Abstract
The urban nexus approach involves the investigation and elucidation of integrated solutions through the recognition of tradeoffs between water, energy, and food, namely resources whose shortage leads to inequalities in health. The article's central hypothesis is that the context of shortage corroborates social practices that can be synergic or contradictory in relation to the challenges of sustainability and social rights. The objective is to investigate synergies and contradictions based on social practices in the urban nexus in the neighborhood of Novo Recreio in the city of Guarulhos, Greater Metropolitan São Paulo, Brazil. The methodology consists of a qualitative ethnographic study drawing on practice theory as the reference, with direct field observations and narratives. The results featured social practices associated with systematic lack of water, precarious public lighting and transportation, and difficult access to fresh and healthy foods. The study of social practices between synergies and contradictions allowed verifying that this spontaneous process of search for solutions to local problems reveals the need to incorporate local practices and knowledge into public policies and global demands. We define nexus of exclusion as the peripheral condition of impossibility of conscious options that allow jointly orienting the reduction of shortage and iniquities through alternatives for sustainability.
Highlights
The urban nexus approach involves the investigation and elucidation of integrated solutions through the recognition of tradeoffs between water, energy, and food, namely resources whose shortage leads to inequalities in health
Based on Nicolini [15,23], it was possible to observe the practices by the residents of Novo Recreio, based on consideration of the material mediations and discursive practices, assuming that practices are “places of contextualized knowledge” 23 (p. 5) that emphasize different ways of acting and speaking
The observation periods in the Novo Recreio community allowed identifying some dominant practices in the urban water-energy-food nexus, constituting a synergy of alternative means and resilience in relation to the scenario of prevailing scarcity, as well as potential results or products of contradictions in the urban nexus and the perpetuation of the residents’ exile on the city’s periphery
Summary
The urban nexus approach involves the investigation and elucidation of integrated solutions through the recognition of tradeoffs between water, energy, and food, namely resources whose shortage leads to inequalities in health. The objective is to investigate synergies and contradictions based on social practices in the urban nexus in the neighborhood of Novo Recreio in the city of Guarulhos, Greater Metropolitan São Paulo, Brazil. A fundamental contradiction of cities is expressed by the logic of private property in a market context of capital accumulation, which has generated numerous injustices and inequalities in urban ways of life. This trend has spawned motivations for social changes and an understanding of possibilities for living harmoniously with our own creations 1. In Greater Metropolitan São Paulo, Brazil, for example, as in other large urban areas, there is a clear duality between a pattern of metropolization and the dramatic situation of low quality of life for large population contingents who occupy distant urban peripheries, lacking in basic infrastructure, legality, and social investments [3,4]
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