Communities of Practice at the Cidade do Saber

Abstract

I explore the relationships among state, culture and politics in the context of the largest educational project of social inclusion, local participation and citizenship in the Municipality of Camaçari, state of Bahia, northeastern Brazil. The City of Knowledge (Instituto Raimundo Pinheiro – Cidade do Saber), or CDS, offers free access to education, cultural events, and sports and leisure activities to economically disadvantaged children and adults, based on the concept of ‘plural citizenship’, the understanding that wider access to education, culture and sports shortens social distances and generates sustainable human development. Concepts of social inclusion, local participation, critical thinking and constructions of citizenship are applied, tested and contradicted on the ground. Sustainability is experienced as sustainable human development; sustainable urbanism; environmental sustainability and challenges to the sustainability of CDS, a community of practice where stakeholders are potentially producing a new way to understand what it means to be a modern Brazilian citizen.