Nexus of exclusion and challenges for sustainability and health in an urban periphery in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Leandro Luiz Giatti
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti, Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho, Ana Maria Bedran-Martins, Izabela Penha de Oliveira Santos, Simone Omori Honda, Ana Paula Fracalanza, Pedro Roberto Jacobi
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos de Saúde Pública
• Texto Completo: https://cadernos.ensp.fiocruz.br/ojs/index.php/csp/article/view/6974
• topic: Sustainable Development; Health Equity; Urban Health; Social Marginalization; Desenvolvimento Sustentável; Equidade em Saúde; Saúde da População Urbana; Marginalização Social

The urban nexus approach involves the investigation and elucidation of integrated solutions through the recognition of tradeoffs between water, energy, and food, namely resources whose shortage leads to inequalities in health. The article’s central hypothesis is that the context of shortage corroborates social practices that can be synergic or contradictory in relation to the challenges of sustainability and social rights. The objective is to investigate synergies and contradictions based on social practices in the urban nexus in the neighborhood of Novo Recreio in the city of Guarulhos, Greater Metropolitan São Paulo, Brazil. The methodology consists of a qualitative ethnographic study drawing on practice theory as the reference, with direct field observations and narratives. The results featured social practices associated with systematic lack of water, precarious public lighting and transportation, and difficult access to fresh and healthy foods. The study of social practices between synergies and contradictions allowed verifying that this spontaneous process of search for solutions to local problems reveals the need to incorporate local practices and knowledge into public policies and global demands. We define nexus of exclusion as the peripheral condition of impossibility of conscious options that allow jointly orienting the reduction of shortage and iniquities through alternatives for sustainability.