Abstract
Technology is used in order to emancipate. Emancipation for social and environmental justice ought to shape the way technology is designed and used. The relationships across action research, action research spiral, and the General Systems Theory was investigated. The case study refers to environmental education activities as part of a participative management approach to water resources on the Hydrographic Basin of the Upper Maranhão River (Brazil). By introducing action research spiral as a search of rationality in social practices, and describing the nature of lower and higher hierarchical level in General Systems Theory, the higher hierarchical level was associated with Habermasian emancipatory interest, whereas lower hierarchic levels were associated with the specific instrumental concern. To conclude, it is said that the articulation between action research spiral and General System Theory can be the means to strengthen the dialectical potential of the action research spiral in order to achieve both individual and collective empowerment.
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Notes
National Water Agency (www.ana.gov.br).
Remote Sensing is the set of activities that allows the obtainment of information on objects which compose the Earth’s surface, without the need of direct contact with them, through detection and record by satellites or airplanes of the energy reflected or issued by the targets which compose the surface.
According to Xavier-da-Silva (1992), geoprocessing may be defined as a data processing branch which produces transformations in existent values in a geographically referred database (georeferred), using analytical, geographic and logical resources, for the obtainment and presentation of the desired information.
The publications are available at: http://www.unb.br/ib/ecl/CT-Hidro/artigosF.htm.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) – the Brazilian Government institution geared to scientific and technological development – for the financial support provided for this study, which is related to the master degree research of Berlinck (2003).
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Berlinck, C.N., Saito, C.H. Action Research for Emancipation Informed by Habermas and Hierarchy of Systems: Case Study on Environmental Education and Management of Water Resources in Brazil. Syst Pract Action Res 23, 143–156 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-009-9150-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-009-9150-z