A experiência educativa da gestão de um banco comunitário na periferia de São Carlos

Abstract

This study s objective was to investigate the educative processes derived from the social practice of administering the communitarian bank Banco Comunitário Nascente, localized and actuating at Jardim Gonzaga, peripheral urban neighborhood at the city of São Carlos/SP/Brazil. The specificity of this research is the proposition to problematize both the work experience in a Solidary Economy enterprise and the educational processes which are proper to this work experience due to the normative contrast which it establishes in relation to capitalist productive logic and, specially, due to its relation with current conjuncture of brazilian peripheral urban communities and the interfaces with their social phenomena. Considering this, using theorethical references of social education and urban sociology, our starting point was understanding that respecting people alterity and the different characteristics of human to be and to act , and considering the context of their material and symbolic relations that organize a common social and cultural reality, the many social practices that these people and groups of people promote lead to their own human capacity for life in society. The coherence between our understanding of the reality and our ethical and political compromise with our research subjects lead us to chose the path of participant research, a social study methodology which emphasizes the role of methodological acquaintanceship, the acknowledgement of popular knowledge legitimacy and the dialogical construction of the knowledge during the scientific researching process. Our research procedures included the usage of secondary data about historical and socio-economical aspects of Jardim Gonzaga and specific literature regarding the study s theme; primary data were also collected through field work and its registration elaborated in field diaries. Data analysis used research techniques inspired at phenomenology which permitted us to interpret the systematically registered descriptions from the field diaries considering the questions brought by the investigation. Analysis categories delimited referred: a) to workers autonomy at Banco Nascente to perform required activities as credit agents walk with their own feet ; b) to presence or lacking of relations of reciprocity perceived by them at the collective work administration thinking about solidary economy principles ; c) to their expectations regarding the actuation of the communitarian bank and its influence over the improvement of community s quality of life hope to change . The discussion of these categories reveal that those who worked at the solidary enterprise learned to relate and confront the normative principles of Solidary Economy to their own work practices, as well as to notice and question epistemological and sociological conditions through which the limits and possibilities of their collective and individual work administering a communitarian bank were expressed.