EDITORIAL

The first issue of 2013 compiles essays, articles, and debates on recent environmental issues raised by the current form of capitalistic accumulation, which has had profound impacts on the production of life and, therefore, also in the field of education and health.

The issue begins with an essay written by Fabio Mascaro Querido, which, based on the work of Michael Löwy, addresses the need to radicalize the Marxist critique of modernity from an ecosocialist perspective. To this end, Querido discusses how this Brazilian intellectual advocates, in line with Walter Benjamin, a rupture from the capitalistic ideology of progress and civilization, essential to understanding the current humanitarian crisis.

The article titled National curriculum parameters: revisiting health and environment cross-cutting issues, whose lead author is Alexandre Maia Bonfim, concludes, based on a diachronic and synchronic analysis, that the treatment given to the environmental subject based on the 'national curriculum parameters' tends to exclude concrete forms of action, to fragment know-ledge, and to reproduce a behaviorist proposal for education. Consequently, the authors argue that an individualistic, passive citizenship perspective is disseminated, one that is restricted to the scope of the Law and exempts the State from undertaking effective actions.

Addressing the dimension of the Law - and the need to politicize it - is also the subject of Carlos Frederico B. Loureiro and Philippe Pomier Layrargues' article Political ecology, justice, and critical environmental education: perspectives of a counter-hegemonic alliance. The authors argue it is vital for there to be a link between critical environmental education and the environmental justice movement in order to build an anti-capitalistic corporate project. This will enable an ideological redefinition of environmental issues, acting as a counterpoint to hegemonic interpretations of the common sense and raising effective social transformation.

The treatment given to environmental issues in science books and materials is discussed in Francine Pinhão and Isabel Martins' article entitled Action modes of educational texts on science: discussing the health and environment issue. Based on the discursive concepts of 'gender,' the authors identified three main groups of structures (descriptive, explanatory, and narrative) in the mentioned material. These structures allowed the analysis of the construction of meaning in the texts, concluding that these are ways of acting that discipline identities and social relations and systems of knowledge and belief.

Views on the notions of health and environment are the subject of two articles in this issue. The first, titled View of health area professionals on the interface between health and the environment, whose lead author is Silviamar Camponogara, discusses, based on research conducted among the mentioned groups, how the subjects recognize the narrow interface between health and the environment and social inequality in the distribution of the impacts of environmental damage. It is concluded, however, that deepening the debate on the subject in the process of providing training and professional practice in health is fundamental in order to seek effective socioenvironmental responsibility among those involved in the sector.

In Community Health Agent: Environmental issues and promoting health in riverside communities, Natiane Carvalho Silva and Cristina Setenta Andrade follow the same line of analysis of the environmental views among health professionals of agents working in communities in the Ilhéus-Itabuna axis, in southern Bahia, Brazil. The study shows a dramatic setting where educational activities directed towards the environment are not only occasional but also carried out individually. Thus, the authors introduce the challenge of how to leverage these workers in order for them to, based on local knowledge and experiences, create, together with the population, new relationships between the environment and health, taking the undeniable environmental stress there is in the various territories in which they work into account.

Also aiming to put the socalled 'popular knowledge' on the radar, the article titled Environmental education and culture: connecting media and popular knowledge about plants, whose lead author is Lucia de Fátima Estevinho Guido, presents a study on ethnobotany that sought to get to know and value knowledge about plants in rural districts of the city of Uberlândia, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. By joining the local tradition of folk knowledge on plants and knowledge conveyed by media production, the article shows the need to respect cultural diversity and overcome the monocultural view.

Wrapping the section up, Guillermo Foladori, Fernando Bejarano, and Noela Invernizzi's article Nanotechnology: risk management and regulation for health and environment in Latin America and in the Caribbean proposes an approach to identify the players who should participate in the discussion on managing the risk related to this (new) technology. By inserting the discussion and risk management in the environmental movements and workers' organizations, the article contributes to the debate on responsible development, in the case at hand, of the nanotechnologies and nanomaterials.

Discussing the environmental issues from the corporate capital viewpoint implies in dealing with projects on progress that are already in course. Therefore, giving continuity to the editorial line proposed for this issue, the Debate section presents texts that discuss the relationship between capitalism and theories and ideologies of development aiming to describe the contemporary limits on the issue.

Mathias Seibel Luce opens the section addressing a theme that has been central to the recent discussions on the Brazilian development projects - the socalled 'new middle class' - in Brazil: New middle class or new ways of overexploiting the working class? By questioning the emergence of this new class, the author highlights the fact that the distinction between neode- velopmentalism and neoliberalism is a false controversy in light of a real emancipation of the workers, and that the nefarious nexus between the working class' working conditions, health, and its rights remains stronger than ever. Marcelo Dias Carcanholo, in The current critical retrieval of the Marxist theory of dependence, resumes, deepens, and renews the conceptual discussion on the mentioned theory. Jorge Luiz Alves Natal, in Local development - or about ideological exegeses, hegemonic struggles and corporate detours, analyzes the socalled local development as one of the faces of the current internationalization of modern capital, questioning whether, today, the 'old developmentalism' would not be the best possible resistance. Finally, Antonio Brasil Jr., in The reinvention of the sociology of the modernization: Luiz Costa Pinto and Florestan Fernandes (1950-1970), explores the innovative potential found in the theoretical contributions made by these two Brazilian sociologists.

Finally, closing the issue, the magazine publishes two reviews, one on the book entitled A pesquisa em trabalho, educação e políticas educacionais (Research in work, education and educational policies), organized by Ronaldo Marcos de Lima Araújo and Doriedson S. Rodrigues (Orgs.), by Elinilze Guedes Teodoro; and the other on Marlene Ribeiro's Movimento camponês, trabalho e educação - liberdade, autonomia, emancipação: princípios/fins da formação humana (The peasant movement, work and education - freedom, autonomy, emancipation, principles/ends of human training), by Fabiane Santana Previtali.

From 2013, Trabalho, Educação e Saúde will continue being published quarterly, and its three annual issues will correspond to the periods of January to April, May to August, and September to December.

Carla Macedo Martins

Angélica Ferreira Fonseca

Marcela Alejandra Pronko

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 Feb 2013
• Date of issue
  Apr 2013