Street children and youth
Cultures of participation: young people’s engagement in the public sphere in Brazil
Participation in Rio de Janeiro
Authors:
U.M. Butler; M. Princeswal
Publisher:
LSE Research Online, 2008
Recently there has been increased enthusiasm for the participation of children and young people in various sectors of society. This has resulted in an emerging critique of the use and abuse of terms such as ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’ particularly as found within the international development sector. This research tackles these issues in a qualitative way, seeking to understand young people’s engagement in the public sphere of the city of Rio de Janeiro and what the authors term their ‘cultures of participation’. The research examines some of the initiatives in which young people today participate: community organisations, cultural groups, social movements and the historical processes that help us understand their current configuration.
The authors provide a better understanding of how young people actually participate in specific projects, as well as the meaning and impact they attach to such participation. Besides the participation in ‘projects’ the authors also attempt to understand what young people participate in more broadly and what they consider participation to be. The report considers the historical process of participation, the new work culture and DIY culture or participation. The following conclusions are highlighted:
- participation always occurs within a historical context that offers different opportunities, forms and themes that come to provoke it. At the same time, each historical period offers challenges to participation, some more explicitly than others, as seen in years of the military dictatorship in Brazil
- regarding the younger generation a new work culture offers new anxieties and pressures that may restrict the possibilities for participation
- there are new ways of thinking about the political, such as through the New Social Movements that focus on feminism, sexual diversity, ecology, the fight for land. But there is a need to be mindful of the politics that permeates around cultural activities and groups around which young people may also congregate.
