Bruno Sena Martins

DEFICIÊNCIA E INCLUSÃO SOCIAL Os percursos da lesão medular em Portugal

This article problematizes the cultural and socio-political positioning of disability through the analyses of the lives of people with spinal cord injuries. Their personal testimonies, collected at different stages of the rehabilitation process, are used to map some of the challenges faced by this group of people in the social inclusion process. This analysis is then complemented with the perspectives of the organizations working in the field and of family members, in order to explore the similarities between the lives of people with spinal cord injuries and the general situation of social exclusion lived by most disabled people in Portugal.

The emancipation of disability studies in Portugal

Despite the interest of the social sciences in issues of exclusion and inequality, the question of disability, as a key issue of reflection, remains absent from many academic areas. The emergence of disability studies owes much to contexts in which the activism of disabled people has revealed the structural conditions that oppress and neglect experiences of disability. Bearing in mind the specific features of the Portuguese socio-political environment, two lines of inquiry are developed in this text. Firstly, what are the challenges faced by Portuguese academics in making disability a central issue, enabling it to confront the silencing of the voices and experiences of disabled people in society? Secondly, how important is it for research to engage with an ethical and political paradigm that supports the rights of disabled people?

A reinvenção da deficiência: novas metáforas na natureza dos corpos

The concept of disability has been profoundly challenged in the last decades, both politically and epistemologically. On the one hand, there is the recognition that affiliation of certain differences under the concept of disability is nothing but a recent “invention” of Western modernity. On the other hand, is the assumption of the consequences of that construction for the people labeled as disabled? We establish dialogue with important contributions of critical theory, addressing concepts as “dividing practices” (Michel Foucault), “materialization” (Judith Butler), “the body multiple “ (Annemarie Mol) and “sociology of absences” (Boaventura de Sousa Santos), this article attempts understand how the notion of disability can be demobilized by insurgents readings of modernity and its hierarchies.

RISK REDUCTION EDUCATION IN PORTUGUESE SCHOOLS: THE EXAMPLE OF WILDFIRES

In Portugal, wildfires cause huge socioeconomic and environmental impacts. This study aims to understand the contribution of the school to wildfire risk education and to explore how 9th year students rank the risks that affect our country and the municipalities in which they live. The results show that students ranked wildfires risk as the most important risk at national scale and in the area where they live. When asked about the causes, consequences and mitigation measures, most of them found it difficult to identify them. The formal geography curriculum only contained material related to risk reduction education in 2015. However, a non-formal project (PROSEPE – Education and Awareness-Raising Project for School Population), adopted reducing the risk of wildfires as one of its main goals, when it was first established in the 1990s.

Colonial Wars, Colonial Alliances: The Alcora Exercise in the Context of Southern Africa

Images of violence have marked the political landscape of southern Africa since the independence of Portuguese and British colonies. The recent discovery of secret documents attest to the alliance linking white supremacist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia with Portugal’s corporatist–fascist regime. This article focuses on the roots of so much of this violence: the formation of a little-known but crucial white alliance in the subcontinent, code-named ‘Exercise Alcora’, which aimed to perpetuate the minority regimes in the region. South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal, with its two colonies of Mozambique and Angola, thus constituted a political project that sought to frustrate African liberation movements. A critical approach to the (re)construction of national memories is then crucial to understanding the roots of present-day social and political crises in southern Africa, as well as to recognising how important Exercise Alcora, as revealed in confidential documentation, was for the maintenance of white hegemony in this region until the very end of the 20th century. While South African–Rhodesian relations have been extensively dealt with in the literature, the relations between those countries and Portugal were more tenuous and shadowy.

Spinal Cord Injury in Portugal: Institutional and Personal Challenges

This article is dedicated to an analysis of the life trajectories of individuals with spinal cord injuries in Portugal. From a perspective that aims to understand the challenges faced in the different stages following the initial injury, it aims to relate corporeal, personal, and social impacts to medical, institutional, and political responses. Based on a total of 93 interviews, the analysis focuses on the period that starts with the event that caused the injury and extends to the present day, following the entire rehabilitation and integration process and identifying key structures, services, and institutions. In offering a critical reading of processes and structures that are capable of ensuring quality of life and social inclusion for persons with spinal cord injuries, it broadens the discussion to reveal the social exclusion widely experienced by persons with disabilities in Portugal.