Desenvolvimento local, cidadania e arranjos produtivos locais: um estudo no estado do Rio de Janeiro

The aim of the present study was to verify how the participation and interaction of the local government public and private instittutions and civil society, might promote sustainable development, taking as a reference the Local Productive Arrangements (LPA) of Nova Friburgo and its Region. This work was conducted after a theoretical discussion concerning local development, citizenship, local development with citizenship and local productive arrangements. Afterwards, semi-structured interviews were realized with 32 citizens from five cities that were part of the Fashion Development Council, using the discourse analysis to data treatment. It was verified that the productive arrangement in the Centro-Norte Fluminense region of the Rio de Janeiro State has one of its main competitive advantages the pool of institutions, that articulate and support the underwear fashion sector. However, the APL presents many other characteristics making impossible to classify it as a cluster or an industrial district since there is still a need for cooperation among institutions and undertakers. In addition, there is no integration between the government instances and civil society in relation to the LPA development. So, it is concluded that there is a need for more union and dialogue among all of these involved actors, to overcome ¿bottle-necks¿ in the sector of underwear fashion in the region, such as informality of a huge number of companies and the low qualification of employees and undertakers.