Extended Action-Research Community: building knowledge and practices in daily and affective dialogue with the territory

ABSTRACT

The article aims to discuss the lessons learned from the Extended Action-Research Community (CAP) in favelas in Rio de Janeiro, as a contribution to conceptual and methodological discussions in the field of Public Health, from the perspective of Emancipatory Health Promotion and Popular Education. With the CAPs, we seek to respond to one of the main challenges of qualitative research in favelas: a methodological construction that makes it possible to understand the way the residents of these territories experience and respond to health situations. The territory, as an integrative category of analysis to understand the processes of social determination of health, requires CAP to configure itself with a network of interdisciplinary dialogues and between different social agents. The analysis of the documentary material base produced in the period 2003-2020, using the systematization of experience as a research methodology, resulted in the identification of three axes that structure the CAP method: 1) everyday life as the dynamics gear of CAP; 2) territory and the social agents of dialogue; and 3) artisanal tools to collaborate with the territory. Based on these axes, we conclude that the CAP method is a network for knowledge production and dialogue between people-places-territories.

KEYWORDS
Health promotion; Popular education; Shared production of knowledge; Extended ActionResearch Community; Slum.

RESUMO

O artigo objetivou discutir os aprendizados com as Comunidades Ampliadas de Pesquisa-Ação (CAP) em favelas do Rio de Janeiro, como contribuição às discussões conceituais e metodológicas no campo da saúde coletiva, na perspectiva da Promoção Emancipatória da Saúde e da Educação Popular. Com as CAP, como foi sintetizada esta metodologia, buscou-se responder a um dos principais desafios de pesquisas qualitativas em favelas: uma construção metodológica que possibilite a compreensão da forma por meio da qual os moradores desses territórios experimentam e respondem às situações de saúde. O território, como categoria integrativa de análise para compreender os processos de determinação social da saúde, impõe à CAP se configurar como uma rede de diálogos interdisciplinares e entre diferentes agentes sociais. A análise da base material documental produzida no período 2003-2020, utilizando a sistematização de experiência como metodologia de pesquisa, resultou na identificação de três eixos que estruturam o método CAP, metodologia assim denominada: 1) o cotidiano como engrenagem da dinâmica da CAP; 2) o território e os agentes sociais do diálogo; e 3) as ferramentas artesanais de co-laboração com o território. A partir desses eixos, conclui-se ser o método CAP uma rede de produção de conhecimentos e interlocução entre pessoas-lugares-territórios.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE
Promoção da saúde; Educação popular; Produção compartilhada de conhecimentos; Comunidade Ampliada de Pesquisa-Ação; Favelas.

Introduction

One of the greatest challenges of qualitative research developed in the field of public health in the territories of favelas and urban peripheries lies in developing the methodology that, in addition to incorporating Freire’s dialogicity, allows us to understand how the residents of these places experience and respond to health situations, produced by contextualized processes of health determination.

The Extended-Action Research Community (CAP) Method, a doctoral research theme developed from 2018 to 2020, is one of the paths followed to respond to this challenge, contributing to distinct experiences, developed in several fields of knowledge. A previous reflection highlighted how the CAP dialogues with the propositions of the Italian Workers’ Movement, as well as with authors in the field of occupational health, who propose the extended research communities based on the French experience of ergology. Furthermore, CAP was originated based on the idea of an expanded community of peers, as a strategy of quality assurance in the production of knowledge, as an epistemological basis of post-normal science. In the same debate, the challenges of developing this method were presented in territories such as the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where multiple forms of violence overlap and some limits to the expression and social and political participation of the population are evident¹.

It is noteworthy that the challenge of the shared construction of knowledge necessarily implies the challenge of democracy and ethics, and, in this sense, it is urgent that reflections on the processes of social determination of health connect the sanitary, environmental, political, and cultural dimensions related to social inequalities, deficits of democracy, and asymmetries of power that mark, in particular, the territories of favelas². To meet these challenges, we further approach Freire’s perspective. As stated in the reflection mentioned above, we find in Paulo Freire’s concepts of culture, dialogicity, and unprecedented viability the political-pedagogical bases that give meaning to the CAP of the Territorial Laboratory of Manguinhos³: the Community as a movement to promote autonomy and individual and collective freedom, as a space to produce knowledge about the territory and training for the emancipation of everybody, both residents and researchers¹.

This text explains how the challenge of knowledge development has been faced, through the CAP implemented in the territories of favelas, addressing, in particular, daily life. One of the research questions guides this text: which strategies, dynamics, activities, and productions developed by CAP constitute the dialogic movements that particularize the methodology?

This article presents some results of a doctoral research that was developed in the period 2018-2020, integrated into a research and innovation project (CEP/ENSP under CAAE No. 97805218.5.0000.5240). The database of this work are the experiments conducted in CAP in different contexts, which is the fieldwork of this project, together with the documentary collection - technical reports, field diaries, reports of workshops and seminars, and academic publications - and the resulting of experience with research and cooperation activities developed in the favela of Manguinhos, in Rio de Janeiro, since 2003³.

In order to search for the best path that responds to the particularity of the research, focused on a critical reflection of CAP, we used the methodology of the systematization of experience consolidated by Oscar Jara⁴ in the field of Popular Education, whose principle ratifies the experience itself as the starting point for the production of knowledge. Jara seeks to reinforce the idea of systematization as a critical interpretation, which comes from a complex effort to locate, describe, classify, analyze, and reflect on what is experienced. Considering that an unprecedented and unrepeatable process was built with particular experience, it should be used, precisely because of its originality, as a source of learning, and lessons should be learned from that and shared. In addition,

Systematizing experiences, in short, is a privileged instrument so that we can accomplish all of it as a challenge to create unprecedented events, but full of meaning⁴⁽⁵⁷⁾.

Therefore, the results of the analysis, discussed in this article, reflect lessons expressed in the form of the three axes that structure the CAP Method: 1) daily life as a gear of the dynamics of CAP; 2) the territory and the social agents of dialogue; and 3) the artisanal tools to collaborate with the territory. Such axes are the fundamental dimensions of the operationalization of CAP as a methodological device of shared knowledge development in favelas and urban peripheries, capable of incorporating in their research dynamics the problems, limit situations, and the new viable ones experienced by residents, as well as by the research team itself, in dialogue with them. At the same time, to respond to the challenges of fieldwork, it expands its range of dialogues on a craftsmanship path, using Mills⁵ expression, built on the dialogue between different areas of knowledge in which they stand out, especially: the contributions of philosophy, which has been reflecting on daily life in Benjamin⁶ and Heller⁷; anthropology, which, in general, focuses on the observation of life in such territories⁸, using everyday life as a scale of analysis; sociological studies focused on the sociability of common life^9-11; critical geography, present in studies on daily life and multi-territoriality^12,13; and popular education, which contributes to thinking about the dialogic process forged in everyday life.

The three axes mentioned are presented and discussed here as a reflection aimed to share the mode of operationalization of CAP. Thus, the principle of the method of experience systematization is affirmed, revealing the knowledge and lessons learnt from the experience systematization.

We show these axes, which are principles of the CAP method, arguing how daily life configures the main gear of the CAP, and then analyzing the CAP as a network of agents and relationships constituted in the territory. Finally, we present the main working tools of CAP, which confer movement to it and enable dialogicity, even in limit situations of vulnerability.

Thus, we sought to contribute to the methodological discussions in the field of collective health, from the perspective of Emancipatory Health Promotion (PES)¹⁴. This perspective is referenced in the approaches to the social determination of health and popular education, whose conceptual bases were mentioned in the previous text¹⁴; as well as with the reflections on participatory research in the urban context of favelas and a daily life with territories in intense movements and dynamics. CAP is also understood as an interdisciplinary contribution to give new significance to participation, as one of the central pillars of health promotion, inscribed in the National Health Promotion Policy (PNaPS)¹⁵.

Daily life as the Engine of the Dynamics of the Extended Action-Research Community

Daily life as a gear of the CAP Method is expressed in two dimensions: in the researcher’s work, where daily life is constituted as a space-time dialogue with the territory, and in the daily life of the territory, where invisible and silenced processes are inscribed, which often point to critical events⁸.

Lindón¹⁶⁽⁴¹⁾, in recovering Lefebvre’s idea of daily life “as the 24-hour plot of any day and any subject”, leads us to think of daily life not only as the place of action and the space of social reproduction but also as a place of transformation, the center of historical happening⁷. In this sense, daily life taken as a space of micropolitics, a space-time of interaction with the territory, can favor the elaboration of a comprehensive view of the processes of health determination. It articulates the “fragments of the history of the world and society”, that is, the structural dimensions that produce and reproduce in the territory, with the aid of local social agents, making it possible to establish the relationships between the micro-macro dimensions and the “emergence of the components of everyday life” that produce health^12,17.

Similarly, Martins states that we find innovative social production in everyday actions. Thus, according to the author, we are attentive to rediscover the historicity of action and praxis in the invisibilities of daily life and understand everyday processes and their relationships with deep and dated, lasting, and hidden social structures. A daily life that is fragmentary, fleeting, episodic, space of the instant, of the event⁹. Such dimensions that emerge from the residents’ narratives reveal invisibilities in the processes of health and disease production and therefore are a strategic space for what Santos calls sociology of absences¹¹.

The apprehension of daily life allows us to understand the plurality of historical and social agents and the multiplicity of spaces in which political action takes place. It also allows us to think about the experience and cultural, political, and ideological facts identified as instituting the social movement and popular knowledge.

In the dialogue with the territory, daily life is presented as the instituting space in which the possibilities and impossibilities of producing health and life emerge. An invisible and complex daily life with multiple vulnerabilities and powers, which emerge in the residents’ practices and narratives, in the different shared spaces of dialogue⁹.

For research in these territories - whose dynamics are commonly defined only by researcher and dictated by academic time and the demand of their projects - incorporating the issues brought by its residents and organizations that work in it points to new research problems. Craftsmanship, then, means incorporating new themes and inventing research techniques and approaches adjusted to daily, changing, and even dangerous nature of these new themes⁵.

The centrality of daily life in the process of operating a CAP occurs because of two aspects. The first has to do with the fact that the territory is the unit of analysis. Daily life is the privileged lens to observe the experiences, positions, and views of the social agents with whom they relate, with the residents being central subjects of this dialogue. This means that the focus is on situations, challenges, and narratives that refer to daily life to trigger problematizations. The other aspect is related to the work of CAP itself, considering strategies, dynamics, activities, and systematizations/syntheses that were conceived to develop knowledge about a given problem situation proposed by the territory. Thus, for CAP, daily life represents the space-time of approximation with the thematic universe inscribed in the territory and, at the same time, the space of knowledge production in a dialogic perspective, in which the exercise of equality and alterity are sought as principles of the emancipatory practice^3,12.

Daily life as a gear in the dynamics of CAP means that the work process of the research is impregnated by the reality of the territory, incorporating its problems, the events that impact the lives of residents, and also its challenges. In addition, it points to the need for methodological readiness as taught by Martins⁹.

The territory and its social agents: establishing an Extended Action-Research Community

Faced with the challenge of developing a comprehensive view of a problem situation, contemplating how this situation is distributed in different spaces and is experienced by the various social agents of the territory is a fundamental task for CAPs.

This implies observing how the structural, social, cultural, and symbolic dimensions are expressed in terms of the territorialization of the problem, configuring a multiplicity of territories or dimensions in the same territory. In other words, it is about observing the relationality and spatiality of the problems that different agents or social groups experience due to their socioeconomic and cultural conditions, their insertion, and relations with the territory¹³.

Therefore, interlocution and mediation take place at different times and involve a diversity of social agents, in the daily relationship with the territory. The assumption is to incorporate into the CAP process the social agents of the territory that contain some central characteristics: being old residents, working on social projects, developing social works or working in collectives in the territory. The former are differentiated by the fact that they accumulate knowledge about the local history and changes in the territory, especially with regard to public policies, as well as about the different causes that give rise to the problem. Those involved in social or collective work stand out for the knowledge produced from their work or local action, establishing a regular dialogue with supralocal agents, such as health, education, and social assistance professionals, social forums of the city, representatives of human rights councils, and academic groups¹⁸. They are also those who maintain closer contact with the residents of the territory, in their daily experience; who identify the specificities of the problems in terms of their territorialization, that is, at the level at which the problem is configured - individual, family or by place of residence -, as well as their potential causes. The daily listening of the territory as a whole allows for the definition of a problem situation in a given context and the beginning of the process of a CAP, through the gradual incorporation of residents.

The group that is in charge of the cap movements, named Núcleo CAP or CAP Center, consists of people who, in daily dialogue with the territory, are responsible for the initial discussions, planning, organization, and evaluation of all actions. This Center is composed not only of researchers and residents of the territory, but also of people from other places who, through their experiences, participate, for example, as fieldwork coordinators. It also includes health and education professionals working in the territories, who are incorporated into the project because they are references to the theme about which a research or intervention is being implemented.

Of fundamental importance for the development of the CAP process, the constitution of the CAP Center in the territory involves an intense dialogic process with the residents, identified with what Bourdieu calls “practical analysts”^10(591), a kind of local specialists, and with professionals working in the territory. This dialogue is not only about the theme to produce knowledge, but also regarding the possibilities of participation in the Center in terms of experiences and knowledge about the problem situation and personal availability, among others, always respecting the principle of autonomy.

For this, the different insertions in the territory and experiences of these practical analysts are central to the preliminary systematization of the problem situation. They allow for a prior mapping of the problem and the identification of its causes, from the structural to the different forms in which it manifests itself. This results in a kind of spatialization, which makes it possible to identify the modes of expression of the problem in the territory and the social agents directly or indirectly involved, which, with their different points of view, can contribute to the reflections and systematization in the production of knowledge on the subject in the discussions of a CAP.

The Center procedurally defines strategies and dynamics of approaches and dialogues, according to the personal possibilities and the contexts of the territory, using individual conversations, face-to-face or WhatsApp meetings, phone calls, etc. Then, a network of dialogue is created, adding several social agents to the process in the mobilization for the meetings and workshops of collective discussion of the theme. This effort involves listening, negotiations, and changes, based on the identification of issues that approximate or cause divergences, including setbacks in decisions previously taken.

Although CAP has this central core, the process involves many other participants. A workshop organized by CAP, for example, to discuss the problem situation selected or the results of this discussion, will include several people who are not part of the Center. In addition, it is also common for participants in some activities of CAP, such as the workshop itself, to express interest in the action research work and to integrate the research as a whole.

In short, CAP is constituted in the territory around a network of daily relationships with residents and workers, who accumulate knowledge resulting from lived experience about the place. The methodological design of CAP is not given by quantitative sample, it does not focus on a certain number of people, but rather on those who have knowledge about the place, because of their position due to the time of residence and circulation in different spaces in the territory and in the city, and those who adopt a view of the situation from their experience, having experienced the problem in its limit. It is also important to avoid invitations from organizations and people who are, by their structural or conjuncture nature, more interested in competing for positions than listening and establishing a dialogue with the collective, in a process of inter and self-learning. In this sense, the production of knowledge, and its expansion, does not occur by maximizing views, but by producing a comprehensive view, considering the different points of view of those who participate in a process of knowledge production on a given theme³.

Field visits, workshops and the means and media of communication: the artisanal tools to collaborate with the territory

From the perspective of the CAP methodology, the tools are forms of work that are being engendered to enable dialogic communication with social agents in the daily routine of the shared production of knowledge.

In fact, many of the tools already adopted in qualitative research are reinvented. They are re-signified, as their meanings for the expansion of dialogue are discussed. Also, it is possible to learn with the residents the informal side of the work process, for example, through dynamics that favor the approximation, communication, and production of knowledge, based on what Bourdieu calls the construction of spaces of points of views¹⁰. The three main tools of CAP are shown here: field visits, workshops, and media.

The importance of walking through the territory in field visits, in the process of a CAP, lies in the potentiality of direct dialogue with people in the streets and alleys and even in their homes, whether they are simple residents, leaders or those who work in the locality. This allows you to see closely the problem and its causes. The displacement of researchers to where the people are, in order to meet them and dialogue in their places of residence, opens doors to establish bonds of trust and to interview in an observational situation, in which one has access to more relaxed testimonials, and to images of the locality. It also means reaffirming that we are together, walking alongside, knowing some of the risks and challenges that residents live in their daily lives. For example, in January 2014, when visiting one of the places in Manguinhos, within the scope of a participatory evaluation project of PAC Favelas, a resident talked to us and said: “no one talks to the kids, you were the only ones”. This is the purpose of the field visits: to talk to the ‘kids’, the common residents - the subjects of CAP’s dialogue, whose voice is silenced or made invisible.

In a similar situation, it was possible to listen to the report of a resident in another location. Involved in so many problems, including the open sewer that led her to buy spring water to drink, as she did not have the courage to drink the water from the hydro company, she ended up losing her job. In this conversation, it was possible to witness the invisibility of many disease production processes in Manguinhos - the stress and hypertension caused by the living conditions reported by the resident. Being in the place of the event, it possible to have access to situations made invisible by official data systems. It is only possible to evaluate them when one dialogues directly with people who are exposed to these problems in their daily lives.

Another fundamental tool is the workshop. It is the main strategy to gather, confront, and establish dialogues between different types of knowledge and perspectives. The discussion workshop is the most important activity of a CAP, because it triggers the debate between the different views and experiences on the theme in question in the territory. It is even possible to develop a CAP and study a problem without going through the territory, but it is not feasible to elaborate it comprehensively without the debate between the different points of view of those who are involved and who have experience with this problem.

The dialogue with popular education has allowed us to conceive such workshops not only as a tool capable of producing knowledge and responses to health problems that involve multiple knowledge and experiences, but also as a formative space for all participants, rescuing Freire’s principle of promoting autonomy. The workshop is a privileged collective space for dialogue, which promotes and favors critical reflection and is, therefore, a powerful space for the exchange and recovery of experiences, as well as for the regain of knowledge by residents. It is also, in the opposite sense, a space for humanization and expansion of knowledge for researchers, because it is a space where life conditions and health situations are confronted and reworked collectively, as a result of research, living and being in a given territory¹.

There are three components that make a workshop fulfill its role as the main activity of a PAC: the participants, the reception, and the dynamics and mediation. Regarding the participants, although it has been discussed previously, it is worth noting how relevant is the participation of dissonant voices in relation to the theme and the care in not having any form of hierarchy among the participants.

The reception is fundamental and begins in the form of the invitation, personally formulated by the CAP Center team, mainly due to its close relations with the residents. In the invitation, there is a concern to make the objectives and interests clear, as well as the chosen place, so that everyone feels at ease. Everything is organized to give lightness to the space and security for an open dialogue. The reception is reinforced by the snacks served at the beginning of the workshop. This moment is important because it is when people meet, get to know and recognize each other and establish the first dialogues. It is an important time to relax and socialize in the workshop, particularly among those who do not yet know each other or are shy or are not used to speaking in public.

Finally, to stimulate the workshop and mediate the debate, it is important to have someone with experience in collective discussion and social sensitivity, and who employs language that reaches everyone. At the same time, materials such as photos, texts or films should be used to promote and facilitate a dialogue, according to the problem to be discussed. The duration and the number of participants in a workshop need to be considered, as it should be carried out in a time interval that allows everyone to participate in the discussions but does not cause the participants to be mentally and emotionally tired.

To exemplify, the workshop related to the theme of social suffering in Manguinhos in 2019 is briefly presented. The nature of the theme - which mobilizes experiences of pain, with a close relationship between collective and personal experience - required particular ethical and methodological care. Therefore, a resident of the region, with experience in popular education and research in the territory itself, was invited to help in the workshop. With the help of the facilitator, the CAP Center discussed and organized how the dynamics of the meeting should be, based on some methodological questions: how to problematize a situation that affects everybody, but that is individually experienced, with different effects on people’s lives? How to create a welcoming space that would enable not only the participants’ reports, but also the discussion of the theme from its collective dimension? How to make the workshop a space that will contribute to the elaboration of the experience of pain, producing knowledge and self-knowledge and making it a form of action capable of favoring each and every one?

Some strategies were then defined: to problematize social suffering in its dynamics, considering the transformations in the territory and in the daily lives of the residents; to address the subjective and structural dimensions that generate social suffering, avoiding situations or triggers that refer to the memory of personal pain or loss; to encourage testimonies, and, considering the familiarity of people with cell phones, to use a device such as a microphone as a tool for recording reports.

The discussion on the use of the audiovisual recording tool gained special prominence. Previous experiences with workshops indicated that the use of the directional microphone (handheld) enabled technical quality to record the speeches in audio and contributed to the dialogue and the organization of the reports, because those who wished to speak waited for the other to finish their intervention. It is noteworthy that the participants liked to use the handheld microphone, on which we put a label with the word testimony, expressing a kind of claim of speech.

The means and media of circulation of knowledge are the other tools that have centrality in CAP’s communicative process, as a way to contribute to expanding the circulation of the discourses of minorities, non-hegemonic social groups, of those who do not have the means of production, and circulation of their world views^1,19.

Hence, it is necessary to produce knowledge and information to be contextualized to local realities; and its circulation, expanded as a way to reduce the asymmetries and inequalities of power between the narratives for the construction of a democratic city project. To this end, in order to allow for greater dynamism to the circulation, we systematize the information and knowledge operating with materials of different natures - the final products of a CAP process and the intermediate materials.

The final products are the materials that result from the processes of reflection, systematization and synthesis of the research theme. They cover documentaries, video reports, research, and technical reports, academic texts, etc. Intermediate materials, in turn, are produced to mediate activities during the research. They are organized to share previous knowledge of the theme, enhance and facilitate dialogue during the activities and as a strategy to give greater dynamism to the exchange of information and circulation of knowledge during the process of a CAP. They are systematized in the form of short videos, notebooks and thematic newsletters, field photographs, among others.

Digital social networks - Facebook, YouTube, and especially WhatsApp - are inserted in the process based on the learning experiences of appropriation of these tools by groups that work in popular communication in the favelas and that are partners. The communication via these media, together with the observation of news and reports, allows us to raise fundamental issues to the research agenda and contributes to a quick and powerful dialogue, as well as the production of syntheses and new movements and products¹⁹.

WhatsApp has become an important means of communication, both for the exchange of data and information and for the maintenance of relations of care and affection, after the social isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is through the exchange of individual or group messages with residents that it has been possible to access, in recent times, the daily life of the territory. We receive and send messages about the research work, to inform or exchange ideas about problems and political issues in the territory and in the city, about problems of people we know, and how to support, resolve doubts, and give advice.

We discussed here the main tools of the method. However, the cycle of production, circulation, and appropriation of knowledge of a CAP unfolds in a multiplicity of other activities: the planned ones, such as the collection of information in documents, social networks, interviews, creation of materials (texts, videos, photographs, etc.), and the activities that result from casual encounters or events that escape from the ordinary routine of the territory, and that are artisanal and incorporated into the course to give dynamism and continuity to the movements of a CAP.

CAP as a network of dialogue between people-places-territories: an ending

In addition to interdisciplinary exchanges, the CAP is constituted as a network of dialogue between people-places-territories. What we see in this Method, in practice, is a regular dialogue of knowledge, experiences, languages and skills shared among all those who participate in the CAP: residents, researchers from different areas of knowledge, health professionals, education, etc. The daily life is inscribed here as the space-time in which the dialogue is woven, contributing to the construction of a comprehensive view of certain problem situations defined in the dialogue in the CAP.

The CAP Method, systematized and analyzed in the research, was built in the form of methodological craftsmanship to deal with the imponderable nature of daily life that, in addition to numerous vulnerabilities (social, economic, institutional, and environmental), is crossed in its daily life by numerous forms of violence, police violence being one of the most dramatic, along with symbolic violence (racism, misogyny, etc.) and political-institutional violence related to the omission or cooption of institutions and politicians in abyssal contexts - abyssal because they subject the favela residents to life in precariousness, provisionality, and invisibility, resulting from processes of dehumanization either by racism, prejudice, stigma, or criminalization^2,20.

The CAP is known to focus on the unpredictability of daily life and is closely related to the possibilities posed by the territory. This implies selecting and reinventing research techniques and approaches adjusted to the nature of these new themes that emerge from the ordinary life of the place. It is also a kind of pact between the researchers and the social agents of the place, with the commitment to build possibilities of understanding the processes of social determination and production of knowledge in health, through the resources offered by the territory and the action exercised on them. Choosing a problem situation, or the subject of investigation, is not a donation or an imposition of the researcher, but the organized, systematized and added devolution of those elements that the territory delivered in an apparently unstructured or incomprehensible manner ²¹.

Based on the daily dialogue with the territory and its social agents, particularly with the favela of Manguinhos, it is only possible to do what is done and how it is done because networks of trust and affection are built, using practices and forms of dialogic collaborative communication, from the network of knowledge, experiences, skills in shared knowledge, which attribute a human meaning to academic practice and contribute to transformative struggles.

Thus, in everyday practices, networks are being formed in the territory, and between territories, and constituting the CAP, more than as a technique, as a craftsmanship. “A conversation with the humanity of the other”⁹⁽³⁴⁾, in which the interaction with daily life is to look at the “small things”, the ordinary practices that give meaning to the idea of sharing, which structures the methodology, in a constant conjugation of the verbs to dialogue, to witness, to affect, to experience, to welcome, to reflect, to produce, to communicate. The time of the research is in harmony with the time of the residents, in the exercise of the principle of autonomy and the principle of equality, as a manifestation of recognition and affection for and among people. The challenge for researchers is to get out of the place of comfort of the traditional space of the academy, as a simultaneous process of searching for (self) knowledge and humanization³.

As an action-research network, based on the relationships it establishes with the territory, people, and places, and focused on the promotion of the will with power, of being more, through the shared production of knowledge, the CAP contributes to the decolonization of knowledge and to the legitimization of the quality of knowledge, ethically produced by a CAP, as well as to the strengthening of movements, struggles, and the hope of all who participate in it.

Thus, it reaffirms the task imposed for the health sector, from the perspective of an Emancipatory Health Promotion¹⁴ to promote and create spaces for legitimizing the knowledge produced by the agents and social movements of the favelas in their struggles. Knowledge is power; therefore, in this way, power is also redistributed in society, re-signifying popular participation by producing knowledge that informs public policies, particularly public health policies, stimulating advances in Health Reform and the Unified Health System.

The conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the need for social distancing, have posed new ethical-political challenges for them to continue together in daily life. The networks of dialogue, trust, and affection already present on in-person meetings and the experiences of exchanges and circulation of information and knowledge through social media have helped in maintaining the dialogue with the territories, via WhatsApp groups, Facebook conversations and meetings via digital platforms. Even so, it is still challenging to think about many issues that have already been posed in this period of social distancing, in which we have been communicating online to continue having access to people, the daily life of the territory and its problem situations.

The first and most central of these issues concerns the forms of reception and languages of affection that feed face-to-face dialogue. The challenge that arises is to reinvent the ways of being together, to adopt new pedagogical resources to reduce the lack of body languages due to the distance and coldness of the glass windows of computers, so that they continue to exist as CAP.

Another issue concerns the conditions of access, both regarding equipment for people without resources to buy a mobile phone, a computer, and to support those with difficulties in obtaining and dealing with the applications. Also, the ethical imperative of not endangering people’s lives, ensuring the security of information, particularly those that circulate in work meetings and in meetings with the favela residents.

The foundation of CAP communication is affection: love affection to one another, affection in the sense of letting oneself be affected by the experience of the other to understand it. Affection allows the occupation of a place in the communication system of each other and allows access to invisible processes to each other - and this exchange produces knowledge. Maintaining interaction with everyday life, maintaining the network of dialogue, trust, and affection with people and the territory is one of the greatest challenges that arises at this time.

• Financial support: Graduate Program in Public Health - PPG/ENSP/FIOCRUZ

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the Graduate Program in Public Health - PPG/ENSP/FIOCRUZ.

Referências

• ¹
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• ²
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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Feb 2023
• Date of issue
  Dec 2022

History

• Received
  27 Oct 2021
• Accepted
  27 July 2022