Representações sociais do ambiente preservado: estudo multicaso no município de Ouro Preto/MG

Abstract

Researchers, neighbours and managers of Brazilian Conservation Units (CUs Unidades de Conservação UCs) have had difficulties during the implementation and management of these due to conflicts with companies and with surrounding residents. This situation also arises in protected areas of different nature, places of historical architectural heritage, speleological or archeological. The town or Ouro Preto is a location of importance to the history of Minas Gerais which has in its landscapes, characteristics and markings considered valuable by the public organs, and to be preserved as part of the material, immaterial and environmental heritage of the state and country. According to that principle, many buildings and landscape sites in the county area which were protected under different interests. The aim of this research was to understand how the CU neighbours experience the appearance of the Uaimií State Forest (Floresta Estadual do Uaimií - São Bartolomeu), the Cachoeira das Andorinhas Countys Natural Park (Parque Natural Municipal Cachoeira das Andorinhas), and the Morro da Queimada Archaelogical Park (Parque Arqueológico Morro da Queimada - Ouro Preto); to verify whether the creation of those areas interferes in the daily routine of the population, and to identify social representations of their place of residence and of the concepts of environmental conservation, environment and nature. In order to achieve that, interdisciplinary research was the chosen strategy. In search of the social representations, a concept of the social psychology, the resarcher found herself immersed in the universe of the discourse and praxis of the subjects. The social representations are world views and exhibition of knowledge whose construction is based on the relationship I other object. It is a dialogical concept that helps to understand controversial contexts and contexts related to the transformations in daily routine and in the space experienced by the people. The research was developed in two stages. In the qualitative stage 47 interviews were conducted, recorded and transcribed, based on a semi-structured script, and others, not transcribed, but analised from the field registrer. In the quantitative stage, 214 questionnaires were applied, having as a main technique, for the analysis of social representation, word evocation associated to their place of residence: environment, nature and environmental conservation. The profile of the residents of the surroundings of protected areas was outlined, their main complaints and anxieties. The relationship that the neighbours establish with the protected areas was identified. In some cases, that relationship was one of dependence or of leisure use, in other cases it was one of rejection, arisen from the prohibition of use of the environmental assets and, even by the symbolical redefinition of the conservation territory. It was observed that the social representations for environmental conservation, nature and environment are related to two important principles: that of daily practices/tangible universe and that of modern hegemonic discourse of environmental conservation, proposed from the CUs. Thus, the dynamics of those representations can be observed presently. Finally, the intereference of the creation of these areas in the daily routine of the people and the level of participation of the people living in the areas surrounding the CUs and what will soon become the Archaeological Park was observed, which lead to the conclusion that these spaces have been (re)possessed by the people living close to them, who are seen only as neighbours who impose limits to them.