Saberes, poderes e os dilemas das relações socioambientais

In the last years the expression environment and the concern in relation to it became common. However, the environmental question, nowadays a social and sociological problem, has been constructed along human history, gaining new and different aspects and leading to different types of conflicts. Under an apparent “consensus” about the importance of the environment there are power conflicts to define, among others, the meaning of environment, the origin and solutions of the environmental problems and the forms of relations between society and nature, which influence the entire functioning of the society. A first step to advance in the discussion about this theme may be understanding that environment or nature is not so “natural”. Therefore, we propose to discuss how the predominant conceptions about solid scope we point out the environmental conflicts in public policies that have been reinforcing the importance of changes in power relations so that a serious an consistent environmental policy can be developed. The elaboration of this discussion was supported by the thoughts of Pierre Bourdieu, Andrew Vincent, Karl Polanyi, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, among others.