City: A psychosocial analysis of the urban space after floodings

Abstract

This text is a previous analytic version of a first problematization of the research, entitled Beyond the surface: The productions of the symbolic spacial trenches, which is intended to stu­dy the relations of the inhabitants with the city of São Luiz do Paraitinga (São Paulo, Brazil). Such re­lations contain the possible transformations in the representation of the image of the city, considering the sociohistorical process of the architectural for­mation of the city, as well as the symbolic aspects that appear and suffer conjunctural interventions. The constituent elements of the represented space in the city were, intensively, disturbed due to the floodings in 1863 and at the end of 2009, beginning of 2010. Such floodings caused in a similar form, a destruction of the buildings downtown and the flooding of the rural areas, at least. In this sense, starting first from a local ethnographic contact and a theoretical support centered on some presu­ppositions of the Lefebvre conception about how the space is qualified by the body, and how the production of representations subvert the reality of the built image. It was emphasized as a partial result of this research an orientation of the popu­lation for the rebuilding of the city, after that the floodings were established in an institutionalized image of the city centered on the dual real/sem­blance.