Critical discourse analysis and ethnography: the crisis in the national street children’s movement in Brazil

Abstract

In this article, I explore the epistemological and methodological dimensions of my research regarding representation and identification in the context of the National Street Children Movement in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. The research, carried out between 2005 and 2008, is theoretically informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Realism. My aim is to show the relations between research dimensions, research questions, methods and ontological components, in accordance to this theoretical background. In order to do so, I also describe the methods used in the field and discuss some of the research outcomes.

Keywords

critical discourse analysis epistemology methodology ontology participatory research social movement

Introduction

Social precariousness and demobilization are cross-sectional concerns that motivate researchers in various fields of knowledge. Poor distribution of material and symbolic resources goes beyond therefore the frontiers of Economics and Politics as it inspires work situated in the scope of Critical Social Science (CSS), a scientific perspective that seeks to actively intervene in social change by assuming a critical position, free from the myth of scientific neutrality.

This critical research perspective informs this article. Here, I present results from my research regarding representation and identification in the context of the National Street Children Movement in Brasília (Movimento Nacional de Meninos e Meninas de Rua). The research sought to establish a dialogue between ethnography, critical discourse analysis and critical realism. Through ethnographic data, I conducted an empirical research on socio-discursive issues about representation and identification in this social movement’s context. My aim was to investigate some of the discursive causes for the crisis in the social movement, empirically proven and confirmed in representations from its members (Resende, 2008).

Two main motives are pointed out in the development of this research. Firstly, there is the relevance to investigate, within the scope of linguistics, social issues related to bad resource distribution, given the contemporary relevance of this discussion and the contribution that critical discourse analysis (CDA) can offer to the debate. Secondly, there is the pertinence of the analysis regarding social movements – given CDA’s research agenda in its dialogue with CSS – especially a movement geared towards children and teenagers whose rights and opportunities are precarious and who are the target of repression.

In this article, I do not present the discursive analysis of the research data – I have done this in previous publications (Resende, 2009, 2010a). Here, I explore the epistemological and methodological dimensions of the research, so that I show the relations between research dimensions, research questions, methods and ontological components, and I describe the methods used in the field and discuss some of the research outcomes.

Making explicit an ethnographic research methodology has the advantage of providing opportunities for assessment and exchange of experiences among researchers, and promotes self-reflection regarding one’s own research practice (Barton and Hamilton, 1998: 58). In discussing the use of ethnographic methods in CDA research, Blommaert (2005: 52) considers that ‘we are not informed about where such ethnographic information comes from . . . . The source of such contextual accounts is often obliquely referred to as on-site observation and interviewing . . . . Their function, however, is crucial: they are central contextualising features’. To avoid leaving the ethnographic basis out the scope of CDA, this article focuses on the strategies that have allowed access to the group and data collection/generation. My goal with this methodological discussion is primarily to emphasize the epistemological reflection as a basis for building a clear relationship between ontology and methodology.

Critical discourse analysis: discourse and society

This research is positioned in the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), in its European dimension (Fairclough, 2003; Van Dijk, 1993; Wodak, 2003) and in its Latin American dimension (Magalhães, 2000; Montecino, 2010; Pardo, 2008; Pardo Abril, 2007; Ramalho and Resende, 2011). Following Van Dijk (1993), CDA differs from other perspectives of discourse analysis (DA) precisely because the analysis of conflicts and social issues aims to achieve a greater understanding of these problems through the lens of discourse. In this sense, Fairclough (2003), based on Critical Realism formulated by Bhaskar (1998), proposed a theory of the social functioning of language with a view to the possibility of formulating an explanatory critique of discursive social problems, that is, to enable accurate understanding of these problems in order to overcome the mechanisms that sustain them.

Thus, CDA differs from other theoretical positions related to DA for its interest not only in describing social processes, but also in interpreting them in relation to their socio-historical contexts. Therefore, the research programs proposed by critical discourse analysts in Europe, shared and recontextualized by analysts in Latin America (Pardo, 2010), consider that social processes research require a deep and detailed understanding of its complexity that goes beyond unidirectional explanations (Resende and Marchese, 2011). Research informed by CDA includes an interdisciplinary perspective especially relevant to the fulfillment of the interpretations of data analysed in its linguistic aspects.

One of the basic aspects of CDA is the focus on the relationship between language and society, defined as an inner and dialectical relationship. The internal nature of this relationship implies that texts are a result from the social organization of semiosis, but they can also potentially transform this organization, as well as social events are substrate and result of social structures (Bhaskar, 1989; Fairclough, 2000).

This comprehension of the relationship between language and society is present in a series of definitions of the CDA in which the nature of this relationship is between language and society is taken as a starting point for critical discourse studies (see, for example, Blommaert, 2005; Fairclough, 1989; Resende, 2009; Wodak and Meyer, 2003). Richardson (2007: 37) offers the following definition: ‘the CDA approaches discourse as a circular process in which social practices influence texts, by shaping the context and mode in which they are produced, and in turn texts help influence society by shaping the viewpoints of those who read or otherwise consume them’.

This perspective of CDA’s focus limits the social effects of texts to our understanding of reality, that is, to the representational aspect of discourse. However, the social effects of texts go far beyond the simple ‘viewpoints’ – texts, as components of situated social practices, can influence, in addition to ways of understanding reality, forms of social action. In this respect, Fairclough et al. (2002: 24) suggest that ‘social theorists and discourse analysts routinely defend semiotic analysis on the grounds that semiosis has real effects on social practice, social institutions, and on social order more generally’.

A critical discourse analysis can be considered effective when it allows the analyst to explore the discursive materialization of social problems in terms of the effects of discursive aspects of contextualized social practices and vice versa. Thus, CDA explores insights from the Transformational Model of Social Activity, from Bhaskar (1998), to propose a model towards the comprehension of the social functioning of language.

In discussing the relationship between language and society, Fairclough (2003: 8) ‘recontextualizes’ the notion of ‘causal powers’ in Critical Realism (CR) to propose that texts also have causal effects, and that the analysis of these effects is part of discourse analysis:

Texts as elements of social events [. . .] have causal effects – i.e. they bring about changes. Most immediately, texts can bring about changes in our knowledge (we can learn things from them), our beliefs, our attitudes, values and so forth. They also have longer-term causal effects – one might, for instance, argue that prolonged experience of advertising and other commercial texts contribute to shaping people’s identities as consumers, or their gender identities. Texts can also start wars or contribute to changes in education, or to changes in industrial relationships, and so forth. Their effects can include changes in the material world, such as changes in urban design. . . . On the whole, texts have causal effects upon, and contribute to changes in, people (beliefs, attitudes, etc.), actions, social relationships, and the material world . . .

Thus, based on formulations derived from CR (Bhaskar, 1989), CDA aims to investigate the relationship between language and society, in terms of the effects of social organization in the formulation of texts, and in terms of the causal effects of texts in society. Obviously, this kind of investigation cannot be obtained simply by analysing isolated texts. In order to understand the language/society relationship, we must pay attention to discourse in terms of broader social effects. That is why the articulation with ethnography is highly desirable in critical discourse studies.

Youth protagonism and the movement’s crisis

Although the Brazilian Constitution adopts the theory of full protection for children and adolescents – that is defined through family, society and State responsibility for their protection – the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA – Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente) is often disrespected (Melo, 2001). Children and adolescents protected by the Statute normally do not know its contents and or do not know the organs to refer to if their rights be disrespected.

The National Street Children Movement (Movimento Nacional de Meninos e Meninas de Rua – MNMMR) fills this gap, as it seeks to expand young people’s knowledge regarding their rights. The focus of the movement’s action is to generate awareness among children and adolescents at risk due to their underprivileged situation in material and symbolic resource distribution in society. The concept of ‘street children’ adopted is extensive: it goes beyond common sense/knowledge that only children and young people who survive off the street belong to this category to include children and young people from socio-economically excluded families. The idea is that even though these children are housed, they are still considered ‘street children’, since they are permanently at risk, including the risk of being in street situation in the future.

The heart of the proposal, based upon ‘youth protagonism’, is that through active participation the teenager can become involved in solving real problems in the community. What characterizes youth protagonism is that the young person comes out as the source of initiative (in that it is from him/her that the action starts), liberty (given that the root of these actions is in a conscious decision), and commitment (evident in this willingness to account for his/her acts) (Costa, 1998).

In Brasília, the MNMMR sought to maintain workshops regarding guaranteed rights in the ECA, so as to foment critical thinking and youth protagonism in centers located in Brasília’s periphery where the lack of public investment is evident. Until 1998, the movement relied on resources from a project called ‘Organization of Boys and Girls’, financed by Sécours Catholique. This allowed for the upkeep of educators involved in the centers’ work, together with the groups set up in the periphery.

With the closure of this project and the lack of success in the approval of other projects for the organization area, the MNMMR’s centers were weakened and lost the movement’s very methodology for creating centers. Without possibilities to maintain educators working in the centers, it was left to young ‘leaderships’ to upkeep the movement’s centers. This process came about without previous planning due to the young peoples’ own initiative. Leaving the centers up to the young people, without the educators’ coordination, was outside the movement’s methodology for organizing the boys and girls. Nevertheless, it was the solution found to keep the centers working, even if not in the most appropriate manner.

It was in this context of crisis that I developed the research. The set of difficulties in generating resources, the national disarticulation of the movement and the destructuring of the children’s organization was determinant in my possibilities and impossibilities in the research and in the successive reworking of my project (Resende, 2008).

The research

Discussions on ethics in qualitative research have favored collaborative research methods in which the researcher’s aim is not merely to research on or for subjects but to research on, for and with subjects, participant in the research process (Cameron et al., 1992). This implies the recognition of research participants as participants in fact and not as ‘researched subjects’, or much less as ‘informants’. Taking social actors involved in the research process as participants implies including their agenda of interests in investigative practice. This requires relatively flexible research planning, able to be modified so as to become relevant to the community that shares its knowledge with the researcher (Demo, 2004).

Participatory research includes therefore specific risks given that its achievement becomes valid not due to the generalization of results but due to the appropriation to participants’ agenda of interests as well. It is necessary to be sensitive to this – to skip steps set out in the original planning that may be to us academically pertinent but inappropriate to the group. Further, it is fundamental, when it comes to critical research, committed to ethics, that from initial research stages the investigation’s aims and methods be discussed and negotiated with participants in a research practice geared towards clarity and respect for subjects. The research strategies that I will briefly present in the next section were previously negotiated, and so were the aims and research questions.

The research sought to establish a dialogue between ethnography (Hammersley, 1994), critical discourse analysis (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 2003) and critical realism (CR; Archer, 1998; Bhaskar, 1989; Blommaert, 2005; Sayer, 2000). Regarding the epistemological and theoretical articulation with RC, and their methodological implications, Sayer (2000: 19) suggests:

Critical realism endorses or is compatible with a relatively wide range of research methods, but it implies that the particular choices should be dependent on the nature of the object of study and what one wants to learn about it. For example, ethnographic and quantitative approaches are radically different but each can be appropriate for different and legitimate tasks – the former perhaps for researching say a group’s norms and costumes, the latter for researching world trade flows. Perhaps most importantly, realists reject cookbook prescriptions of method which allow one to imagine that one can do research by simply applying them.

My research aim was the movement’s crisis, and my interest was to understand the causal relations that may exist between the crisis and discursive elements in social practice such as modes of representation and identity constructs (Fairclough, 2003; Resende, 2009). Bearing in mind my interest for this specific social movement and linking my research to this specific context, I sought to understand the negotiation of meanings among the movement’s members and the ways in which these meanings form at the same time product and means of social action processes, given the internal relationship between language and society.

I was thus interested in the modes of identification, the social relations and the movement’s very action. In light of this, I used various methods for data generation and collection so as to explore different dimensions of my research aim, as Table 1 indicates.

Table 1.

Relations between research dimensions, research questions, methods and ontological components (Resende, 2010b: 208).

Research dimensions	Research questions	Methods	Ontological components
I. Representation and identification: MNMMR educators’ voice	1. How do MNMMR educators represent action and the institution’s crisis?	Individual interviews with educators	Discourses, discursive representations of social relations and social action
	2. How do MNMMR educators (and others/the adults involved with the Movement) represent protagonism and identify the young people?	Recording of meetings at the MNMMR/DF	Identifications and discursive representations of social relations and social action (actional aspects such as meaning negotiation and hierarchies were also identified)
II. Representation and identification: the voice of young MNMMR protagonists	3. How do the young people represent the MNMMR and identify themselves as protagonists?	Focus groups	Discourses, identities and discursive representations of social relations and social action
	4. How do the young people represent their trajectories within the MNMMR and their action as protagonists?	Individual interviews with young protagonists	Discourses, identities and discursive representations of social relations and social action
III. Social Practices	I did not formulate questions involving practices as the focus chosen was on representation and identification	Participatory observation, field notes, participation in diverse MNMMR activities	Social action, material activities, networks of practices, social relations

The research was reflexively designed, so that I tried to establish relations between the research dimensions, the research questions, the methods and the ontological components of social reality which I aimed to investigate (Mason, 2002). The articulation of diverse methods for data generation and collection, and the use of data from different sources in qualitative research should not be conducted solely to confer research validity, but also because research issues can be approached from a variety of angles or conceptualized in different ways. Thus, it is not sufficient to develop a multimethodological and multidimensional approach, it is essential to be aware of its functionality in exploring research issues. The articulation of different sources and methods in data generation and collection is valid given that this led me, epistemologically, to access all the questions formulated in the research study, based upon the ontological perspective adopted. These angles to the analysis guaranteed, through the strategies designed to the research, knowledge regarding the social world’s ontological components that I decided to prioritize: discourses, identities and identifications, and the discursive representation of social relations, social action, events, practices and structures.

The challenge was to mobilize CDA and CR to analyse ethnographic data so as to access the ontological components of the social world that I identified as key, in terms of CDA theoretical background. As my focus was the discursive moments of practices (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999), especially in their representational and identificational aspects, practices and social relations and the discursive construction of identities were highlighted in the data. Nevertheless, observational methods were useful in understanding the material aspects of the practices studied, and this is of capital relevance, given that, in CDA, representation, identification and action are seen as dialectically related.

Methodology

The choice of a multimethodological approach in this research is due to the fact that the sources and methods selected for data generation and collection inform about the practices involved in the Movement’s operation and help to show how social relations, identities and discourses are articulated in these practices. Also, through the sources and methods it was possible to examine all the questions raised in the research.

The methods used were participatory observation, focus group, focus interview and recording of meetings. In the following subsections, I’ll give a brief account of the use of these methods and their role in the research.

Participatory observation

The first ethnographic stage was participatory observation at the movement headquarters and at two of its centers. Only after a year of contact with the movement’s members did I start data generation through focus groups and interviews. This extensive design for participatory research seeks to guarantee data validity and, mainly, to include in the investigation relevant themes for the participants. That is, to favor the inclusion of their agenda of interests in investigative practice.

I believe that the participatory observation phase was successful in establishing relations of trust as well as my attempt in becoming a group member. This can be noted in the fact that I was invited to participate in various movement activities such as meetings, assemblies, and manifestations, and I was asked to collaborate in projects production and revision as well as in ‘translating’ legal texts.

For example, I became involved in producing a project to create an organizational center for adolescents and young workers at the Brasília Bus Station, both at the initial stage when funding was denied by the Instituto HSBC Solidariedade and in the final phase when it was selected in a Petrobrás funding program. I experienced, together with the research participants, the rush to hand in the project on the last day, the frustration of a negative response and the hope brought by a positive outcome.

Another example of my engagement with the MNMMR that went beyond the movement’s context and had a more direct consequence on my strictly academic experience was to militate against the lowering of the legal age in Brazil in 2007. This engagement led me not only to the National Congress to participate in the meeting of Fórum Nacional Permanente de Entidades Não-Governamentais de Defesa dos Direitos da Criança e do Adolescente (Fórum DCA – Permanent National Forum of Non-Governmental Entities in Defense of Child and Adolescent Rights) but also to produce the text ‘Dessemelhança e expurgo: a mídia e o debate sobre a violência e o rebaixamento da maioridade penal’ (‘Dissimilarity and purge: the media and the debate on violence and lowering the legal age’). My aim was to put academic knowledge, in this case the mechanisms of CDA, in practice in a debate that seemed to me urgent. I do not see my involvement with the movement’s militancy and the close relations that I established with its participants as problematic for the research, on the contrary, they increased the possibility of my work being useful to the movement, which was ultimately my goal (on engagement in ethnographic research see Denzin, 1999; on participatory observation and researcher engagement, see Atkinson and Pugsley, 2005).

Initial experience with participatory observation was also fundamental to get a closer understanding of the organization’s key concepts, such as youth protagonism that also became a core concept for the research project and subsequent data generation steps. Moreover, through participatory observation I could have access to various movement activities, as well as find out about other organizations with which the MNMMR was in contact. This was relevant to understand the social practices in which the Movement participates. Further, participatory observation allowed for making adjustments to the initial research plan so as to make it more appropriate to the context studied. In this sense, I could perceive from the onset the crisis in the movement, both in financial terms as well as in administrative, pedagogical, and organizational terms, and this was confirmed in various interactions in the representations of group members. This crisis scenario led me to reassess the steps programmed for the field work. This may perhaps be the main advantage of observation as the first step in collaborative research. Regarding this research specifically, observation was also fundamental to the knowledge of social action and the (networks) of social practices as ontological components in the social world, in terms of RC and CDA. If we consider Table 1 above, participatory observation is linked to the third research dimension – social practices – and to the following ontological components: social action, material activities, networks of practices, and social relations.

Focus group

Once contact was established with the participants, the research moved on to the second step: the conducting of focus groups with young people who participated in the movement in their childhood or adolescence, so as to discuss the movement’s action in their neighborhoods. Focus group is defined as a research technique that refers to data generation ‘through group interaction on a specific topic’ (Morgan, 1996: 130). The focus group therefore locates the interaction in a discussion in group that is the source of data. The advantage of the focus group over the individual interview is precisely the interaction: through the group discussion it is possible to capture points of instability and disagreement, meaning negotiation, and leadership (Hollander, 2004).

The focus group meetings were, then, the first strategy for analytic data generation in the MNMMR context. Prior to this, I had carried out participatory observation and taken field notes, but I had not yet done individual or group interviews. The focus group method was not part of the original research plan; it was included upon suggestion by ‘Julia’, an MNMMR educator to whom I refer as a ‘key participant’.¹ She perceived my concern with the MNMMR’s destructuring – the movement, with over 20 years in existence, was according to its own members’ representations in a financial, administrative, pedagogical and militancy crisis – and so Julia considered that a discussion with young people who had passed through the movement before the crisis would be relevant for me to know about this other period of activities in the MNMMR.

Julia thought it would be interesting for me to talk with ‘ex-children’ from the Movement as they would be able to relate their trajectories in the organization and the centers’ operation before the crisis and the shutting down of activities. The denomination ‘ex-children’ was not determined by the research, rather it is internal to the movement, a common form of referring to ‘children’ who took part in center projects and organization and who, in their adolescence, stopped participating directly but still maintained ties to the institution or took on other roles in the movement, as ‘protagonists’. Given that my project had as its base participatory research, I thought it worthwhile to accept Julia’s suggestion and so, in April 2006, I carried out two focus group meetings at the movement’s headquarters. Both meetings were organized by Julia, but she had not participated in the meetings themselves.

Each focus group meeting lasted on average 2 hours. They were audio-recorded and transcribed to be analysed according to CDA methods. In addition to the initial aim of the meetings to find out about the perspective prior to the crisis, the focus groups turned out to be relevant in the analysis for identifying the young protagonists in the group interactions. In this sense, the group discussions allowed for access to different perspectives with respect to youth protagonism and social mobilization. If we consider Table 1 in the previous section, the focus group method is linked to the second research dimension – ‘Representation and identification: the voice of young MNMMR protagonists’ – and to the following ontological components: discourses, identities and discursive representations of social relations and social action. Indeed, data provided in the focus groups allowed answering the third research question (‘How do the young people represent the MNMMR and identify themselves as protagonists?’).

In focus group 1, I identified two boundaries of space-time: a temporal division between the time before engagement with MNMMR and the time after this engagement, and two ‘spaces’ in opposition, the space of the periphery and the space of the movement. The awareness of inequality and disrespect of the (theoretically) granted rights becomes a source of conflict when comparing the spaces in opposition. This is in accordance with the contradiction between the discourse of youth protagonism and the discourse of social structure immobility.

The discourse of youth protagonism represents the action of the protagonists in their neighborhoods, resulting in their identification as ‘protagonists’. The lack of resources available, however, is represented as a material barrier for their social action. Although they construct for themselves identities of resistance (Castells, 1999), they expressed conflict in the materialization of their projects for social change. The discourse of youth protagonism is internalized in the building of their identities, but social change is a challenge that seems to be utopian.

The gap between the voluntary mobilization that defines protagonism and the immobility attributed to social structures brings an irreconcilable contradiction, since action and structure are seen as separated, so that the belief in social change is weakened by the discourse of structure stability. For the protagonism to overcome this merely discursive character, social actors who identify themselves as protagonists must perceive in social structures not only what constrains their action, but also what serves as a resource to this very action.

In focus group 2, protagonism was defined as multiplication of knowledge, as a trajectory that involves acquiring knowledge in an institution and expanding it in the community. This definition contains three power relations based on knowledge: (i) the young protagonist depends on an institution to acquire the necessary knowledge to the protagonist action; (ii) the protagonist becomes a keeper of knowledge, and this knowledge is what makes him/her a reference in the community; and (iii) this knowledge is formulated outside the community, by the legitimating institution. According to this representation, the protagonist role depends on knowledge from beyond the community, which suggests a dependency relationship, of the community in relation to the institution. This dependency between community and institution is repeated in the relationship between the young protagonists and the movement.

Moreover, different concepts of protagonism were constructed in relation to everyday life and the public sphere. The protagonism in the life world refers to the routine decisions of daily life, while the protagonism in the public sphere relates to spaces for political deliberation. In the focus group, the public sphere was subdivided in the institutional space of the movement and wider spheres, beyond the institutional environment. The contradiction between the need for autonomy in the performance of protagonist roles and the dependence of a legitimating institution is the most significant aspect of this focus group.

Focus interviews

Four focus interviews were conducted with movement’s members. Two young protagonists and two educators participated in the interviews. The interviews allowed the interaction to flow more freely, although focused on specific points of interest (Doncaster, 1998). This has the twofold advantage of capturing the subjects’ perspective on the theme and not invading their privacy in an unpleasant manner.

Although the aim was to focus on specific issues related to the participants’ experience with the MNMMR, there was no rigorous planning of questions for the interviews. This kind of interview guarantees focus on the theme of interest in the research and at the same time confers freedom of expression to the participants, and this can be relevant to the discursive construction of their identities (Magalhães, 1986).

According to Gaskell (2005: 66), ‘two main questions must be considered before any type of interview: what to ask (specification of the topic guide) and who to ask (how to select the interviewees’). Regarding the first, the interviews should serve to obtain representations on the movement and its operation, on the identification of participants in relation to the movement and on the networks of practices in which the movement took part. With respect to the second issue, I took advantage of my prior experience with the movement to identify participants who would help to get information on the first question and who would be available to do so. The interviews were recorded in audio and the transcriptions provided data which was analysed according to CDA.

If we consider Table 1 in the previous section, the interviews are related to discourses, identities and discursive representations of social relations and social action as ontological components. The interviews with educators are linked to the first research dimension – ‘Representation and identification: MNMMR educators’ voice’ – and to the first and second research questions (‘How do MNMMR educators represent action and the institution’s crisis?’; ‘How do MNMMR educators represent protagonism and identify the young people?’). On the other hand, the interviews with young protagonists, related to the second research dimension (‘Representation and identification: the voice of young MNMMR protagonists’), allowed me to answer the fourth research question: ‘How do the young people represent their trajectories within the MNMMR and their action as protagonists?’.

Both the interviews with the two educators had presented a malaise regarding previous decisions and events. These interviews sign a crisis of legitimacy that results in the need of rationalizations able to give coherence to the recent history of the movement. On the other hand, the two young protagonists do not demonstrate surety when identifying themselves as ‘educators’ – a role they began to play due to the crisis of the movement. Perhaps the cause of this conflict is that, although the movement needed their action as educators, the same movement did not allow them a full identification as educators.

Although the movement has been identified as a space for dialogue that creates the possibility to young people to have a voice, it does not seem to be true regarding the voice of young people in relation to their role as educators. Both young protagonists interviewed had trouble to discuss the significance of the movement in their lives and to explain why they feel continually linked with it. What we see is that both have a relationship of dependency on the organization. Although one cannot deny that the lack of material resources for action is a limiting factor for the success of their work as educators, it seems that this relationship of dependency also acts on this, since the dependency is in opposition to the autonomy implicit in the concept of youth protagonism.

Recording of meetings

During the field work, on various occasions I was invited to participate in the movement’s events and activities, such as the National Assembly, meetings at the Local Commission’s headquarters, projects production, mobilizations, manifestations, workshops. When possible, I always responded positively to the invitations. On some occasions, I did not think it wise to tape the interactions in which I participated, for example at the National Assembly and the meeting of the DCA Forum, as there were persons present who did not know about or were not participating in my research, or the situation was not favorable to recordings. In these cases, I made notes.

It was possible however to tape two meetings. The taping of these meetings was obviously not part of the initial research plan. Nevertheless, I took advantage of these occasions to collect data, according to what Retamozo (2006: 11) suggests in affirming that ‘in studying social movements, it is essential to put in practice ethnographic vigilance so as to identify situations that can provide material for a better understanding’. One advantage of using this data is its potential in analysing the movement’s activity as it is not data generated in a specific research situation – such as data generated through interviews, for example – but data relative to concrete activity from the organization itself.

If we consider Table 1 in the previous section, the recording of meetings is linked to the first research dimension – ‘Representation and identification: MNMMR educators’ voice’ – and to the second research question: ‘How do MNMMR educators (and others/the adults involved with the Movement) represent protagonism and identify the young people?’.

In the transcript of meeting 1, I looked at points of instability between perspectives of movement members who disagreed on several aspects of the performance of the movement – its scales of operation, the concept of protagonism, the meaning of political action within the movement. In the transcript of meeting 2, on the other hand, I analysed the representation that educators and coordinators of the movement built about young protagonists.

The analysis showed asymmetries in interpersonal terms. These asymmetries may be related to the system of hierarchies, internal to the movement. In the discussion about the meaning of youth protagonism, there was a source of instability: youth protagonism refers to participation as a mode of experience, or it refers to effective action, to autonomous mobilization? The split between participation and action connects to the debate about the possibilities of action for young protagonists within the movement.

Final considerations: an explanatory critique

Within Critical Realism, explanatory critique is defined as ‘critique of a phenomenon that follows from diagnosing that it is part of the explanation of why a false belief is held or why some social or personal ill persists’ (Lacey, 2007: 196). The Transformational Model of Social Activity (Bhaskar, 1989) proposes that the unmet needs of social actors as well as the mechanisms that possibly block the meeting of these needs and potential modes for overcoming the same be identified. In this sense, Collier (1994: 165) suggests that ‘by seeing how something goes wrong we find out more about the conditions of its working properly than we ever would by observing it working properly’.

Thus, some unmet needs for overcoming the Movement’s crisis were identified in the research. I will here highlight just a few of them. The first refers to articulation in network. The Street Children Movement in Brazil achieved decentralization at the National Assembly only in 2006, but it still has to attain more effective network articulation. There are problems in the type of network created: in terms of procedures, the need for actual meetings for network articulation proves to be unviable due to the high costs involved in holding meetings and assemblies. One possibility for overcoming this problem is to use digital communication to propel articulation at lesser costs. It has to do with a discursive question in that it involves the need to appropriate discursive resources such as the ability to use the tools of digital communication.

The lack of dissemination of activities conducted is another problem to be resolved. This is a problematic issue in two senses: (1) it limits the capacity to generate resources as one of the aims of funding agencies is their very visibility that depends upon the visibility of the projects supported; and (2) it limits the movement’s ability to attract new militants because society does not see this mobilization. Further, circulation of the type of work carried out by the movement could impact upon the debate regarding the condition of children and teenagers in vulnerable situations in Brazil.

Just as the issue of articulation in network, overcoming the problem of lack of dissemination of the movement’s activities is related to the more effective use of the new means of communication. The presumed inability to deal with communication is mobilized in the construction if identities. The discourses internalized in identity constructions ‘impose’ different levels of ease/difficulty regarding the use of language (Fairclough et al., 2002). Overcoming the naturalization of the inability to use these discursive resources is a step towards resolving the problem. Nevertheless, we cannot consider that naturalization of this inability is the only cause for the lack of dissemination of the movement’s activities, if we understand, according to Sousa Santos (2007: 24), that ‘very local experiences, not very well known or legitimized . . ., are hostilized by the social means of communication and so have remained invisible, without credit’.

A third issue highlighted in the data is the absence of spaces for training young educators. The lack of these training spaces is a problem related to young people’s difficulties to conquer their space as educators and to identify themselves as such – a discursive aspect of this problem are the modes of identification of young people as educators in the data. Moreover, the lack of training spaces interferes in the quality of work and has methodological consequences regarding the strategies to obtain common objectives.

The recovery of the training spaces is a problem that requires many material resources and which seems to me depends upon efforts to approve specific projects in this area. During my work with the movement, however, I did not observe any mobilization in this sense. I did not hear any comments as to the need to elaborate projects for this. A first step to overcoming this obstacle can be awareness of its relevance.

Resource generation for training/organizing children was also represented as an unmet need in the movement. There is a discursive change implied in this issue: if at the time of the movement’s rise, the political opening after the military dictatorship in Brazil and the celebration of civil society’s participation in the public sphere guaranteed interest in mobilization projects, in the current scenario, society’s participation seems more geared towards filling the gap in services abandoned by the State, in programs to which society is invited to participate in voluntary terms. Mobilization discourse seems to have weakened in the clash with assistance discourse. Whilst social mobilization discourse preaches society’s protagonism in resolving social problems, assistance discourse recognizes social problems but privileges solutions that do not come from the very people that suffer from the problems identified but from the assistance/charity from other sectors in society. The children’s organization was an evident question at the time the movement started the struggle but it does not seem to be considered a relevant question in the current context. This is perhaps why the movement does not get more resources for creating centers.

Another contradiction highlighted in the data refers to the discourse of protagonism and the discourse of social structures immobility. What stand out as movements between discursive and non-discursive practices are the selection of specific discourses to interpret events, legitimate actions and represent social processes; the mobilization of these discourses selected in modes of action; their inculcation in modes of identification; their resonance in broader social practices (Fairclough, 2003). The endorsement by movement members of the immobility discourse clashes with their mobilization objectives for social change and so this curbs their articulation to meet these objectives. The emergence of this discourse in the movement’s context and its retention in the interpreting of events interferes in social change projects and in the capacity to incorporate subjects or to consolidate project identities (Archer, 2000; Castells, 1999).

I maintain the hope that my research can contribute to the social movement that opened its doors to me, not only through the participative nature of the research but also through potential in terms of reflexivity. Through sharing results and negotiating my interpretations, I sought for these reflections to go beyond the strictly academic scope of this research and to generate reflections also within the Movement.

Based on this same principle, these reflections also see conflicts in academic practice and can teach me many lessons in this sense. Ethnographic experience also allowed for reflections on my own practice as researcher: I learnt in the movement the relevance of participatory research and some ways to conduct it much more than I could have ever learnt from any book or manual. Hence the great advantage of participatory research: in joint construction, experiences are shared, knowledge is brought together and objectives are multiplied.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was supported by the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES, Brazil), in the form of scholarship.

Notes

Author biography

Viviane de Melo Resende is a Professor at the University of Brasília (UnB), Brazil, where she is also the co-ordinator of the Núcleo de Estudos de Linguagem e Sociedade (Language and Society Research Center). She is member of the Red latinoamericana de estudios del discurso de las personas sin techo o en situación de extrema pobreza (REDLAD).

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