Alguns aspectos da cultura e suas interrelações com a educação ambiental

Abstract

Many discussions about Environmental Education fell onto the fad of thinking about environment as something purely physical and about environmental problems as deriving from man's misdemeanor with natural capital. However, the discussion about the relations between nature and society also converges to the way in which a given context's cultural organization reveals identities, ideological formations and lifestyles. Therefore, a new vision emerges, and at it, the cultural values of traditional societies are designed as a patrimony to be protected. This research has, as one of its goals, to reflect about what is culture under the vision of sustainable development, so as to ponder about cultural rights of traditional societies facing our current civilizational crisis. Theoretical referential's elaboration had as its focus culture and the fundamentals of the new emerging environmental paradigm, with attention to the thoughts of Lévi-Strauss, on what's referred to the discussion about human cultures' diversity; to Edgar Morin's complex method of thinking human experience; and to Enrique Leff's reflection about the environmental crisis, giving special attention to the epistemological aspects of his work, as “environmental rationality” and “environmental knowledge” analysis categories.