quando do surgimento histórico do MST, no empenho de elucidar e correlacionar a luta pela terra realizada pelo Movimento, com algumas de suas matrizes culturais. Assim, objetiva-se ter um “olhar cultural” sobre o MST, sua luta contra- hegemônica e as formas de resistência em seus territórios, além de se buscar na história do MST suas relações com ideias sobre cultura e arte. A pesquisa dedica mais ênfase no período compreendido entre 2003 e 2010, durante o governo de Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Pretendemos contribuir na reflexão sobre o caminho que o MST percorreu no debate geral sobre as ideias de cultura, a partir de uma abordagem marxista, e de como e seu Coletivo Nacional de Cultura avançou no desafio em criar uma produção artística contra-hegemônica para contribuir na formação cultural de todo o MST. Este desafio transcorre pelo desenvolvimento humano em sua forma integral, na formação de valores humanos anti- capitalistas, objetivando a melhoria das formas de vida para a constituição de territórios de resistência. / Abstract: This research proposes to analyze the formative and consolidation processes of the National Collective of Culture of the MST. For this purpose, the aim is to search for the first aesthetic elements related to the initial processes of the historical emergence of the MST, in an effort to elucidate and correlate the struggle for land carried out by the Movement, alongside some of its cultural matrices. The objective is to produce a cultural perspective of the MST, highlighting the counter-hegemonic struggle and the forms of resistance encountered in its territory, as well as searching through the history of the MST for its relationship with Art and Culture. The research focuses more on the period between 2003 and 2010, during the government of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. The intention is to contribute to the reflection upon the path that the MST has taken in the general debate about the ideas of Culture, based on a Marxist approach, and how the National Collective of Culture advanced through the challenge of creating a counter-hegemonic artistic production that contributes to the entire MST. That challenge elapses through human development in its integral form, in the formation of anti- capitalist human values, aiming at the improvement of ways of living for the constitution of territories of resistance. / Resumen: Esta investigación propone analizar los procesos formativos y de consolidación del Colectivo Nacional de Cultura del MST. Para ello, buscamos desde el surgimiento histórico del MST los primeros elementos estéticos en el inicio, con el objetivo de elucidar y correlacionar la lucha por la tierra realizada por el MST con algunas de sus matrices culturales. De esta forma, se plantea el objetivo de un “mirar cultural” al MST, su lucha anti hegemónica y las formas de resistencia en sus territorios, además de buscar en la historia del MST sus relaciones con ideas sobre cultura y arte, en una investigación que pone énfasis en el periodo comprendido entre 2003 y 2010, durante el gobierno de Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Pretendemos contribuir con la reflexión sobre el camino que recorrió el MST en el debate general sobre las ideas de cultura, a partir de un abordaje marxista y cómo su Colectivo Nacional de Cultura avanzó en el desafío de crear una producción artística anti hegemónica, para contribuir con la formación cultural del Movimiento. Este desafío es por el desarrollo humano integral y la formación de valores humanos anticapitalistas, con el objetivo de mejorar las formas de vida en la constitución de territorios de resistencia. / Mestre

abstract: Masculinity has been increasingly recognized as a critical and relatively unexplored area of inquiry in anthropological gender studies. This project seeks to expand anthropological research on masculinity to contemporary American society. Using the case study of a male-centered popular new sport, Mixed Martial Arts (also known as cagefighting) this project integrates theories of embodiment and feminist perspectives to explore how masculinity and masculine hegemony are shaped, contested, and perpetuated in the United States. Using a multi-level framework this project explores: 1) How is masculinity experienced and expressed by Mixed Martial Arts fighters as a form of self-identity? How do their bodies play a role in constructing masculinity? 2) What are the pervasive forms of masculinity associated with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)? Are they truly representative of the sport? 3) Can these pervasive forms of masculinity be seen as hegemonic? How would hegemony operate in relation to individual experience? Using multiple methods to capture multiple points of view was critical to thoroughly examining the complex notion of masculinity. This study employed participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, surveys, photo elicitation, and media content analysis, as each presented particular benefits and allowed for the development a more well-rounded understanding of masculinity within the realm of MMA. This study also situates the rise of MMA and its representations of masculinity within the greater perspective of contemporary American society. By doing so reveals how ideologies of prescribed masculinity do not arise out of a vacuum but in relation to particular economic, social and political contexts. An emphasis of this study was to examine the daily lives of MMA fighters to understand how their participation in what may be regarded as a hypermasculine activity affects their own perceptions of masculinity. In looking at how masculinity is embodied, the gaps and often contradictions between representation and individual experiences are revealed. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of masculinity as both an embodied and relational construct. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2011

abstract: Despite a wealth of academic literature critiquing current tensions within the Fair Trade (FT) movement, very little work has focused on examining the birth and evolution of the FT movement within the broader context of the international political economy (IPE), specifically in reference to the ideological and policy changes that ushered in an era of free trade and deregulated markets for both trade and finance. From such an optic, it is no longer enough to merely question the extent to which the market should be engaged. Rather, one must question whether the engagement of the market strips the movement of its power to affect long term development in local economies. Drawing upon the historical record, this thesis focuses attention on the complexity of the linkages that exist between political ideology, trade policy, and development. While Fair Trade is commonly understood to be a responsive effort to create more equitable trade relations with producers in the least developed countries, less emphasis is placed on understanding the state-centered political structures that contributed to a capitalist push-back and the implementation of today's liberalized trade policy, and yet to do so is absolutely critical if we are to gain a deeper understanding of the limits and constraints of Fair Trade. Full engagement with mainstream markets has led to robust growth in the FT market per annum, yet countries that are heavily engaged with the FT market show little evidence of development or poverty reduction at a macro-level. Thus, Fair Trade must define itself as more than principled opposition to labor exploitation if it is to present itself as a credible instrument of economic development. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Social Justice and Human Rights 2011

An examination of scholarly work on nationalism reveals that the nation is typically defined on the basis of positivistic understandings of human nature or society. Consequently, it is understood, not in term of its own specificity, but in terms of an underlying referent that is thought to engender it. Since the unity of the nation is attributed to a “privileged” cause, the plurality of forms that co-constitute it are underemphasized. Positivist explanations have therefore obfuscated the extent to which “the nation” and “nationalism” come to be diversely imbricated in the social and political fabric, and how the nation comes to be totalized, in light of the plurality of its constitutive forms and subject positions. The present work deconstructs existing theories of nationalism, while seeking to generatively furnish a theory of nationalism that eliminates all reliance on positivism. Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, which sees socio-political blocs as discursive terrains of multiple overdetermined forms and relations, is deployed in these efforts. Therefore, nationalism is understood, not in terms of privileged constituents, but as a variable set of overdetermined “family resemblances,” such as, “the nation,” “the state,” “the military,” “tradition,” etc., that come to represent the national communal totality. These “family resemblances” come to be dispersed variably and unevenly, as privileged nodes in the field of overdetermination, “binding” together differential identities. And since what governs any discursive formation is the uneven play of differences, it follows that a particular identity will have saturated, more than any other, the field of overdetermination and the content of nodal signifiers (e.g., “the nation”) with its narratives, thereby establishing its hegemony. “The nation” can thus be understood as a privileged signifier of historically variable content that, through its general and uneven dispersion, fuses but unevenly privileges, multiple identities into a socio-political bloc. / Graduate / 2019-06-14

Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-04-11T19:25:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Luiz Mirandaseg.pdf: 771975 bytes, checksum: 71d2542a7dff30dbd926d5b97b6c2f64 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Meirelles(rodrigomei@ufba.br) on 2013-05-26T10:53:41Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Luiz Mirandaseg.pdf: 771975 bytes, checksum: 71d2542a7dff30dbd926d5b97b6c2f64 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-26T10:53:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Luiz Mirandaseg.pdf: 771975 bytes, checksum: 71d2542a7dff30dbd926d5b97b6c2f64 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / O presente trabalho estuda o Movimento dos Sem Teto da Bahia (MSTB), de sua origem em 2003 ao seu processo de cisão, resultando na configuração de dois movimentos com concepções e práticas diferenciadas. O movimento surge com grande capacidade de mobilização, ocupando prédios e terrenos considerados sem função social, chamando a atenção do povo, da mídia local e do Estado. Tal configuração se dá na Salvador com um déficit habitacional de mais de 150.000 moradias, com profundas desigualdades sociais e concentração de renda. A composição social dos sem teto é de desempregados, sub-empregados, mães trabalhadoras solteiras, catadores de resíduos sólidos, enfim, toda sorte de excluídos e despossuídos do círculo de produção da mercadoria. É justamente a relação com o Estado, ao longo de sua história, um dos principais divisores de água do MSTB. Se por um lado um campo que se constituiu no movimento defende a autonomia e independência em relação ao Estado, a compreensão da crise da habitação como problema estrutural do capitalismo, defendendo outro modelo de sociedade, outro campo estabelece relação de atrelamento com o Estado, com afinidades com a atual hegemonia política, cultural e econômica da sociedade. Assim, enquanto um campo tem uma posição contra-hegemônica (Campo A), o outro campo se afina com a ordem estabelecida (Campo B). / Salvador

135f. / Submitted by Oliveira Santos Dilzaná (dilznana@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-08-26T15:18:09Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERT_VERSAO_FINAL Thais Brito da Silva.pdf: 617058 bytes, checksum: 966d0431991e10dbe6ab5f440cfa44da (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Portela(anapoli@ufba.br) on 2013-08-26T15:44:04Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERT_VERSAO_FINAL Thais Brito da Silva.pdf: 617058 bytes, checksum: 966d0431991e10dbe6ab5f440cfa44da (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-08-26T15:44:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERT_VERSAO_FINAL Thais Brito da Silva.pdf: 617058 bytes, checksum: 966d0431991e10dbe6ab5f440cfa44da (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / CAPES / Esta pesquisa apresenta uma análise das posições políticas dos movimentos sociais articulados em torno do jornal Brasil de Fato sobre o governo Lula. Por um lado, a respeito de como este governo se relaciona com o bloco de poder e a hegemonia política no Brasil; por outro lado, como se relaciona com estes movimentos e em que medida contribui ou não com processos contra hegemônicos. As questões suscitadas na pesquisa foram desenvolvidas a partir da análise de conteúdo das edições do jornal Brasil de Fato no período de 2003 a 2007, nos meses de janeiro, março, junho, setembro e dezembro de cada ano. Ao todo, foram estudadas 25 edições das primeiras semanas dos meses indicados. O pensamento de Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) e o legado teórico da sua produção intelectual é o referencial teórico principal da análise. Considerando a perspectiva gramsciana que identifica a vida estatal como uma contínua formação e superação de equilíbrios instáveis entre os interesses dos grupos fundamentais e os interesses dos grupos subordinados, o estudo apresenta as posições políticas dos movimentos sociais articulados no jornal Brasil de Fato sobre o governo Lula e coloca problemas e questões relacionados a um cenário de convivência entre alianças de classes, concessões programáticas e tentativas de conciliação de interesses conflitantes empreendidas pelo governo Lula. Ao mesmo tempo, tem-se uma conjuntura identificada, inicialmente, como favorável aos movimentos sociais, que demonstram esperar que o governo realize as mudanças ansiadas pelas classes populares, que faça reformas estruturais, mas é um cenário que vai se mostrando, nas avaliações dos intelectuais que se posicionaram no Brasil de Fato, desestruturador das forças de esquerdas no país. This research presents an analysis over the political facts and acts of social movements during Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's government as presented in Brasil de Fato newspaper. In one hand, is presented how government related with the political hegemony in Brazil. In the other, how does it related with the social movements and in what degree the government contributed or not with counterhegemony processes. That questions developed in this research rose during the analysis of 25 editions of Brasil de Fato newspapers from the first weeks of January, March, June, September and December, from 2003 to 2007. Antonio Gramsci's (1891-1937) theories is the intellectual basis of the analysis. We consider Gramsci perspective that identifies the state life as a continuous training and upgrading of unstable balance between the interests of key groups and interests of subordinate groups, the study presents the political views of social movements in Brazil de Fato newspaper about the Lula government and poses problems and issues related to a scenario of coexistence of class alliances, awards program and attempts to reconcile conflicting interests taken by this government. At the same time, the situation initially identified as favorable to the social movements - that expected the government to make changes yearn for the working classes - to make structural reforms, became – as showed on the evaluations of intellectuals who were stationed in Brasil de Fato - a scenario of destructuring the left a scenario that in the country. / Salvador

This thesis tries to historize the phenomenon of teaching religion in the Czech lands, especially in the period 1950-1956. In the first part of the thesis, the subject of interest is the analysis of the relationship between the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCZ) and the Roman Catholic Church in order to create an appropriate framework for the empirical part. The second part of the thesis describes both the CPCZ strategy in the field of religious education and the concrete social practice associated with their implementation. As a result, the study maps a certain imaginary space between the ideological claim and the daily practice that is created in communication between communist elites, church secretaries, local officials, teachers and directors, church representatives, and believers themselves. The thesis concludes that in socialist education there was a certain effort to use religious teaching in the sense of socialist upbringing. However, since the end of the first half of the 1950s, this effort has been gradually reduced and all signs of the normality of teaching religion should have been reduced to a minimum, but the study shows that local practice has not always achieved this claim. It has always been limited by an effort not to go beyond the "legality" framework that could jeopardize...

The globalization of the English language has rendered both positive and negative impacts to countries around the world. With the ever-increasing pervasiveness of the English language, many non-native-English-speaking (NNES hereafter) people and countries have shown growing interests in teaching and learning English. Some governments of these NNES countries have decided to implement “English” as a mandatory school subject into their compulsory curriculum in order to “connect with the world” and/or to increase their nation’s international image. However, in these NNES countries, English often does not hold official capacity and is taught as a foreign language (EFL). Although English (language) education can bring positive changes to a nation, it is not free of problems. Essentially, English education influences many NNES countries and their citizens in sociocultural, economic, and educational arenas. Some scholars, such as Tsuda (2008), assert that the “problems” and impacts are inseparable from “English language hegemony.” My country of origin, Taiwan, is one of the EFL and NNES countries that implements English education in our nation’s compulsory education. In recent decades, communicative-based English educational approaches have received great support from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. In an EFL setting, such as that in Taiwan, the said educational approaches have complicated English education even further. In particular, the communicative-based approaches focus on teaching and practicing English oral proficiency, which average Taiwanese citizens do not need in their daily lives. Many Taiwanese people experience identity struggles and self-esteem issues because of their less-than-desirable English oral proficiency. In addition to Taiwanese, native-English-speaking (NES) teachers who are recruited to teach English in Taiwan are an integral part of the Taiwanese English education. As a Taiwanese citizen and an intercultural communication scholar, I recognize the intricate complexity of Taiwanese English education and am compelled to examine it in this dissertation as it has not received much attention in the discipline of Communication Studies. In this dissertation, I employ Identity Management Theory (IMT) (Cupach & Imahori, 1993; Imahori & Cupach, 2005) as the primary theoretical framework to examine Taiwanese English education. Particularly, I utilize IMT to study the identity construction and management (such as identity freezing), facework strategies, and intercultural relationship development among NES teachers, Taiwanese English teachers, and Taiwanese students. To carry out this research, I employ critical complete-member ethnography (CCME) (Toyosaki, 2011) as the central research methodology, because I see myself as a complete-member researcher with my research participants. I share complete-memberships with them in nuanced, complex, and contextual manners. Methodologically, CCME entails ethnography of communication, autoethnography, and critical ethnography; all are informative of my data collection methods, including ethnographic participant observation, ethnographic interview, and autoethnographic journaling inside and outside of English classes at different Taiwanese universities. These three methods helped me gather rich data for this research. To analyze and discuss the data, I employed thematic analysis (Owen, 1984) and critical examinations of consensual and conflictual theorization (Fiske, 1991; Toyosaki, 2011). Both methods render complex findings. In particular, the analysis and discussion reveal and explain (a) how the research participants manage cultural identities through marking scope, salience, and intensity with different English educational participants, (b) how they apply facework strategies to cope with identity freezing experiences, and (c) how they establish and maintain intercultural relationships with other English educational participants as they transition across different relational phases of their relationships. I deliver the findings thematically in an analytical and narrative-like manner, as I layer and weave together the field notes, the interview responses, and my autoethnographic journaling. Ultimately, I argue that English hegemony has glocalized in Taiwanese English education and is manifested through research participants’ identity management politics and their intercultural relationships. Essentially, my research shows that identity management politics is inseparable from the power differentials and inequalities imbued in Taiwanese English education. Voluntarily and/or involuntarily, the research participants and I have normalized English hegemony, embodied its presence in our knowledge production and consumption, and given English/Western ideologies consent to dominate our communicative choices, our (sub)consciousness, and our intercultural relationships. Aside from perpetuating English hegemony, I have also observed resistance against the said hegemonic impacts inside and outside of the English classrooms. In a power-laden intercultural communication context, such as Taiwanese English education, critical analyses and examinations play essential roles in revealing the identity management politics and power differentials embedded in the (mythically) “innocent” English classrooms. I further recognize how this research serves as an example to other EFL and NNES countries. In due course, I conclude that my research makes contributions to the scholarships of intercultural communication and to English education in Taiwan and beyond.

LUCENA, Milene Madeiro de. Na trilha dos Kariri: implicações dos processos de comunicação na disseminação dos sistemas agroflorestais por camponeses/as cearenses. 2012. 159 f. : Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Ceará, Pró-reitoria de Pesquisa e Pós-graduação, Programa Regional de Pós-graduação em desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente, Fortaleza, 2012. / Submitted by Nádja Goes (nmoraissoares@gmail.com) on 2016-04-04T15:32:37Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_dis_mmlucena.pdf: 2811591 bytes, checksum: a671b8183ccc9ac423d03b214d9371f6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Nádja Goes(nmoraissoares@gmail.com) on 2016-04-04T15:33:08Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_dis_mmlucena.pdf: 2811591 bytes, checksum: a671b8183ccc9ac423d03b214d9371f6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T15:33:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_dis_mmlucena.pdf: 2811591 bytes, checksum: a671b8183ccc9ac423d03b214d9371f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Under the emergence of thinking about the challenges and problems related to social and environmental sustainability in semiarid Ceará and its principal focus the role of communication processes in the environmental context, this paper investigates the case of the spread of agroforestry systems( SAF's) production among peasant families in Cariri in southern Ceará. The starting point of the study are Kariri records about the people whose culture is marked by a spirituality deeply rooted in the relationship with nature, passed by the processes of oral communication. The / the peasants / as agroforestry today are seen here as the inheritors of this culture. In light of this reality, we investigate the complex web of mediations that the relationship between communication , culture and politics articulated, so that communication is seen from the sociality, recognizing the strategic importance of communication in the affirmation of identity and autonomy of people, shifting the axis of the discussion of the means for mediation. Thus, we discuss how the processes of communication about the spread of the SAF's for peasants/Cariri in the community and contribute to ecological sustainability of the households surveyed and their natural environment. / Sob a emergência de pensar os desafios e problemas relacionados à sustentabilidade socioambiental no semiárido cearense e tendo como foco principal o papel dos processos comunicativos nesse contexto ambiental, o presente trabalho investiga o caso da disseminação dos Sistemas Agroflorestais (SAF’s) de produção entre famílias camponesas na região do Cariri, no Sul do Ceará. O ponto de partida do estudo são os registros sobre o Povo Kariri, cuja cultura é marcada por uma espiritualidade entranhada na relação com a natureza, repassada por processos de comunicação oral. Os/as camponeses/as agroflorestais de hoje são vistos aqui como herdeiros dessa cultura. À luz dessa realidade, investiga-se a complexa trama de mediações que a relação entre comunicação, cultura e política articula, de maneira que a comunicação é vista a partir da socialidade, partindo do reconhecimento da importância estratégica da comunicação no processo de afirmação da identidade e autonomia dos povos, deslocando o eixo do debate dos meios para as mediações. Dessa forma, discute-se como os processos de comunicação em torno da disseminação dos SAF’s por camponeses/as no Cariri contribuem para sustentabilidade comunitária e ecológica das famílias pesquisadas e do seu ambiente natural.

Os conflitos e debates sobre usos, propriedade e gestão da água ganharam evidência nos processos de privatização de serviços de abastecimento nos anos 1990 e, atualmente, aparecem em outros espaços de luta social. Os distintos temas relacionados à água, no entanto, são usualmente trabalhados desarticuladamente, o que contribui para a disseminação de imprecisões teórico-conceituais que refletem as lutas sociais as concepções emergentes: o bem comum é um conceito vivo cujas imprecisões contribuem para sua cooptação pela hegemonia organizada por oligopólios que concentram as tecnologias de apropriação da água. Esse trabalho propõe uma análise dos diferentes temas da água a partir da articulação dos conceitos de metabolismo social, valor e luta de classes, em Marx; e das concepções emergentes nas lutas contra privações no acesso à água. Realiza, pela abstração, uma crítica ontológica da apropriação capitalista da água, que indica suas contradições e as esclarece desde sua gênese. A crítica ontológica é um movimento que mexe com todas as dimensões do conhecimento (epistemológicas, teóricas e metodológicas) e que reproduz o concreto, a sociedade capitalista em suas múltiplas determinações, pela abstração. Recria, dessa forma, essa realidade a partir de seu núcleo fundamental, o valor. As formas de apropriação da água na sociedade capitalista são organizadas pela produção de mais valor em uma dinâmica de luta de classes: a água é natureza incorporada na criação de mais valor. A análise do tema da água, nesse sentido, deve identificar os interesses de classe em disputa e os reflexos dessa disputa nos usos da água e nas formas de vida. Nessa perspectiva, se percebe que as formulações sobre a água como bem econômico, ao desconectar o valor-de-uso da água do valor atribuído pelo dinheiro, engendram uma relação fetichizada, na qual os mecanismos de gestão são separados das práticas de apropriação e integrados aos valores legitimados pelo capital. Ocultam, nesse processo, os aspectos desiguais e destrutivos das práticas de apropriação da água. O consenso ativo conquistado por essa hegemonia se manifesta na estratégia de ONGs, iniciativas políticas e análises acadêmicas enredadas em armadilhas teóricas e políticas, que aparece na confusão conceitual entre a água como bem público e bem comum. Inspirado em lutas sociais que alcançam a necessária crítica ontológica das relações capitalistas, defendo que uma concepção da água como bem comum está na afirmação éticoprática de que os frutos da natureza pertencem à humanidade. Pertencem, portanto, a todos os que deles necessitam para viver. O trabalho propõe, de forma conclusiva, uma compreensão universalizante da organização: a apropriação da natureza e da água é também a organização do metabolismo social que, na sociedade capitalista, se fundamenta na extração de mais valor pela classe capitalista em todos os momentos da vida. As concepções que emergem nas lutas sociais esboçam novas formas de organizar o metabolismo social, nas quais o critério para a apropriação da água e da natureza é o bem comum, um princípio ético e universal: a reprodução da vida humana. / Conflicts and debates surrounding water uses, properties and management became evident with the privatization processes in the nineties. Nowadays, these issues have appeared in further social struggles. Even though, the various issues related to water are usually approached in a non-articulated way, and that contributes to the dissemination of theoretical and conceptual imprecisions and contradictions, with consequences in social struggles that oppose capitalist appropriation of water and the concepts that emerge on it, like the common good. The common good is a living concept, but its theoretical and conceptual imprecisions contribute to its cooptation by a hegemonic bloc organized by transnational corporations which concentrate the technologies of water appropriation. This dissertation proposes an analysis of different issues related to water through the articulation of the concepts of social metabolism, value and class struggles in Marx; and conceptions that emerge in social struggles. It makes, through abstraction, an ontological critique of capitalist appropriation of water that indicates its contradictions and clarifies its genesis. The ontological critique moves every dimensions of knowledge (epistemological, theoretical and methodological) and reproduces the concrete, capitalist society in its multiple determinations. It recreates this reality through its fundamental nucleus, value. The different forms of water appropriation in a capitalist society are organized for the production of surplus value in a class struggle dynamic: water is nature incorporated in the creation of surplus value. The analysis of water issues, in this sense, must identify the class interests in dispute and also the reflection of this dispute in water uses and ways of life. In this perspective, it becomes evident that the formulations of water as an economic good, by disconnecting use-value from value attributed by money, engender a fetishized relation in which management mechanisms are separated from appropriation practices and integrated to values legitimated by capital. They conceal, in this process, unequal and destructive aspects of water appropriation. The active consensus conquered by this hegemony is manifested in the strategy of NGOs, political initiatives and academic analysis limited by concepts like governance and civil society as opposed to the State, and in the conceptual confusion between water as a public good and as a common good. Inspired in social struggles that reach the necessary ontological critique of capitalist relations, I argue that a conception of water as a common good is the ethical and practical affirmation that the gifts of nature belong to humanity: they belong to all who need it for living. This dissertation proposes, as a conclusion, a universalizing comprehension of organization: the appropriation of nature and water is also the organization of social metabolism which is founded, in capitalist society, in the extraction of surplus value by the capitalist class in every moment of life. Water as a common good is a conception that emerge in social struggles that aim at new ways of organizing social metabolism in which the criteria to appropriate water and nature is an ethical and universal principle: the reproduction of human life.