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This paper interrogates the extent to which imaginaries of climate and ecological breakdown attend to the memories, knowledges, and experiences of communities already impacted by histories of racism, colonialism, and poverty. Drawing on insights from Black studies and decolonial thinking, the article reflects on how the causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change can be mapped onto geographies of racialised violence and social dispossession. Specific emphasis is given to Rio de Janeiro, notably its port area, a geographical space where future-oriented narratives remain oblivious to the city's history of anti-Black violence and Indigenous genocide. In parallel, the paper looks at the recently built Museum of Tomorrow and its public representations of the Anthropocene. Overall, the article contends that pluralising accounts of the Anthropocene might offer alternative epistemic entry points for understanding and interrupting the mounting ecological catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the majority of Brazilian public schools, poverty and social injustice prevail. Most students come from disadvantaged realities, and their future seems to be already defined by a lack of social mobility, exclusion from civil rights, and violence—a situation that has worsened with the global pandemic. Rooted in ethnographic research in public schools in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, this paper explores the role of pedagogies of care in creating alternative, possible, and preferable narratives about the future of these students. By using the metaphor of "school as soil", the study identifies care in four dimensions: time, heterogeneity, mattering, and fertility. It draws on 12 semi-structured interviews with teachers from eight different public schools that were part of a larger doctoral project. By researching school as soil, we examine how pedagogies of care encourage teachers' speculation about preferable imaginaries for the future of their students. Results show that despite precarious resources and scarce institutional support, pedagogies of care appear in multiple reported situations, aiming to inspire learning processes, give voice and agency to the socially marginalized, and allow for ways of thinking that offer alternatives to the seemingly ubiquitous oppressive relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When, in 1822, Brazil declared its independence from Portugal, its vast territory was little known by the central government in Rio de Janeiro. There was a great need to create reliable maps that would delineate the new country's boundaries. This paper aims to show how a practical application of astronomy, specifically geodesy, was vital in the efforts to build the nation. We follow the professional life of an astronomer, Luis Cruls, director of the National Observatory, professor at the Military School and chief researcher of several expeditions, to discuss the strength of geodesic and cartographic activities in Brazil at the end of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general purposes of the PROVIVA project are to establish a community HIV/AIDS surveillance and monitoring system in Rio de Janeiro and to develop, implement, and evaluate a community-based HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention program for cocaine injectors and snorters, and male transvestite sex workers, in Rio's shantytowns, prostitution districts, and other neighborhoods where rates of street drug use are high. A secondary purpose is to develop an effective field-based HIV prevention program that can be used in other communities throughout Latin America and perhaps other developing nations. Conducting research in an international setting in general, and establishing a community-based seroprevalence and prevention project in a developing nation in particular, presented a myriad of procedural and logistical obstacles and complications. Within this context, this paper reviews the requirements of the National Institute on Drug Abuse cooperative agreement projects, examines the issues and problems associated with implementing this kind of research in a developing nation, and suggests appropriate solutions for dealing with these emergent circumstances and difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to distinguish between, on the one hand, emerging ideas, values and representations and, on the other, the actual circumstances in which they are applied by society. For this purpose the juridical field is a privileged place for investigation being at the same time the locus of norms and conflicts. In particular, our attention focuses on environment-related litigation in Rio de Janeiro. The distance between legal discourse and my analysis of lawsuits pertaining to the environment in Rio de Janeiro is a result of the tension between the universal character of the environmental perspective, as embodied in Brazilian legislation and the lack of social mobilisation combined with the complexity of kinds of actors and interests involved in juridical practices concerning environmental protection. It is suggested that this tension be understood in the light of the dynamics of social relations in the urban context of Rio de Janeiro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]