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1st International Symposium on Sustainable Aging and Planetary Health, and 1st NAPENV International Meeting on Intrinsic Capacity

Sustainable Aging is a complex process. Understanding the factors that favor or limit it is mandatory so that strategies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be implemented. Intrinsic capacity is one of these factors. Although it is a determinant of successful aging, the translation of this knowledge to sustainable aging and planetary health is still scarce. This symposium aims to bring together researchers from different regions of the world to promote a debate on the intrinsic capacity and health care strategy for older people in order to promote actions that contribute to achieving the SDGs and planetary health. It is linked to IEA's Sabbatical Year Program.

Registration

Free and public event | Registration required
Online event | No attendance certification will be provided
The event will be held in English and there will be no simultaneous translation into Portuguese | Live transmission at http://www.iea.usp.br/aovivo

Organization

Sabbatical Year Program (IEA-USP)
Núcleo de Pesquisas sobre o Envelhecimento e o Idoso (NAPENV)

Programme

Studies on South-South international relations, and science and innovation diplomacy are now more organically a part of IEA's research agenda. This became possible with the entry of the Center for the Study of International Negotiations (CAENI) - a research support center (NAP) of USP's Dean of Research and Innovation (PRPI) - to the academic structure of the Institute, after approval of the proposal of membership by IEA's Board.

Initially a research laboratory of the Department of Political Science (DCP) at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), the CAENI became a NAP in 2012. Having South-South trade relations as its central theme, the Center began to study the dynamics of the constitution and functioning of coalitions of countries considered to be sub-regional leaders.

In this initial phase, the emphasis of the work was given to studies on IBAS (India, Brazil, and South Africa) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Within this context, some works have been dedicated to the analysis of Brazilian foreign policy focused on South-South relations.

As of 2019, without abandoning these themes on country coalitions and Brazilian foreign policy, the Center began to more systematically focus on studies about scientific diplomacy and innovation. That year, it organized the first Advanced School on Science and Innovation Diplomacy (InnScid), whose fifth edition took place this month. The IEA has hosted the initiative for three years. The InnScid is linked to the program São Paulo School of Advanced Science (ESPCA), funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).

In the last two years, the researchers of the CAENI have been developing projects on gender equality in science, technology, and innovation in the context of multi- and bilateral negotiations, global circulation of research data, the role of international networks in the advancement of science, and digital cooperation, among other topics. In 2022, the Center joined an international research network on data diplomacy, a research branch of science and innovation diplomacy.

The research projects carried out by the Center are financed by national and international funding agencies. In addition to these projects, the CAENI conducts extension courses on international negotiations, international relations, and science and innovation diplomacy.

In addition to the support from the President's Office at USP and the deans for Research and Innovation, Undergraduation, and Culture and University Extension, CAENI's projects also receive funding from FAPESP, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development in Brazil (CNPq), the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, and the European Research Council.

With a multidisciplinary structure, the Center brings together professors, researchers, and undergraduate and graduate students from different units at USP, as well as collaborating researchers from other Brazilian and foreign institutions.

The CAENI is coordinated by Amâncio Jorge Silva Nunes de Oliveira, a full professor at USP's Institute of International Relations (IRI) and vice-director of the Paulista Museum. The deputy scientific coordinator is Janina Onuki, a full professor at the DCP-FFLCH, former director at IRI, and a participant in IEA's Sabbatical Year Program. The board is made up of four professors: Cristiane Lucena Carneiro and Pedro Feliú Ribeiro, both from IRI, and João Paulo Candia Veiga and Manoel Galdino, both from the DCP-FFLCH.

The Center's current research agenda focuses on two themes: Scientific and Innovation Diplomacy, and Brazilian Foreign Policy and International Cooperation. In addition to carrying out the annual editions of InnScid, the CAENI will keep several other projects until 2026, which marks the deadline for the current renovation of the Center as a NAP. Some highlights are:

• Gender STI: an analysis of women's participation in the various areas related to science, technology and innovation, with funding from FAPESP and the European Union.
• Science Diplomacy 2.0: carried out in partnership with the University of Manchester and funded by the Horizon Europe program of the European Union, it aims to map the main databases considered one of the main assets for science diplomacy.
• Multilateralism and Global Challenges: Past, Present, and Future: a project in partnership with the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and funded by CNPq aimed at identifying the main topics under debate in multilateral arenas, the role of the states in these forums, and their capacity to produce results.

Throughout its 11 years of operation, the CAENI has carried out an intense training and qualification program aimed at a broad spectrum of the public, from high school students to members of high public administration positions.

The courses mainly address aspects of international negotiations in the context of South-South relations. The coordination highlights that the participation of personnel engaged in international negotiation processes, both in the private and governmental fields, subsidizes the research agenda, thus creating a feedback process between research and teaching.

The analysis of relevant themes of the Brazilian social and political life in the last two centuries is the central aspect of the dossier "Bicentennial of Independence," present in the latest issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, a four-monthly publication of the IEA. The online version of issue #105 is now available, free of charge, at the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Portuguese only).

Although the set of texts is not intended to review the historiography of Independence or to fill gaps pointed out by historians and other social scientists, aspects of this type are also present in the articles, says the editor of the publication, sociologist Sérgio Adorno.

The dossier is curated by three USP professors: Carlos Zeron, from the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), Alexandre Macchione Saes, from the School of Economics, Management, Accounting, and Actuarial Sciences (FEA), and Antônio David, from the School of Communications and Arts (ECA). They are authors of the opening article "3 times 22: Ideas of a Modern and Sovereign Brazil Circa 1822, 1922, and 2022," which questions the revisions of the ideas of sovereignty and modernization in essayism and historical-economic thought.

Two main questions have motivated the curators in composing the set of texts: What makes the ideas of sovereignty and modernity unique in Brazilian society? How did the dialectic between modernity and tradition materialize in actions, government plans, public policies, social thought, science, culture, and education, and what are its consequences?

Based on these questions, the dossier explores "challenges and impasses, especially in the contributions that focus on paradoxes and antinomies of social thought in Brazil," explains Adorno. With this perspective, the essays address "the tensions between memory, politics, and the writing of history by highlighting different narratives about Independence as a fact and historical process." One of the texts with this concern is "Memory, Historiography, and Politics: The Independence of Brazil, 200 Years Later," by Cecilia Helena de Salles Oliveira, from USP's Paulista Museum.

In the article "State and Society in Brazil: A Deferred Meeting with Democracy," Andre Botelho, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and Grabriela Nunes Ferreira, from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), discuss decisive moments in which the relations between State and society were problematized, highlighting themes such as political centralization and decentralization, the adequacy of political institutions to the characteristics of society, and the confrontation of the democratic issue.

Close to the present, "2022: The Pact of 1988 under the Sword of Damocles," by Camila Rocha, from FFLCH, and Jonas Medeiros, from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), points out how the "crisis of the democratic pact of 1988 originated from new dynamics fostered by the Brazilian post-bourgeois public sphere itself, which developed in the midst of the national redemocratization process."

Commenting on the Brazilian reality of the last 20 years, Kabengele Munanga, a professor retired from FFLCH, reflects on issues regarding diversity. He highlights that conflicts are notably translated into racist and xenophobic practices that engender the violation of the human rights of different people and the resulting social inequalities. The question that arises, he says, is how to establish equity and equality of treatment "without first recognizing the collective existence of the bearers of differences and their identities."

The role of science in the constitution of the Nation and the contribution of the arts in the conformation of the so-called "late modernisms" are analyzed in the articles "The Sciences in the Formation of Brazil from 1822 to 2022: History and Reflections on the Future," by three researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), and "The Modernist Legacy: Reception and Developments in the 1960s and 1970s," by Ivan Francisco Marques, from FFLCH.

Among the texts that discuss post-Independence historiography, the editor cites the "stimulating overview of reference works" present in the interview given to the curators by historian Carlos Guilherme Mota, also retired from FFLCH, and founder and first director of the IEA.

The dossier also brings together analyzes of facts and social processes relevant to the understanding of the Bicentennial. Among them, Adorno lists:

• the construction of the public sphere since 1822 and its current crises,
• the social dynamics that establish the existence of armed groups with hegemonic ambitions over territories, populations, and illegal markets,
• the destruction and degradation of national biomes, beckoning an environmental catastrophe,
• and the patterns of socio-spatial accumulation and segregation in São Paulo, leveraged by large-scale real estate operations.

Education

"Classics of Education" is the dossier that complements issue #105. According to Adorno, the articles address problems and dilemmas of contemporary education from a specific angle: "Books and authors that, when becoming 'classics' in this field, guided strategic themes for understanding relationships between actors, everyday school life, changing values, challenges in unique periods such as those of pandemics, and, above all, for the formulation of educational public policies."

The texts analyze aspects of works by Israel Scheffler, Maria Helena Souza Patto, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, José Mário Pires Azanha, John Goodlad, Michel Foucault, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, and Roger Chartier. The authors of the articles are researchers from UNIFESP, UFRJ, USP's School of Education (FE), the Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE), Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), and the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU).

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Bicentennial of Independence

3 times 22: Ideas of a Modern and Sovereign Brazil Circa 1822, 1922, and 2022 - Antônio David, Alexandre Macchione Saes, and Carlos A. de M. R. Zeron
Memory, Historiography, and Politics: The Independence of Brazil, 200 Years Later - Cecilia Helena de Salles Oliveira
State and Society in Brazil: A Deferred Meeting with Democracy - André Botelho and Gabriela Nunes Ferreira
2022: The Pact of 1988 under the Sword of Damocles - Camila Rocha and Jonas Medeiros
Country of the Future? Time Conflicts and Historicity in Contemporary Brazil - Rodrigo Turin
On "Misplaced" Concepts, Historiography, and Ideas - Carlos Guilherme Mota
The World and Diversity: Issues in Debate - Kabengele Munanga
Armed Domains and Their Criminal Governments: A Non-phantasmic Approach to "Organized Crime" - Jacqueline de Oliveira Muniz and Camila Nunes Dias
The Modernist Legacy: Reception and Developments in the 1960s and 1970s - Ivan Francisco Marques
Brazil, 200 Years of Devastation: What Will Remain of the Country after 2022? - Luiz Marques
São Paulo: One Hundred Years of an urban Growth Machine - Mariana Fix and Pedro Fiori Arantes
The Sciences in the Formation of Brazil from 1822 to 2022: History and Reflections on the Future - Nísia Trindade Lima, Dominichi Miranda de Sá, Ingrid Casazza, and Carolina Arouca

Classics of Education

Convergences: Thinking about Teaching and Inequality with Scheffler, Patto, Bourdieu, and Passeron - Juliana de Souza Silva, Katiene Nogueira da Silva, and Renata Marcílio Cândido
“Thinking with” José Mário Pires Azanha about Elaborating Brazil’s Educational Future - Patrícia Aparecida do Amparo, Ana Laura Godinho Lima, and Denice Barbara Catani
Education, Society, and Democracy: John Goodlad’s Legacy - Domingos Fernandes
Michel Foucault in (De)formations: On the Classics and their Uses in the History of Education - José Cláudio Sooma Silva e José Gonçalves Gondra
Science, Evolution, and Education in Herbert Spencer - Décio Gatti Junior e Leonardo Batista dos Santos
Teaching Away from School: Essay on the Representations in E. Durkheim and R. Chartier - Roni Cleber Dias de Menezes e Vivian Batista da Silva

The 104th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados brings the centenary of the 1922 Modern Art Week, the role of research at universities, and the 60 years of the creation of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) as its central themes. The digital version is available on the SciELO platform (Portuguese only).

The opening dossier, dedicated to the Modern Art Week, features articles that evaluate how timely this "complex and plural" movement still is, being "one of the most important movements in Brazilian culture," according to the publication's editor, Sérgio Adorno.

Regarding the landmark of the last century, "a lot has been written about the main events, the participants, the motivations, the reference works, the polemics that surrounded it, the noisy reception, and the nonconformity with the dominant traditionalism in the arts." Estudos Avançados, however, "did not intend to repeat what is already known, but to add new contributions," says Adorno.

In the article "Notes on Modernism," Eduardo Jardim exposes two different times in the 1920s as two ways of conceiving modernism between the incorporation of modern languages of European influence and the adoption of national traits in the art produced in the country.

The original myths about the rediscovery of Brazil and the resumption of colonial roots as achievements of modernism are themes present in the article "The Reinvention of the Week and the Myth of the Discovery of Brazil," by Rafael Cardoso. The author also brings up critical disputes around the Modern Art Week.

Further contributions explore Mário de Andrade's achievements in the movement, such as his way of thinking about Brazilian unity and the diversity of "Brazils." In this sense, the project of a country that invested in the ethnic and cultural mixture through art is analyzed. The article "Brazil and Mário de Andrade's Brazils: the End of the Apprentice Tourist?" points out how the country was questioned due to the need to determine cultural differences to face internal inequalities.

The dossier also has articles addressing similarities and differences between Argentine and Brazilian avant-gardes in the 1920s, and the importance of clothing for Brazilian modernism.

Research Universities

The articles in the second dossier address the contribution of universities and research to the country's development in several areas, a "current and inexhaustible" issue that "raises polemics and divergent positions," as Adorno states.

According to the article that opens the dossier, "Research and Graduate Studies in Brazil: Two Sides of the Same Coin?," written by Simon Schwartzman, the distribution profile of researchers and graduate courses in Brazil started to follow the profile of enrollment in undergraduate courses from the 2000s onwards. With an analysis of the characteristics of the system and the occupation of graduate students, the author concludes that the expansion of the research system responded to the demands for titling of higher education professors in detriment of the country's research priorities.

The second article ("The Abandonment of the 'University Spirit' in the Construction of the Armando de Sales Oliveira Campus") brings the history of the foundation and the fundamentals of USP, and considers the absence of a university spirit. It highlights the lack of an integrating environment in the project by not taking the academic aspect into account.

Closing the dossier, the article "The University as a Reliable Source for the Formulation and Improvement of Public Policies" evaluates the influence of USP on public policies. The analysis is based on the University's performance during the COVID-19 pandemic and its scientific production in various areas of knowledge during this period, which served as a source for the implementation and evaluation of public policies.

60 Years of FAPESP

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP,) the journal features articles that address the solid role of the institution in proposing decisive strategies for the development of the country based on knowledge. Despite facing repeated threats to its assets and budget, the Foundation stands out in the articles for its budgetary and administrative management, and for the execution of its activities.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

100 Years of the Modern Art Week

Eduardo Jardim
Rafael Cardoso
Pedro Duarte
Eduardo Coelho
Ivan Francisco Marques
Marcos Antônio de Moraes and Rodrigo de Albuquerque Marques
Gênese Andrade
Flávia Camargo Toni and Camila Fresca
Carolina Casarin
Carlos Sandroni

Research Universities

Simon Schwartzman
Caio Dantas
Vahan Agopyan and Glauco Arbix

60 Years of FAPESP

Marco A. Zago and José R. Drugowich de Felício
Jacques Marcovitch
Hernán Chaimovich

The Biota-Synthesis, one of the centers of the São Paulo Research Foundation for problem-oriented projects, is calling for applications from those interested in competing for one of the eight vacancies to conduct postdoctoral research until 10:00 (UTC-3) am on March 14.

Although the postdoctoral positions are open to Brazilian and foreign researchers who have a PhD degree, fluency in Portuguese is desired to facilitate the discussion and dialogue with the different actors involved in the project. Candidates must present a project in the areas of modeling, ecosystem services, restoration, urban ecology, human health, climate change, nature-based solutions, and collaborative policy design. A same applicant can apply for more than one scholarship at the same time.

The desired profile for these postgraduates is of professionals with great ability to work collaboratively in teams, with high capacity for listening and dialogue with researchers and social actors with different backgrounds and professional experiences, in addition to the modeling and analysis capabilities that will be detailed for each profile. Each postdoctoral fellow will have a specific research project and supervisor, but it is expected that this group of fellows will work together, in close collaboration with the coordination team of the Biota-Synthesis.

FAPESP postdoctoral fellowships are competitive (R$ 7,373.10 - approximately US$ 1,340.00) and granted for 24 months, with the possibility of extension for two additional years. The fellowships include a research contingency fund, equivalent to 10% of its annual value which should be spent on items directly related to the research activity.

Applications must be submitted through the following form. The necessary documents are the following

• Curriculum Vitae following the FAPESP format, including Lattes (for Brazilian candidates), ORCID, and Publon links, as well as citation indicators (e.g. number of publications and citations, H index); please indicate experience in teamwork and with the development of public policy, if applicable;

• Research statement specifying why the candidate is suitable for the fellowship position;

• Three reference persons who can be consulted if the candidate is selected for an interview.

For each of the 8 fellowships, 3-5 candidates will be selected for an interview (to be conducted virtually). The initial selection will consider the adequacy of the candidate to the fellowship profile, as well as the candidate's professional experience and publication records.

The interviews are expected to take place at the end of March/beginning of April, and the fellowship will begin in May, after validation of the selective process by FAPESP, according to the Foundations's norms (Portuguese only). All postdoctoral fellows will be formally linked to the postdoctoral program (Portuguese only) of the University of São Paulo.

More on each fellowship opportunity:

1 - Estimation and Prediction of Pollination and Associated Ecosystem in Agricultural Landscapes

2 - Modeling Future Scenarios for Pollination and Associated Ecosystem Services in Face of Landscape and Climate Changes

3 - Supporting Decisions for Forest Ladscape Restoration and Forest-Based Economy

4 - Operationalizing Policies for Forest Landscape Restoration and Forest-Based Eonomy

5 - Regulation of Zoonotic Diseases in Urban and Rural Ladscapes

6 - Ecosystem Services Modeling and Human Weell-Being in Urban Landscapes

7 - Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) and Urban Interventions for Climate Adaptation in Urban Areas

8 - Collaborative Environmental Policy Design for the State of São Paulo

Should there be any questions, please send a message to biotasintese@usp.br.

The network of University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS) has opened the selection process for the 4th edition of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), whose theme is "Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence." Early and mid-career researchers with a doctorate and fluency in English can apply. Applications from researchers linked to any academic institution or with links to industry, non-governmental organizations, artistic or other institutions are welcome, provided that they have a position equivalent to that of a professor or researcher.

A virtual meeting will take place in June 2021, followed by two immersion meetings - the first in October 2021, in Paris, and the second in June 2022, in Belo Horizonte. The French Network of Institutes for Advanced Study (RFIEA) and the Institute of Advanced Transdisciplinary Studies (IEAT) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) are the hosts.

The Intercontinental Academia brings together young researchers from different countries and fields of study to study a single topic. In 2015, the IEA hosted the first phase of the program's inaugural edition, organized in partnership with the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) at Nagoya University.

Applications
Submissions must be made through applications-ica4@rfiea.fr until March 31, 2021.

Mentors and fellows
At the meetings, selected participants will have the chance to discuss research topics with a notable group of mentors, who were previously invited to participate in this edition of the Intercontinental Academia.

Candidates affiliated to USP must undergo prior selection by the local scientific committee. If the University endorses the application and it is approved in the final selection, then USP will be responsible for supporting the participant for the immersive meetings. The sending of doubts and the complete documentation must be made through the address rkmeckien@usp.br until March 11, 2021.

CALL for fellows – Intercontinental Academia

UBIAS network
Started in 2010, the Ubias network currently congregates around 50 institutes for advanced study around the world and has the proposal to promote an environment for the exchange of experiences between researchers from different areas, cultures, and backgrounds, creating a productive space for innovative research. One of the most successful initiatives of the Ubias network is the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), in which the scientific exchange between generations, disciplines, cultures, and continents takes place around a major theme. More at www.ubias.net.

Managing director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University since 2008, Padberg has a background in history and biological anthropology. Her main research interests are related to interdisciplinarity and the development of universities and science.

By talking to directors and employees about the institutes' strategies, missions, and values, she has brought together aspects related to their functioning and autonomy in relation to the universities where they are based, in addition to their contribution to research. "Institutes for advanced study have played a notable role in the development of universities and sciences," she says in the article. Padberg also addresses the future challenges of these research centers.

With regard to Latin America, the researcher has reinforced that the institutes have a "special responsibility" concerning the political and social development of their countries, democracy, and the mediation between science and society. When highlighting the IEA-USP as the largest and oldest institute in the region, Padberg cited the intention outlined in its foundation, in 1986, to be an area of academic and intellectual freedom. "With the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Brazilian universities were looking for a new beginning and endeavored to develop international relations in academia," she wrote.

Essays on the Post-COVID-19 World

The blog Interdisciplinarity has started to publish essays on the post-coronavirus world, received after a call opened in April. The inaugural article, Science and its Public after the Pandemic, by Lorraine Daston, from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, addresses the public's greatest interest in the scientific content produced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Daston has analyzed the future prospects for the dissemination of science and its relationship with people.

Created by the partnership between the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld Univertity, which manages the blog, and the network of University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS), the initiative has launched the question How will/should the world change? The corona crisis as an interdisciplinary challenge. In addition to the blog, the selected essays will be published on the websites of UBIAS and the IEA-USP, which supports the call. The next selected works will continuously be published in the coming weeks.

The call is still open to interested parties from all areas and countries. The texts must address the impacts and challenges of the post-coronavirus world for society.

"There are growing indicators that the world will be different after this crisis and that globalization will be questioned in many areas. According to these observations, the corona crisis should mark a turning point. In times of great uncertainty, science is asked to look to the future and offer a rational discourse on how to react to the situation," evaluates the letter of the call.

Essays must be written in English and have a maximum of 10,000 characters, including spaces. The receiving addresses are zif@uni-bielefeld.de or ubiasnetwork@gmail.com.

Executive manager of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University since 2008, Padberg has a background in history and biological anthropology. Her main research interests are related to interdisciplinarity and the development of universities and science.

By talking to directors and employees about the institutes' strategies, missions, and values, she has brought together aspects related to their functioning and autonomy in relation to the universities where they are based, in addition to their contribution to research. "Institutes for advanced study have played a notable role in the development of universities and sciences," she says in the article. Padberg also addresses the future challenges of these research centers.

With regard to Latin America, the researcher has reinforced that the institutes have a "special responsibility" concerning the political and social development of their countries, democracy, and the mediation between science and society. When highlighting the IEA-USP as the largest and oldest institute in the region, Padberg cited the intention outlined in its foundation, in 1986, to be an area of academic and intellectual freedom. "With the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Brazilian universities were looking for a new beginning and endeavored to develop international relations in academia," she wrote.

The network UBIAS (University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study) has an open call to receive essays on the theme How will/should the world change? The corona crisis as an interdisciplinary challenge. Researchers from all areas and countries may participate.

The articles will be published on the websites of the network and of the IEA, as well as on the blog Interdisciplinarity, managed by University of Bielefeld's ZiF (Center for Interdisciplinary Research). Texts written in English must have a maximum of 10,000 characters, including spaces, and sent to the emails zif@uni-bielefeld.de or ubiasnetwork@gmail.com by the end of May. If the received material is considered to be of high quality, it is possible that it will later generate a publication by UBIAS.

The network

UBIAS is currently composed of 41 members, representing 44 institutes of advanced studies, all based in universities. Guilherme Ary Plonski, deputy director of the IEA, is the coordinator for the 2018-2020 biennium. The network aims to exchange experiences and carry out joint research. For this call, UBIAS works in partnership with ZiF.

Photo: Pxhere

Based mainly on community ties and experiences of political resistance to the social oppressions that occur in the peripheries, cultural collectives "reinvent forms of productive organization, constituting local arrangements based on other logics, distinct from the neoliberal productive paradigm," according to Professor Dennis de Oliveira, from the Department of Journalism and Publishing at USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), a participant in IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2019.

From July to December, he will develop the project "Insurgent Outskirts: the Culture and Communication Collectives in the Peripheries of São Paulo," in which he will map the performance of these groups and analyze three aspects:

• the experiences of the collectives in relation to the role of communicative processes as guiding axes of their organizational perspectives;
• the resignification processes of the peripheral territories from the collectives' action;
• the relations maintained by the collectives with government agencies, companies, universities, and other institutions.

When ethologist Eduardo Ottoni, from USP's Institute of Psychology (IP), began researching the use of tools by capuchin monkeys in the 1990s, he did not imagine that his and other researchers' work dedicated to the study of the species were contributing to the consolidation of a new scientific discipline: cultural evolution.

The volume of relevant critical mass in the area led to the creation of the Cultural Evolution Society in 2017, during a meeting in Jena, Germany. "The keynote of that meeting was to optimize the inclusion and interaction of various theoretical and applied perspectives related to the study of cultural phenomena, from the humanities to information and natural sciences," says Ottoni, who joined IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2019.

As outcomes of the project "Evolutionary Approaches to Culture," he is writing a textbook on the subject and two articles for specialized periodicals. In addition, the professor is planning a workshop to take place in November. The idea is to invite four foreign researchers, including Rachel Kendal, from the University of Durham, president of the Cultural Evolution Society.

With these contributions, he hopes to foster debates on recent field study perspectives, which include Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution, gene-culture coevolution, extended cognition, and behavioral traditions in nonhuman animals.

Origins

According to Ottoni, there used to be a complete division between the humanities and the biological approaches to cultural evolution, with prejudices on both sides. "Some areas of the human sciences imagined horrible things when one spoke of biology, and there were even pejorative classifications, such as calling someone a 'genetic determinist.'"

In this context, a perspective of cultural anthropology associated with the tabula rasa theory has appeared, making no sense according to the ethologist. "The conception was that evolution gave us the brain and sense organs, with everything related to culture being a social and flexible construction, with nothing to channel or determine it."

On the biological side, restrictions were also established with the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, developed from the late 19th century until the discovery of DNA in the 1940s, says the researcher. "Neo-Darwinism generated a model with more restrictions on culture than Darwin's original model."

The Neo-Darwinian model speaks of "particulate" and non-Lamarckist inheritance (as it would not involve the inheritance of acquired characters) with "blind" variation (in relation to selection), specifies Ottoni. "This model can hardly be applied to culture."

"Darwin speaks basically of inheritable variation with consequences in terms of fitness (aptitude). This model, indeed, serves well to model cultural processes."

The extreme example of this restrictive model has been given by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, "although he has been the creator of the 'meme' concept as a unit of culture transmission," says the professor. "It was a metaphor or a kind of theoretical exercise on the information process."

"For Dawkins, culture affects the success of the organism and thus becomes part of the phenotype in a broader sense of the term, which he calls the extended phenotype (the set of 'selectable' characteristics of the individual). The implication of this is that culture affects fitness but is not 'inherited' in the same way as genes."

Coevolution

These humanistic and biological conceptions have allowed for a lot of discussion, but they have been replaced by a new point of view: cultural aspects would not be something isolated from the organism, but a very important part in the processes of biological evolution, Ottoni explains.

"Genetic evolution is no longer considered as the only information transmission line in time. Cultural evolution has come to be considered another transmission line, with somewhat different rules in its dynamics. Both lines interact and there is also a perspective that has gained visibility and relevance: culture would not be exclusive to humans."

Ottoni says that the reason he ended up heading to this area was the discussion of cultural processes in capuchin monkeys after the initially accidental discovery that they use tools and that they learned to use them with each other. "We already knew of the more sophisticated use of tools by chimpanzees."

Researchers began to discard anything that could be explained by genetic variation or, in the case of differences in behavior between groups, by ecological differences. "Having discarded these aspects, we must verify the degree of importance of social interaction for learning."

This approach has been applied to the use of tools by nonhuman primates: chimpanzees, monkeys, and orangutans. The idea of existence of cultural processes in other nonhuman animals has also been present in studies of vocal communication in cetaceans, experimental studies with fish, and in other cases, adds the ethologist.

All of this echoed general evolution models and authors working on the idea of niche construction: "In a more traditional evolutionary model, individuals expose their extended phenotype to the environment and nature kills some more than others. However, every organism minimally transforms its environment, but some transform it more and will change the selective pressures to which they are subject."

As an example he cites the termite, whose organic structure is adequate to live in the controlled temperature and humidity of the termite mound built by the colony. "It could not stand to be exposed to the savannah climate." This concept of niche-building in evolutionary biology has been developed over almost a century, and though it still generates many polemics it has become a classic, says Ottoni.

"But there is also the idea of the niche's cultural construction, something more intense and determining. This changes the organism-environment relationship in natural selection: when the organism transforms the environment, other things get to be selected."

Capuchin monkey breaking nuts with stones at Serra da Capivara National Park

Machiavellian intelligence

The classical anthropological conception was that ecological aspects of natural selection produced the development of human intellect. "According to this explanation, the hominins went out into the savannah and lacked the survivability their predators had in that space, needing to build weapons since they also lacked the predators' natural utilities such as claws and tusks. Basically, it is an idea of technology supplying natural needs."

In contrast, the hypothesis of what became known as "Machiavellian intelligence" emerged. Supporters of this idea argued that the pressures of social complexity would have been more important for the evolution of primate intellect than the development of technologies.

"A submodel for social learning arose from the hypothesis about the social origins of the intellect: the idea of cultural intelligence. This means that if humans, ever since their ancestors, increasingly depend on technological development and relationship dynamics, they increasingly depend on culture. Thus, everything that genetically favors the evolution of capacities that predispose to the aptitude for socially mediated learning and the establishment of cultural processes would be part of a selection process."

Ottoni claims that this ability was a specific selective pressure that marked the history of primates. "It started with primatologists and then expanded to the study of other animals."

Until recently, however, many researchers called whatever perpetuated through socially mediated learning in nonhuman primates "traditions," he notes. "'Tradition' is not a good word because it denotes vertical transmission from generation to generation, while cultural transmission also happens between individuals of the same age group horizontally."

What should be used is "culture," with a status similar to "genetics," argues the professor. In this model, there is a flow of information that is marginal but interdependent with genetics. "If we call this process 'cultural,' the questions change: does human culture have peculiarities or is it just a case of hypertrophy? If it is peculiar, then what happens differently in humans?"

Faced with these questions, scientists have refined learning concepts, as in the case of imitation, according to Ottoni. "Maybe only humans imitate in the strict sense of the term. Is there such imitation in chimpanzees?"

The key issue is to operationally define these aspects in order to compare socially mediated learning processes in humans and nonhumans, and see what is different, says the researcher. One of the "hottest" research themes in this scenario today is that of cumulative culture: "Human culture is clearly cumulative, with progressive improvements."

Photos (from the top): Leonor Calasans / IEA-USP and Tiago Falótico / IP-USP

British cognitive scientist Donald Peterson is the new visiting professor at the IEA. For an initial period of one year, he will develop the research project "Life in the Cognitive Era." Until last year, he was a full professor of Computer Science at Shantou University in China.

Peterson covers logic, philosophy, psychology, and computer science. During his stay, he will conduct seminar-series and prepare publications in the area of the project. People of all disciplines and at all levels will be welcome at the seminars. One seminar-series will be on Cognitive Life, concerning issues of welfare, work, health, and education in an era of AI, robotics, and 5G communications. Another will be on Cognitive Computing, concerning the architecture, applications, and significance of systems such as IBM Watson.

In research, Peterson will focus on his concept of "epiduction" (a form of practical reason), and its relation with modern data conditions, the human brain, machine augmentation, and welfare.

Cogtech

Cognitive technologies (cogtech) are influencing life and work, and "we need a critical understanding of their opportunities and risks," says Peterson. Examples of cogtech are artificial intelligence, adaptive systems, big data analytics, humanoid robotics, person recognition, personalizing learning systems, and virtual reality.

According to Peterson, cogtech is complemented by innovations in biometrics, nanotechnology, 3D-printing, quantum computing, and by systems such as cryptocurrency and blockchain. Regarding systems theory, the new era involves "a shift toward more open systems, and their positive and negative potential effects."

Conditions associated with this shift include mass data, rapid change, global connectivity, and the cyborg interdependence of humans and machines. "We are shifting our course toward new ways of living and working, and the social and cultural implications of this change are radical and immanent." In Peterson's view, the task of policy in the cognitive era is to direct the use of cogtech to beneficial effects, rather than to classify the relevant technologies as inherently good or bad.

Peterson explains that this field of study is necessarily interdisciplinary: requiring both technical and critical knowledge, as being both theoretical and practical. "It is theoretical because it requires analytical structures such as systems theory and context-modulated reasoning, and it is practical because its issues will impact employment, mental health, education, work, communication, and quality of life."

Profile

Peterson holds a PhD in Philosophy from University College London, a Master's degree in Foundations of Advanced Information Technology from Imperial College London, and a Master's degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Edinburgh.

Before becoming a full professor of the Department of Computer Science at Shantou University, he was Associate Professor in Computer Science and Head of Division at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Information and Communication Technology at the University of London, and Lecturer in Cognitive Science and then in the Psychology of E-learning at the University of Birmingham. Peterson has previously inhabited two research labs: ECRC in Munich (The European Computer-Industry Research Center), and LKL (The London Knowledge Lab). He now joins an Institute of Advanced Study in the tradition established in Princeton in 1930 by Abraham Flexner. This tradition is deliberately multi-disciplinary, research-focussed, and, in the case of IEA-USP, oriented to social welfare as a practical outcome of research.

Peterson is the editor of "Forms of Representation: an Interdisciplinary Theme for Cognitive Science" (1996), which includes a chapter by Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon, co-editor of "Philosophy and Cognitive Science" (1993), and author of "Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy: Three Sides of the Mirror" (1990). He has also written 13 book chapters and published 10 articles in refereed journals.

Photo: Leonor Calasans / IEA-USP

Knowing the causes of political corruption and the organized crime associated with it in Brazil, as well as the way in which the bodies destined to combat it operate, is something that requires understanding from the micro-foundations of rational action, through the weight of patrimonialism in the historical formation of the country, up to the effects of the institutional and organizational scheme on the behavior of the crimes' actors, according to political scientist Rogério Bastos Arantes, a professor at the Department of Political Science at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences.

Arantes is one of the participants in IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2019, in which he develops the research project "Political Corruption and Organized Crime in Brazil."

For him, however, the components linked to the causes of corruption and organized crime in the country should not be understood only in the light of a positive theory, characterized by the explanation of processes and institutions from realistic assumptions about human behavior and through resources and techniques for research and validation of results towards the search for generalizations. "This work must also be inspired by the democratic promises to be made."

Database

The survey of convictions produced by the penal system, the analysis of cases reported by the media, and interviews with citizens and specialists are the three types of research used to circumvent the difficulties of directly measuring corruption, according to the literature examined by Arantes. His project will go beyond the simple survey of convictions, "as it will gather information about the phenomenon from the early stages of the criminal investigation and organize them in the form of a large qualitative database."

More than 3,000 operations carried out by the Federal Police (PF) and the Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) between 2003 and 2017 will be analyzed. The objective is to map crimes related to political corruption and examine the performance of the main institutions involved in combating these criminal practices, especially both mentioned above and the federal courts.

According to Arantes, the mapping "may result in a new empirical typology of state and governmental activities, and of private economies that are more subject to political corruption and organized crime." He estimates that the result of this work will be the most comprehensive picture of these criminal actions.

Institutions

The study will also provide knowledge about the institutional and organizational bases of action of the bodies in charge of investigating and prosecuting such crimes, explains the researcher. The constitutive poles of the penal system, namely PF, MPF, and the federal courts, "have undergone significant displacements that have reshaped the criminal jurisdiction related to the fight against political corruption and organized crime."

Taken as a whole, the research project will require an interdisciplinary approach, especially by mobilizing the fields of political science and law. The main results of the work will be the subject of at least one scientific article. Arantes also intends to draft a book on the research topics. The publicly accessible database will be structured after the publications and will be permanently updated, so that "studies and analyzes can be replicated, new hypotheses can be tested, and new theories can be tried".

Arantes plans to give two conferences, one in each semester of 2019, and organize a seminar at the end of his sabbatical period, with the participation of researchers and public leaders concerned with the research topic.

Quantitative data

The database on the more than 3,000 operations began to be built in 2018 and uses the summaries written by the PF as source. Gaps and inconsistencies of information have been solved through research on official websites of other institutions involved in the operations, professional associations (especially those linked to the PF), and also the mainstream press.

To examine the organizational dimension, Arantes uses the available data on the renewal of staff, and of the technical and strength apparatus of the PF that occurred in recent years.

According to him, the preliminary analysis of the first 600 operations of the investigated period has revealed the occurrence of more than 50 types of crimes, with 23% of them being related to corruption crimes and 16% pointing to public servants involved in other types of crimes that needed the support of corrupt practices. Another obtained information was that no less than 24,923 provisional arrests were carried out from 2003 to 2015 in 2,866 operations.

"Through judicial authorizations and under the supervision or active participation of the MPF, the PF has already launched hundreds of operations against corrupt politicians at all levels of the federation and in all branches of government. It has also reached out to judges and police officers of all existing corporations in the country, including itself, as well as to corrupt public servants in the most diverse areas of public administration."

According to Arantes, Operation Lava Jato has so far carried out almost a thousand search and seizure warrants, executed more than two hundred coercive conducts, and served 115 preventive and 121 temporary arrests." Adding up the sentences of those convicted so far, including former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Lava Jato has already reached almost 2,000 years in convictions."

Although the unprecedented collection of information that reveal the profile and extent of these practices in Brazil only provides knowledge of the cases in which the actions of the PF and MPF had some effect, "this is the largest volume of data on such criminal practices ever produced in the country."

Qualitative information

In-depth interviews and exemplary case studies will provide qualitative information for the research. PF delegates and public prosecutors will be interviewed with an emphasis on knowledge about the investigated crimes and the approach to changes in the institutional system.

Members of other institutions who worked on task forces with the PF will also be interviewed. In this case, the objective is to assess the hypothesis of institutional densification within the network of accountability institutions.

The analysis of exemplary cases will seek to assess the effectiveness of criminal proceedings in the operations. In these studies, in addition to the mentioned agents, magistrates will also be interviewed. Lawsuits will be selected for case studies in order to verify whether the obstacles inherent to the triangulation of the criminal justice system have in fact been overcome or not, and whether the system has started to operate with a greater degree of effectiveness.

Changes

Arantes identifies three significant displacements that the MPF, the PF, the Federal Justice, and the system that they have been part of since the past decade have gone through. These changes "reshaped the criminal jurisdiction related to political corruption and organized crime."

One of them was the fact that actions of administrative impropriety, "elected in the 1990s as the dominant strategy of prosecutors in the fight against corruption," gave way to police investigations and criminal prosecutions of corruption as a common crime in the 2000s, according to the researcher.

Another change in the 2000s was that the main role has shifted from state public ministries to federal agencies, notably the PF, MPF, and federal judges.

The third change has to do with the interaction between the agencies: "the historical disarticulation of the institutions that make up the penal system has led to a greater consolidation of their reciprocal relations, resignifying the forms of investigation, prosecution, and judgment in this field."

Arantes' hypothesis about these three displacements is institutional and organizational in nature. In the first case, "the changes can be explained by the institutional design capable of providing more effective results in the criminal and federal spheres." This effectiveness "also depends on the endogenous motivation and the commitment of organizations to increase the effectiveness of their actions and the consolidation of their reciprocal relations within the accountability network with a view to overcoming isolation and having a greater impact on activities against corruption."

"Considering the period of just over a decade with almost daily operations it is difficult to find a parallel in politics compared to other countries. In addition, the search for greater effectiveness in combating corruption and organized crime through concerted action by the police, prosecutors, and judges represents one of the great news in contemporary Brazil."

Neopatrimonialism

"In a country with patrimonialist formation, in which the modernization of economy and State has not been preceded or even accompanied by new power relations based on the liberal principle of the contract, the archaic coexists with the modern as neopatrimonialism or bureaucratic patrimonialism," in the definition of Simon Schwartzman, comments Arantes.

In fact, according to the researcher (based on the studies by Edson Nunes), "the incomplete and contradictory Brazilian modernization could have bequeathed a set of four 'grammars' that organize the relations between the State and society: clientelism, corporatism, bureaucratic isolation, and universal procedures."

In a historical constitution like this, "political corruption could not fail to be endemic and to be present in the most diverse instances of power and representation." Arantes says that in a scenario "in which private agents organize themselves to capture income, and politicians and bureaucrats control massive resources, the opportunity for the practice of corruption is given."

Public debate

"Despite these difficulties, we must recognize that since Brazil's redemocratization the problems of corruption and organized crime have occupied a central place in the public debate, involving representative institutions, being permanently observed by the media, occupying the attention of public opinion in election times (but not only), and mobilizing civil society actors and even international organizations on mission in the country, leading to the promotion of legislative changes and to the signing of treaties in which the need to combat them is highlighted."

Arantes points out the institutional evolution of the country's organs and of the system as a whole to fight corruption: "New methods of investigation associated with new legal provisions and mechanisms of international cooperation have led to incisive actions by the investigative bodies. Added to this is a new stance by the federal magistracy, which places itself closer to the MPF and the PF than as its counterpoint. This means a fight against corruption and organized crime on a scale never seen in the country."

According to the researcher, his project is part of the analytical trajectory of studies that sought to demonstrate that the definitive consolidation of democracy in the countries of the third wave of democratization (as established by Samuel Huntington) depends on advances beyond simple electoral competition and alternation of power. "Among these studies, I highlight those that investigated the connections between corruption, institutional trust, and adherence to the democratic regime," says Arantes referring to the work of political scientist José Álvaro Moises, a senior professor at the IEA, where he coordinates the Quality of Democracy Research Group.

Photo: Fernanda Rezende / IEA-USP

Maurício Pietrocola: ''A conscientização sobre riscos deve passar do nível local para o global''

Despite the shortcomings and inequalities in many societies in accessing the benefits provided by scientific and technological development, large portions of humanity take advantage of significant improvements in the quality of life to varying degrees. Many of these improvements, however, come at high costs in environmental, social, and even cultural terms.

Research on the atomic nucleus and the consumption of fossil fuels, for example, led to two civilizing risks: the ever-present possibility of nuclear conflict and climate change due to global warming caused by greenhouse gases.

It is also clear that awareness of the negative implications of many consumption and behavior habits, such as the indiscriminate use of plastics and automobiles or the excessive consumption of meat, has grown in significant parts of the population in recent decades.

"The problem is that people are still basically concerned with the negative impacts at the individual and local level, without considering the interrelation of all factors on a global scale," says educator Mauricio Pietrocola, a professor at USP' School of Education (FE) and a participant in the 2019 Sabbatical Year Program.

Scientific education

At the IEA, Pietrocola is developing the project "Scientific Education in the Risk Society." The objective is to identify how students in basic education can be awakened to perceive the risks inherent in scientific and technological development, not only from a local point of view, but also in connection with global aspects. "Young people must be able to understand the risks, be aware of their causes and implications, and be able to take actions that contribute to minimizing these risks, not only at individual or local levels, but also globally. For this to be achieved, it will be necessary to adapt teacher training and curricula," says the researcher.

The sociological framework used by him to characterize the current period of humanity as that of a "risk society" is based, above all, on the formulations of sociologists Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) and Anthony Giddens.

In the preface to "Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order," published in 1995 in partnership with Scott Lash, they state that "as a species, we are no longer guaranteed our survival, even in the short term - and this is a consequence of our own actions, as a collective humanity." They warn that "new areas of unpredictability are often created by the very attempts to control them."

For Beck, Giddens, and Lash, the great relevance acquired by ecological issues "is due to the fact that the 'environment' is no longer something external to human social life, but completely impregnated and reordered by it. (...) What used to be is today so completely entangled with what is 'social' that, in this area, we can no longer take anything for granted."

Late modernity

In the conception of risk society formulated by Beck, he considers that globalization has played a fundamental process in the diffusion of risks on a global scale, including the diffusion of technologies and industrialization in addition to possibilities and consumption habits, in a context in which globalization is one of the engines that he, together with Giddens and Lash, calls late modernity or reflexive modernity.

We are a society that experiences post-nature, a reflection of how technoscience has transformed nature into technonature. In this type of modernity, the central concerns of society change from the development and implementation of new technologies to the management of risks associated with existing technologies," comments the researcher.

He explains that until the middle of the 20th century science education was thought almost exclusively as a kind of qualification for young people who wanted to pursue a profession of a scientific or technological nature, of a higher or technical level.

"After World War II, scientific education is understood as more than a training for scientists and technicians, and that science and technology are much more connected with society. Then, a movement emerges to think about the importance of science for the citizen who will not become a scientist or technician."

As a result, curricula are being reformulated to reflect scientific education as one of the aspects of citizenship training. "For the past 30 to 40 years we have been working on curricula and teacher training with this purpose." However, says Pietrocola, this concern still reflects orientation towards good practices, "about what should be done or not, with science being a grading tool of that scale."

In his studies, Beck begins to show that the relationship between science and society is so complex that it is no longer possible to distinguish where one or the other begins, explains the researcher. "Certain social practices only came into existence from science and technology. An example of this is communication. Until the invention of the telegraph, communication was linked to the speed of the fastest horses. Today it can happen in less than a second." Beck also showed that the globalization process started to generate several types of risks, different from those previously existing, "risks that the very science and technology create."

According to Pietrocola, school curricula are still very much focused on risks and individual or local needs, such as the importance of using sunscreen, for example. "But if someone decides to buy a car for greater mobility, they will not only contribute to the congestion and pollution of their city, but also to global warming, the melting of the polar ice caps, and the submersion of the Maldives Islands."

The nefarious consequences "are more or less evenly distributed across the planet". The researcher explains that this goes against the logic of capitalism itself, which sought to produce wealth in one place and export (environmental, above all) risks to another. "Confined profit and risks used to be the pattern, including used tires, broken cell phones, and other discarded products and waste being sent to poor countries. This confinement of risk disappeared with late modernity."

Methodology

Pietrocola and his mentored students are working on two fronts. One of them is student-centered and will firstly map their perception of the risks arising from scientific and technological development. "The prospect is that the level of this perception is very low." Then, the project will raise awareness of the global scope of risks previously considered to have local impact only. The third phase will be dedicated to the identification of individual and group educational actions that can contribute to the reduction of risks at local and global levels.

"If we can get students to go through these three stages, we will also have to work on another front, which involves curricular additions and teacher training for methodological use." Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States already deal with the risk issue in their curricula, "but I do not know to what extent civilizing risks are being addressed," he comments. In the Brazilian case, he considers that emphasis is placed only on risks in which local impact is perceived..

In the second semester, Pietrocola intends to start working with teachers from a public school in the municipality of Osasco and hold a cycle of seminars on the principle of precaution, inequality, global warming, and other topics with specialists from Brazil and the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In 2020, fieldwork will take place in the schools, making it possible to see how much teachers and students are already aware of the issue of global risks.

Photo: Leonor Calasans / IEA-USP