Discussions about sustainability and the planning of Brazilian cities, as well as historical studies on slavery, especially in colonial Brazil, are the main themes addressed in the 97th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, released this month. The online version (Portuguese only) is available at SciELO.

The articles in the dossier dedicated to urban studies have the participation of several researchers from the USP Global Cities Program, which is based at the IEA. The material includes an analysis of the urban-demographic patterns of the São Paulo State capital. According to the authors, the goal is to gain a better insight into the singularities of the city. One of the collaborating researchers of the dossier is sociologist Sérgio Adorno, who was responsible for editing a Estudos Avançados issue for the first time after replacing Alfredo Bosi.

In the article "Urban Sustainability: Conceptual Dimensions and Legal Implementation Instruments," the authors reflect on ways to implement public policies that aim the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Innovations and strategies for financing and developing the management of Brazilian cities are presented.

The dossier also addresses urban forests built by the Brazilian State and by activists, as well as technology as an ally of sustainability in solving everyday problems and city governance.

Slavery

The second dossier has been inspired by the seminar "Slavery of Body and Soul: Church, Political Power, and Atlantic-Mediterranean Slavery," which took place last April and was organized by IEA's Research Group Time, Memory, and Belonging. The articles analyze the view of Father António Vieyra and the position of the Catholic Church on slavery. Despite its redemptive discourse, the Church has accepted and integrated slavery into its doctrine and institutions, an inheritance from the Roman Empire, where it has been constituted.

"The Indians, the Amazon, and the Concepts of Slavery and Freedom," an article by Camila Loureiro Dias, seeks to show a broad approach to the notion of slavery in Brazilian history, highlighting that the trafficking of Africans was only one of the colonial forms of exploitation among others that involved the Indians of the Amazon region.

Literature, Current Affairs, and Reviews

The way how writer Carlos Drummond de Andrade has reacted to the repressive context of the Brazilian military dictatorship in some of his works is the subject of one of the essays in the "Literature" section of the new issue. According to the author, Fabio Cesar Alves, the analysis seeks to demonstrate how the poet was forced to deal with the state terrorism and political forces of the mid-1970s in a ciphered manner.

In the "Current Affairs" section, one of the discussions addresses the offenses of adolescents. According to the authors, Alysson Assunção Andrade and Jacqueline de Oliveira Moreira, offenses in the youth can be fed by a circuit of segregation and, sometimes, failed search for recognition. Another article deals with cyberbullying, its consequences for public health, and the mechanisms to prevent it.

The "Reviews" section closes the issue, featuring an analysis of the international insertion of Russia and president Vladimir Putin, and the self-fiction of writer Caio Fernando Abreu, among others.

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

USP Global Cities

Marcelo Batista Nery, Altay Alves Lino de Souza, and Sergio Adorno
Carlos Leite, Claudia Acosta, Tereza Herling, Ligia Barrozo, and Paulo Saldiva
Debora Sotto, Djonathan Gomes Ribeiro, Alex Kenya Abiko, Carlos Alberto Cioce Sampaio, Carlos Arturo Navas, Karin Regina de Castro Marins, Maria do Carmo Martins Sobral, Arlindo Philippi Jr., and Marcos Silveira Buckeridge
Erica Moniz Ferreira da Silva, Fabiano Bender, Márcio Luiz da Silva de Monaco, Ana Katherine Smith, Paola Silva, Marcos Silveira Buckeridge, Paula Maria Elbl, and Giuliano Maselli Locosselli
Miguel Luiz Bucalem
Cláudia Terezinha Kniess, Alexandre de Oliveira e Aguiar, Diego de Melo Conti, and Arlindo Philippi Jr.
Tatiana Tucunduva Philippi Cortese, Sonia Viggiani Coutinho, Maria da Penha Vasconcellos, and Marcos Silveira Buckeridge

Slavery of Body and Soul

Alcir Pécora
Carlos Zeron
Marina Massimi
Caio C. Boschi
Camila Loureiro Dias
Emanuele Colombo

Literature

Simone Rossinetti Rufinoni
Fabio Cesar Alves
Eliane Robert Moraes
Gilmário Guerreiro da Costa
Sandra Soares Della Fonte

Current Affairs

Ana Lydia Sawaya, Anna Maria Peliano, Maria Paula de Albuquerque, and Semíramis Martins Álvares Domene
Alysson Assunção Andrade and Jacqueline de Oliveira Moreira
Jorge Shiguemitsu Fujita and Vanessa Ruffa

Reviews

Lenina Pomeranz
Erwin Torralbo Gimenez
Cristiane Rodrigues de Souza
Eduardo Veras
Caio Moraes Reis

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