AMBIENTALIDADE Uma nota sobre a governamentalidade ambiental Copiar

´AMBIENTALIDADE´ Uma Nota Sobre a Governamentalidade Ambiental

A influência dos insights de Foucault é crescente tanto no sentido vertical como horizontal. A verticalização de tal influência se reflete no aprofundamento e refinamento das analises genealógicas e arqueológicas,

enquanto que sua

horizontalização se deve a

ampliação dos “campos” que passam a ser tratados pelos frameworks configurados a partir do legado foucaultiano. No livro Environmentaly: Technologies and the Making of Subjects (2005) de Arun Agrawal temos uma convergência dessas duas tendências. A referência empírica do livro é a politica de proteção ambiental/florestal em Kumaon no norte da India, a partir da qual

não apenas evidencia as relações entre as mudanças no

governo e os deslocamentos nas praticas (e nas crenças) ambientais, mas principalmente analisa as tecnologias de governo/governança ambiental e suas relações com as mudanças nas subjetividades, processo que apreende a partir do conceito de “ambientalidade (environmentality). “Environmentality refers, then, to a specific optic for analyzing environmental politics instead of denoting a particular form of it. Specific forms of environmentality depend on the characteristics of the elements constituting it. Shifts in the nature of knowledge, politics, institutions, and identities lead to new forms of environmentality by definition” [AGRAWAL, , 2005, p. 226]

Ou em outras palavras do autor: “Environmentality, …. constitutes a way to think about environmental politics. It attends carefully to (1) the formation of new expert knowledges; (2) the nature of power, which is at'the root of efforts to regulate social practice; (3) the type of institutions and regulatory practices that exist in a mutually productive relationship with social and ecological practices and can be seen as the historical expressions of contingent political relationships; and (4) the behaviors that regulations seek to change, which go hand in

hand with the processes of self-formation and struggles between expert- or authoritybased regulation and situated practices”[ AGRAWAL, 2005, p.229] E, nesta mesma direção detalha seu argumento “Writings on governmentality can illuminate and track the uncertainties and unexpectedness of new forms of government in at least four ways. First, they prompt analyses of how problems that require government (the conduct of conduct) come into being rather than accepting unquestioningly the existence of problems […] Second, instead of taking power as the fixed property of some agent(s), it becomes possible to examine concretely how power is generated by and located in different strategies of government., No particular agent or person can then be seen as being located in a permanently m,ore powerful political position vis-a.-vis another. Instead, one can begin to ask why some strategies of government work in certain ways and with what effects [… ] Third, recourse to governmentality as an optic also orients attention toward the careful study of the techniques, forms, and representations of knowledge that are related to new means of governance. Statistics, maps, numerical tables, and their collation in specific formats can become the basis for producing new forms of knowledge that make some actions seem naturally more appropriate than others as an invaluable aid to the process of government […]Finally, studies of governmentality bring to the forefront questions about the relationship between government and selfconstruction. If the literatures on institutional analyses, public policy, and the state treat the process of subject formation and identity change as lying outside their legitimate domain, an examination of governmentalization is about integrating institutional and other social changes with changes in subjectivities. The foregrounding of questions about these relationships forces analysis to search for resources that would allow at least the beginnings of answers.” [AGRAWAL, 2005, 223/225]

A partir desta referência analítica o autor estrutura um “estudo de caso” da politica ambiental/florestal em Kumaon no norte da India tendo como premissa que ela se ancora na construção de um bloco (que os velhos chamar de hegemônicos) compostos de conhecimentos enquanto poder, instituições e subjetividades. É em torno destes três conceitos que se configura ponto alto do livro, sua proposta analítica, a qual pode ser expresso com as próprias palavras do autor: “Processes around the environment always involve power/knowledges and subjectivities and are always mediated by institutions. Instead of a selective conceptual focus on "politics," "institutions," or "subjectivities" as the foundation on which to build an analysis of changing environmental relations, it can be more fruitful to examine how these concepts shape each other and are themselves constituted.” [AGRAWAL, 2005]

E, para tanto, ele resgata o legado dos ecólogos políticos, teóricos da propriedade comum e das feministas, os quais tem como foco o poder, a propriedade enquanto uma instituição e, as novas subjetividades, entre as quais destaca-se a contribuição histórica das teóricas feministas. Enfim, temo um livro instigante tanto no atacado no sentido da sua proposta analítica, como no varejo entendido no sentido das fontes processas, as quais em si, já constituem uma contribuição relevante a nossa compreensão da politica ambiental.

AGRAWAL, Arun, Environentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. London: Duke University Press, 2005