Education and Epistemology. The Contribution of Budgeting in (des) Construction of Knowledge-Emancipation

Abstract

I assume that Participatory Budget (PB) can function as a strategy within a city interested in citizenship education , in favor of practices that embody participatory democratic actions. Consequently, I show how the PB has rooted social practices that permeate citizen participation in local governance, proving its plasticity in the process of inclusion of different visions and values for the social and cultural (de)construction of the city. PB has aslo been unveiled as a mechanism that has allowed additional readings of the world, not only for the local power, but also for ordinary citizens. New understandings and hermeneutics that trigger new knowledge, new alternative ways of inclusion, present themselves through the success and diffusion of practices, as knowledge-emancipation.  PB is presented as a mechanism that from the city governance´s perspective, acts on behalf of social justice.

The closeness that is developed between the executive of the city and the citizens who inhabit it, generate very strong dialogical processes triggering calls for the negotiation of the city's cultural competence.

In a moment (in the history of societies) where the dichotomy between global and local is becoming more acute by the blurring of social, cultural and geographical boundaries, PB presents itself as a social movement that generates an environmentally (de)constructed epistemic framework that, by allowing the humanization of the oppressed, becomes essential to research. By the dialogical relationship instituted, as well as the negotiation processes it faces, PB presents itself as a movement that contributes to the learning of citizenship education.