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Background: Leptospirosis is one of the most widespread zoonosis in the world and Brazil has the highest number of cases in Latin America. Transmission occurs mainly through exposure to water and soil contaminated by the urine of infected animals. The goals of this study are to describe the geographic distribution, demographic characteristics and exposure factors of urban and rural cases of leptospirosis, and identify spatial clusters in urban and rural areas of Brazil. Methods/results: A retrospective epidemiological study was carried out using 16 years (2000–2015) of surveillance data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Cases were described by age, sex and race, and exposure factors were characterized in urban and rural areas. A spatial autocorrelation analysis was conducted using local Moran's I to identify urban and rural clusters of disease. On average 3,810 leptospirosis cases were reported annually with higher numbers in urban areas. National urban and rural incidence rates were the same (1.9 cases/100,000 population), however, regional differences were observed. Urban incidence rates were higher in the North and Northeast regions, while rural incidence rates were higher in the Southeast and South. The main exposure factor reported in urban and rural areas was exposure to places with signs of rodents, followed by flood in urban areas and agriculture and animal farming in rural areas. Clusters of leptospirosis were identified in densely populated urban areas of the North, Southeast and South regions, while rural clusters were concentrated in of the Southern region with large agriculture and animal farming practices. Conclusions: This study highlights that leptospirosis is an important public health problem in both urban and rural areas of Brazil. The results provide decision-makers with detailed information about where disease incidence is high and can be used in the development of prevention and control strategies for priority areas and risk groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an ethnographic study of a party for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)+ women, this article examines contemporary sociospatial practices LGBT+/queer women utilize to build community during the festas juninas in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. While these popular festivals associated with the rural space of the Brazilian Northeast may seem to replicate colonial, religious, and traditional structures, they have also have become fertile ground for queer contestations of heteronormative structures in the Northeast. I argue that LGBT + women in Natal engage in a cultural and spatial anthropophagy: devouring, absorbing, and hybridizing different cultural influences and types of space to create new community formations. By consuming many of the symbols, images, and cultural productions of the festas juninas they actively construct a hybrid anthropophagic space for LGBT + women and challenge moralistic values associated with rural Northeastern culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forms and processes immanent to the Compound territories in the contemporary world bring countless social issues to the geographic debate, and this effort requires an expanded interpretation of the relationships that involve both urban and rural spaces. In view of this, the present study is based on some theoretical analyzes of the "territory" to seek to contribute to highlight the social constructions of the peasant movement. This is an effort that gains validity due to the growing supremacy of current agribusiness, which "in theory" configures a re-territorialization of peasant places in favor of monocultures. However, using bibliographic clippings that support peasant struggle and resistance, here is a reflection that deconstructs this "maxim" of the disappearance of peasant territoriality, an understanding that remains prominent in the analyzes of agrarian geography. Far from introducing a dichotomized approach (agribusiness / campenisate), here is the permanence of peasant territory concomitantly with the great agrarian-capitalist property, an interpretation that is perfectly feasible as a public policy in Brazil and in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new model of agricultural production that was established in Brazil between the 1960s and 1970s was contradictory, as the public policies of rural development reinforce the social inequalities in the countryside with the deterritorialization of thousands of rural workers, especially in the state of Paraná. This process contributed to the organization of new territories and new territorialities. Likewise, in recent years, in the region of Campo Mourão, new territories have emerged in rural areas and, among them, the landless rural workers': a part organized in the form of settlements, implemented by the municipal power in partnership with the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, others in the form of camps that are transformed, through struggle, into settlements. For a better understanding of this movement of de-reterritorialization of the landless rural workers, we have addressed, in our research, the process of territorialization of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) in the Geographical Microregion of Campo Mourão. The research had a theoretical and empirical character with interviews and statements from the landless rural workers of the settlements and camps Irmã Dorothy and Nossa Senhora do Carmo, located in the municipality of Barbosa Ferraz. These movements are forms of power and resistance to the order established in capitalist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Its distinguished the contribution of the 'Maison Familiales Rurales - MFRs' (France) and 'Casas Familiares Rurais - CFRs' (Brazil) to the young adults' lives and also the families who experience Pedagogy of Alternation's proposal. The aim is to discuss the subject formation in rural areas, in Brazil and France, on educational processes characterized by distinctive territorialities whether by historical-social and cultural peculiarities of each country in question or the necessities and possibilities imposed by the economic structure of such realities. In this qualitative research, interviews, observations in rural family houses of the two countries and bibliographical research were used. In France, the country of origin, there is a wide spectrum of formations with resources from both public ministries of agriculture and education. In Brazil, it is prioritized the agricultural formation and elements that produce real changes are identified since knowledge is thought and organized alongside with the actors/subjects who live in these rural areas, and is also based on their interests and their reality, usually with no government funding. It is perceived that the pedagogical process of the brazilian CFRs has efectivated many individual and collective transformations which converge to more active subjects on rural resistance movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]