"Estudos Avançados" #95 addresses the future of universities, and urban and environmental degradation
In addition to perspectives for universities, and urban and environmental concerns, the 95th issue of IEA's journal "Estudos Avançados," launched this month, also discusses the judicialization of health and the precautionary principle. According to editor Alfredo Bosi, "the current primacy of technology is one of the transversal themes that bring together articles about so diverse objects."
The issue also contains reviews of eight books on visual arts, literature, political science, economics, and globalization.
The opening section has "University" as theme and features an article by former president of USP Jacques Marcovitch. The professor, who has also been director of the IEA, analyzes three aspects: the Academic Performance and Evaluations project, coordinated by him; the transformations undergone by academic institutions; and the challenge of proposals that in his view would disqualify public universities, such as the implementation of tuition fees.
The need for universitary adaptation to a new reality dominated by information networks is analyzed by Luiz Bevilacqua, a visiting professor at the IEA from 2017 to 2018, in the article "The Last Train to Alexandria".
The articles that are specifically focused on USP present studies conducted by researchers Ricardo Terra and Carlota Boto. While Terra brings up a self-reflection on the institution, including its financial imbalance, missions and overall evaluation, Boto shows how the concept and the project of USP appeared in the discourse and in the actions of intellectuals in São Paulo and abroad in the early 1930s.
City and Environment
The urban degradation of large cities and the deforestation of vast regions in Brazil are two of the addressed themes in this section. Bosi emphasizes the conflict between defenders of a more humane style of housing and the "violent deterioration of the space where the lower-middle class neighborhoods and the slums on the periphery of large cities are examples and victims," as discussed in the articles "End of Utopias, The City of São Paulo and the Discussion of Contemporary Urbanism," by urban planner Antonio Claudio Pinto da Fonseca and historian Carlos Guilherme Mota, and "The Conflict of Space: The Tense Port-City Relationship in Urban Planning," by João Mendes Rocha, a specialist in public policy and government management.
Regarding the articles on environmentalism, the editor highlights the concern with "economic interests that promote the wild deforestation," remembering that "after a short period of relative control, the anti-ecological threat that reaches entire regions of the Amazon and the Northeast has returned." The theme is present in "Territories and Political Alliances of Post-Environmentalism," by experts from various institutions, and "Characteristics and Provenance of Firewood Used for Cooking in Brazil," by Adriana Gioda.
The other two sections are "Health," with two articles, and "The Precautionary Principle," with three collaborations. The first two texts discuss the guidelines of the National Council of Justice for the action of law professionals in the realization of the right to health, and techniques of welfare coaching in the change of lifestyle in the public health system.
In the article "The Adoption of Precautionary Measures Against Risks in the Use of Technoscientific Innovations," philosopher Hugh Lacey, a former visiting professor at the IEA and current member of the research group Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology, discusses the responsibilities of scientists and institutions in conducting the research needed to inform precautionary measures. Lacey's text is accompanied by two articles by other researchers: one revises the precautionary principle in the Brazilian legal system to international agreements while the other discusses the main arguments involved in the scientific debate on the principle of substantial equivalence, which states that genetically modified organisms, popularly known as transgenic, are chemically equivalent to organisms selected by traditional breeding techniques and thus would not require additional toxicological studies.
The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:
Leading Article
Alfredo Bosi
University
Jacques Marcovitch
Carlota Boto
Ricardo Terra
Luiz Bevilacqua
City and Environment
Roberto Araújo, Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira, Peter Mann de Toledo, Andréa dos Santos Coelho, Eloi Dalla-Nora and Felipe Milanez
João Mendes Rocha
Thais da Silva Chedid and Edmilson Moutinho dos Santos
Adriana Gioda
Ranulfo Paiva Sobrinho, Junior Ruiz Garcia, Alexandre Gori Maia and Ademar Ribeiro Romero
Candido Malta Campos
Antonio Claudio Pinto da Fonseca and Carlos Guilherme Mota
Marcos Cesar Weiss
Health
Aline Marques, Carlos Rocha, Felipe Asensi and Diego Machado Monnerat
Luciana Oquendo Pereira-Lancha, Danielle Kallas, Paula Helena Dayan and Antonio Herbert Lancha Jr.
The Precautionary Principle
Hugh Lacey
Fernanda Viegas Reichardt and Mayara Regina Araújo dos Santos
Luciana Zaterka
Reviews
Leonardo Octavio Belinelli de Brito
André Roncaglia de Carvalho
Fabio Mascaro Querido
Ricardo Ohtake
Flávia Amparo
Marcos Antonio de Moraes
Ana Luiza Martins
José Augusto Ribas Miranda