Filhos e cidade: narrativas sobre a significação da cidade por pais que moram em condomínios fechados de alto padrão

Abstract

The residential gated upscale condos - which bring within its walls services previously available only through city circulation – represents, in Salvador Bahia, an urban novelty and, at the same time, a new families’ way of life. This study investigates narratives of parents, residents in these places, about the significance of the city. Anchored in a reflection on children caring, the relationship between family and city emerges in the parents´ narratives revealing the impact and importance of the city to families’ lives. This study investigated the meanings of city from temporalities brought in narratives, analyzing the dynamics of this sign as a mediator and semiotic regulator, according to the theoretical perspective of the Cultural Psychology. Seeking to meet the principles of idiographic science a multiple case study was performed, based on narrative interviews. From the category 'folk psychology' a Dynamic Model of Three Basic Dimensions of the sign city - the territorial dimension, the social and political - was proposed in order to analyze and understand the meaning of what they narrated as a city, while referring to the experience of city. As a result of the model, applying to narratives about the meanings of cities, we found out the identification of different dynamics between the territorial, social and political dimensions, according to which temporality the sign was related to. Besides the past, present and future temporalities there was also constructed through narratives, a timeless city, revealing the strength of the sign under study as a promoter sign. In the future’s temporality the dynamic of the sign city revealed the political dimension dominance, leading to the significance of the city as a product of this dimension. There was an evidenced of a meaning crystallization mechanism through semiotic feedback between the political dimension and the social dimension. This “semiotic trap" seemed to contributed to a pessimistic view about city´s future, due to a fading of collective actions alternatives to individual. The narratives underscore the semiotic processes of canonicity in personal culture and its relationship with the collective culture. Demonstrating the dynamics of bilateralism transfer of culture model, the semiotics novelty was brought through narrative examples, demonstrating the meaning construction of the city sign while interview was taking place. The entry of new semiotic elements in the reflections, demonstrated the possibility of the new semiotic generation and its potential to ease the unique narratives.