Conventional Leisure to Other Understandings And Practices in the Ghettos of Belém (Pará – Brazil)

Education as a Liberating Practice

Abstract

Historically, leisure concepts and practices were conceived in a hegemonic way within a globalised, capitalist and Eurocentric context and this established conventional understandings of what leisure would be. This work sought to analyze the experiences and understandings involving leisure in a ghetto of the city of Belém, a federative unity of Brazil. In an ethnographic exercise, informal conversations, participant observation, semi-structured interviews and field notebook annotations were used. The results showed that the residents of this ghetto often associate leisure with at least five features: 1) money; 2) time; 3) spaces; 4) practices opposed to work; and 5) feelings, sensations or emotions. These and others narratives generally make reference to the logic of conventional leisure, which reaches a ghetto community in Belém-Pará known as “Mata Fome” through the media and governmental actions dictating what is and what isn't as well as what can and can't be considered leisure. Opposed to this process, the "liberating education" proposed by Paulo Freire is perceived here as fundamental to an emancipatory leisure.