Os Relatórios do Desenvolvimento Humano e a possibilidade de tornar o espaço urbano capaz de impulsionar processos de distribuição de poder, recursos e capacidades: uma análise inspirada nas indicações de Norbert Elias

Abstract

This study aims at demonstrating that the analysis of Human Development Reports makes it possible to detect the simultaneity of civilizing and un-civilizing processes. The documents in question do not intend to identify these processes, however, a thorough examination of their concerns indicates the possibility of carrying out a reflection upon them inspired in the last texts by Norbert Elias, which reiterate the necessity to verify the extent to which the distribution of resources and power does, or does not, become the center of current political concerns of an organism like the United Nations. The documents so far analyzed, while trying to give visibility to the civilizing possibilities, also bring to the surface, regardless of their intentions, un-civilizing processes, which are expressed in the indifference and omission of some configurations (State, associations of interests, public and private organizations, political groups, governments etc.) towards poverty, misery, deprivation, precariousness of housing, sanitation, food, schools, and social and political exclusion.