Abstract
The text addresses the relationship between environmental education, from a critical theoretical perspective, and the environmental conflicts in Latin America, bringing theoretical contributions to the emancipatory, Marxist and anti-systemic educational practice in the region. For this, it begins with a conceptual discussion on education, thought as an ontological process of formation of human beings, along with the continuous movement of production of their means of life, which dialectically determines the way we create and satisfy needs, establish the society-nature metabolism, produce culture, give meaning to life and our own way of being as individuals in society. There are environmental conflicts in capitalism because the process of destruction of nature, inherent in the socio-metabolism of capital, reinforces social inequalities and reduces the possibility of survival of social groups that live in differentiated, non-weird ways with nature. Such conceptual aspects are thought within the specificity of dependent capitalism and the process of coloniality of knowledge and power in Latin America. Based on this, and on how the social struggles of workers, native peoples and traditional peoples are constituted and fought for the liberation of peoples, a final synthesis is made, explaining the intentionalities of environmental education in these Latin American emancipatory struggles.
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Notes
- 1.
For Costa and Loureiro (2014, p. 137), the realization of work is only effective in an inseparable movement in two planes: subjective (processed within the subject) and objective (resulting in the material transformation of nature), in which its effectuation constitutes an objectification of the subject who acts. Work reveals how these two categories are articulated, since social being originates in the synthesis between subjectivity and objectivity. Through practical activity what was once in consciousness (now is outside it), transformed into an object.
- 2.
Abya Yala, in the language of the Kuna people, means Mature Land, Living Land or Land in Bloom and is synonymous with America (Porto-Gonçalves, 2009).
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Work carried out with the support of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq/Brazil).
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Costa, C.A., Loureiro, C.F. (2023). Critical Environmental Education, Marxism and Environmental Conflicts: Some Contributions in the Light of Latin America. In: Hall, R., Accioly, I., Szadkowski, K. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37252-0_17
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