Leisure, sports and culture on the local agenda: the Manguinhos? health promotion experience

Abstract

Located in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro City and consisting of eleven slums, Manguinhos is marked by poverty and social inequalities, showing a lack of public policies. The constitution of a Local Development (DL) and Health Promotion policy in the region revitalized the association life and raised a heated debate about the present demands. The main focus is to understand the meanings and values that the community leaders attribute to leisure, sport and culture and the political practice and relation between these leaderships, and their internal conflicts. Differences in the everyday political practice of the community leaders were identified. This creates a scenario permeated by cleavages and political distrust which represent "collective action dilemmas". Consequently, one of the conclusions indicates little ability for cooperative action between the different local leaderships, which as a result impairs the development of a common agenda to be negotiated with the public sector or other local social organizations and makes it difficult to put forward the demands, particularly those concerning leisure, culture and sport. Additionally, we concluded that initiatives in these subject are very important to Manguinhos? communities.