The environment and its (ir)relevance in the social representations of the development of three cities in the State of São Paulo

Abstract

This study, conducted through a survey, identified the environment’s relevance in the social representations of developed city, built by the inhabitants of three cities in the State of São Paulo: Jaboticabal, Olímpia and Bebedouro. The study is qualitative and based on the approach of the Central Core of social representations, supported in the technique of free evocation of words (Abric, 2001), using the EVOC 2000 software (Vergès, 2002). Two types of analysis have been made: the lexicographical, which reveals the Central Core and a peripheral system of representations, from the most evocated words (the main words); and the categorical, which groups into categories all the words that are evocated. A sample of 408 people from each city have been interviewed, stratified by sex, age, income and schooling. The results point out that a developed city is represented essentially by an economic dimension (symbolized by employment and industries) coexisting with a social dimension (symbolized by health and education), causing the paradigm of human development (measured by HDI) to emerge. The environment, which is the base of the sustainable development paradigm, is irrelevant for the representation of a developed city: in the three cities, there were no words related to environment in none of the main words, and the environmental dimension is the weakest one between the seven categories identified, with less than 1% of evocations.