A onda do turismo na cidade do sol: a reconfiguração urbana de Natal

Space reading of Natal City and its reconfiguration from the intensification of tourist activity and the expansion of the services' sector, transiting, primarily, through the geography, the social sciences, the economy, in one main approach that is unaware of science's traditional limitations and recognizes the complexity that involves current world. In face of this agreement it analyzes the social-economic implications that remodel the spaces under the new economic view of services' sector, commanded by the tourism, in an intense process of city's reconfiguration, concentrating in three great axles and their irrigation ways. These changes were about the public-private relation (by the public politics) in the formation of new spaces and in the remodeling of the city's old areas, which, together, had contributed to the tourist activity's appropriation, returning it in a social-economic mosaic that owns obvious reflexes in its space. This fragmentation in the urbane cloth of Natal is expressed by social nature and economic points and, in the scenery, is manifested through the modern forms of city's space occupation by the local elites and services' sector, evidencing their status' district, as well as selecting those areas with bigger capacity to reply to the capital

Implicações socioambientais da construção de um parque eólico no município de Rio de Fogo-RN

The purpose of this study was to investigate the social-environmental implications of the first large scale wind farm recently built in Brazil (2006), Parque Eólico de Rio do Fogo (PERF), to the nearby communities. The research was base on the adjustment of the DIS/BCN tool to analyze social impact and it was linked to the multi-method approach. Applying the autophotography strategy, cameras were given to five children from the district of Zumbi, the nearest location to PERF, and they were asked to individually photograph the six places they liked the most and the six places they liked the least in their community. Then, these children were interviewed individually and collectively about the photographs. Adult locals in Zumbi, residents of Zumbi/Rio do Fogo settlement, members of the State and Municipal government and representatives of the PERF were also interviewed with the aid of some of the pictures taken by the children and others that might trigger something to say, as a strategy called sample function. The five children presented positive image towards PERF; all of them chose to photograph it as one of places they liked. Adult population of Zumbi presented positive visual evaluation towards PERF. A small number of the interviewees were aware of the environmental and social benefits of wind energy production. Residents did not participate of the decision making process regarding PERF. They approved the project, especially because of the jobs provided during construction. Nowadays, PERF is something apart from their lives because it no longer provides jobs or any other interaction between the facility and the locals. Residents relate to the land, not with the facility. However, there is no evidence of rejection towards PERF, it is simply seen as something neutral to their lives. The low levels of education, traditional lack of social commitment and citizenship, and the experience accumulated by PERF´s planners and builders in other countries, may be contributing points to the fact that Zumbi residents did not oppose to PERF. It is clear that the country needs a legislation which seriously considers the psycho-social dimension involved in the implementation of wind farms

Os estados no SUAS: uma análise da capacidade institucional dos governos estaduais na assistência social

This paper deals of the effects generated by institutional designs in the behavior of political actors. The literature that discusses the implications of federal arrangements in the production of public policies to dock at two opposing arguments: (1) the federal configuration would cause dispersion and variation in service provision between subnational governments; and (2) the central government would own mechanisms to induce the provision of national policies in more homogeneous levels, similar to unitary states. The research is part of this discussion because it analyzes the effects of the institutional design of the Sistema Único de Assistência Social (SUAS) in the decisions of states in Brazil. Therefore, we analyzed the institutional capacity built by the 26 state governments after the implementation of SUAS, conceiving this system as defined mechanism of government functions and federative cooperation.It is argued that the existence of a heterogeneous institutional capacity of state governments in social assistance is a result of the autonomy contained in the institutional design of SUAS to this level of government. This freedom of action relativize the idea that the implementation of national public policy systems would generate positive (or homogeneous) effects in all subnational governments, at the same time as it preclude to generalize the premise of fragility of the states in the brazilian federal plan.