Knowledge, participation and power in participatory budgeting - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Danilo R. Streck

E – mail: dstreck@unisinos.br

Knowledge, participation and power in participatory budgeting

Contributions to a pedagogy of power

¢ The assumption is that these three dimensions of life in

society are intrinsically interlinked, with multidirectional arrows.

¢ Maybe participation will produce knowledge that is

translated into another relationship with power or another way of exercising it. But it may also be that a given understanding of power creates the opportunity for participation and promotes emancipatory knowledge.

AN EXPERIMENT IN PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

REGIONAL COUNCILS FOR DEVELOPMENT (CONSELHOS REGIONAIS DE DESENVOLVIMENTO [COREDES])

ORGANIZATION OF THE STATE SYSTEM OF POPULAR AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

STAGES OF DECISIONS OF SYSTEM OF POPULAR

AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

¢ “One must detect the realities that can be

potentiated, but these realities are not necessarily prescribed in a theoretical corpus; rather, they will depend on what do I want to know for, which is an axiological or ideological ‘for what’.” (Zemelman)

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF POWER, OR: THE

RECONFIGURATION OF POWER RELATIONS

¢ Power: a social relationship regulated by an

unequal exchange (Santos)

¢ “Repressive” and “productive” function (Foucault) ¢ Power as a dispersed force and/or within

structural spaces

STRUCTURAL SPACES AND POWER

¢ People (!), just to confirm what Diego said here, the

reason for the distance from what happens in our

• town. First: it is badly disseminated, not everyone

has access to the newspaper at school, at the school it has been three months since we last have seen it. Second; most of those who are here get up early, to go catch a bus to Porto Alegre, Esteio. They go to work in other places because here there are no jobs for them. So they leave the dormitory town and then they come to school, go home, lie down and

• sleep. (Inajara, teacher, Nova Santa Rita).

¢ And third, this is how I think: one can never

disbelieve politics, one must never be ashamed of saying: I want it like this and I think in this way. The voter’s registration card is the most powerful weapon we have, regardless of a political party, of who is going to run for election or not. One must never lose motivation, one must still believe in people, because as soon as one does not believe in

• thers, one does not even have to live, because one

lives a life through dreams, goals, and one goes after

• them. (Inajara, teacher, Nova Santa Rita).

¢ It is not, for them [the coordinators], an easy role to

play, having to explain things in all the regions. People think that things happen from one month to the next, or from one year to the next, but they have the pedagogical patience that one must have in terms of government, in terms of Regional Council for Development, in terms of the municipal

• administration. (Delmar Steffen, president of the

Regional Council for Development of the Paranhana Valley).

¢ The system of participation itself, with a large

variety of “small boxes”, makes it difficult for citizens to get in the discussions of the larger issues

• f society.

¢ Digital Office; ¢ Council for Economic Development; ¢ Regional Councils for Development; ¢ Municipal Councils for Economic and Social

Development.

¢ Others

Opacity of power relations in society

RESEARCH, KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

¢ “Those two, the boy and the girl over there, are from

Unisinos, which is doing a research work that is going to write the history of popular participation in

• ur state, ranging from the participatory budget to

the other processes. They are performing a survey, they are going to leave it here, a questionnaire for each one ... to be able to tell the story of this process which is a very rich one in our state. We are in a pioneer state, a state that has a history in the participation process ...” (Pedro Schneider, Regional Coordinator of the Sinos Valley).

Collective self-reflection (Eikeland) Theoretical Discourse X Pratical Discourse (Palshaugen)

NOTES FOR A PEDAGOGY OF POWER

¢ Student: It is time for exams and to deliver papers, and

we cannot stay around here wasting time.

¢ State government representative: You are not wasting

time, you are gaining time, you are gaining learning. We are discussing democracy and citizenship here, besides I think that what you are doing here is not a waste of time. I know that it is exam time, but it is a

• process. (Excerpts from the municipal assembly in Nova

Santa Rita).

¢ Another student: Information occurs only here

downtown, in neighborhoods like Sanga Funda and Berto Cirio there is no information, because sound- equipped cars... that sort of thing. I live in Sanga Funda and never heard about it, never heard, only got to know about it today through our teacher, Sandro.

SOME REQUIREMENTS OF A PEDAGOGY OF POWER

¢ Training and equipping of citizens to read the world; ¢ Recognize in the local space a privileged place of

education;

¢ Situating local topics in a global perspective; ¢ Participation in decision-making bodies and public

spaces for discussion.