Systemic-phenomenological analysis on sustainable territorialities

Summary

The objective of the research is to develop comparative socio-morphological analysis between different territorial realities in search of systemic-phenomenological indicators of sustainability. For that, systemic-phenomenological theories will be the basis to define the socio-morphological aspects to be considered in the territorial realities to be compared, until to be chosen. The origin of the research is in criticisms about the Sustainable Development, a theme in which is evidenced the need for new paradigmatic perspectives (CAPRA, 1982. SOUZA, 1999. REBÊLO JÚNIOR, 200). Along with such critical approaches, two other theoretical frameworks allow to glimpse the possible systemic-phenomenological indicators as paradigmatic contributions to sustainability. The first of these frameworks is the Sciences of Complexity, in particular the idea of ​​Autopoiesis, created by the chilean scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the last 70s. A basic definition about living beings, the idea of ​​Autopoiesis points to the capacity for “self-reconstituition” as the existential and operational dynamic elementary to each and every living being/system. Amid the multiple stimuli of the environment, in other words, what would define a living system would be its ability to self-preserve, self-reconstituting itself, and then survive. In possession of this concept, the physicist Fritjof Capra (1996) proposes a new Ecological Vision for contemporaneity. In agreement with the idea of ​​Autopoiesis, the systemic balance of the capacity for self-reconstitution would be in the correlation between the structures and relationships of living beings. Thus, the autopoietic vital process of life would be the one that constantly incorporates the relationships of a being in its physical structure, and which, conversely, specializes its relationships according to the self-reconstitutive development of its structure. From a systemic point of view, and based on Fritjof Capra’s Autopoietic Ecological Vision, Sustainability can then be understood as the balance between the structures and relationships of systems as a whole, among which, perhaps, the human systems themselves. Based on this hypothesis, the research focus on two apparently common dimensions to the human habitat, whose joint analysis may point to systemic-phenomenological indicators of Sustainability: the territorial scale/delimitation, within the structures dimension, and the social and familiar structuration, within the relationships dimension. As for the territorial scale/delimitation, the Complexity Sciences also corroborate. Among them, the central idea of ​​Open System elucidates that each and every living system is closed and open at the same time (MORIN, 2005). Just as it is observed from the cell membrane to the defining structures of larger biological and social organisms, every system presents a delimitation that not only encloses its limits, but coordinates many of its relationships. As for the social and familiar structuration, it corroborates the second theoretical framework taken here as base, that of phenomenology. For the german philosopher Hanna Arendt, for example, after having studied the family theme in several authors as Plato and Aritotle, the family would be the mainstay for the organization of society and for the urban formation itself. “Historically,” explains Arendt (2007), “it is likely that the emergence of the city-state and the public sphere has occurred at the expense of the private sphere of the family and the home”. In this phenomenological scope, the theoretical-practical propositions on the social-familiar balance developed by the german psychotherapist Bert Hellinger especially contributes to deal with this theme, distancing from the moral and arbitrary issues that are common to it. According to Hellinger, not only the family system, but the entire human social system – and in a way not directly dependent on cultural differences -, would be subjected to a systemic network whose imbalances would be linked to many of the problems that humanity suffers, from social and affective to physical and mental problems. At the base of this systemic network, Hellinger points to principles such as Belonging, Order/Hierarchy and Exchange Balance as those that especially maintain family and social balance. At the heart of all this theoretical basis, the research assumes the thesis that comparative socio-formological analysis between different socio-territorial realities, with regard to the territorial scale/delimitation and the socio-familiar structuration, may point to systemic-phenomenological aspects of Sustainability. In other words, from the empirical research, it is estimated the possibility of analyzing whether compact or spread, delimited or fragmented territories contributes to the sustainability of social and familiar structuration, and vice versa, and consequently to Sustainable Urban Development as a whole.