Abstract

Introduction

This essay broadly dialogues with all those who are interested in the human demand for freedom to come and go, key for life, culture, health, and human education. Paulon¹1 Paulon SM. Quando a cidade “escuta vozes”: o que a democracia tem a aprender com a loucura. Interface (Botucatu). 2017; 21(63):775-86. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622016.0845.
https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622016.08... points out that territories are made of many voices, and that it is a condition for a democratic society to expand the circulation networks in order to echo “new forms of citizenship and the production of a more plural world”¹1 Paulon SM. Quando a cidade “escuta vozes”: o que a democracia tem a aprender com a loucura. Interface (Botucatu). 2017; 21(63):775-86. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622016.0845.
https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622016.08... (p. 775).

Furthermore, the thoughts that are presented, involving the threads of circulation and everyday life, are in dialogue with what the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) has established as “International Priorities for Research in Occupational Therapy”, pointing to the need for production of knowledge in the area regarding the topic of participation in everyday life, as well as the promotion of research whose focus, whether from a theoretical or a methodological point of view, is to understand aspects of everyday participation of marginalized populations²2 World Federation of Occupational Therapists. Prioridades internacionales de investigación em terapia ocupacional [Internet]. London: WFOT; 2016 [citado 1 Out 2020]. Disponível em: www.wfot.org
www.wfot.org... .

As per Salles and Matsukura³3 Salles MM, Matsukura TS. Estudo de revisão sistemática sobre o uso do conceito de cotidiano no campo da terapia ocupacional no Brasil. Cad Ter Ocup UFSCar. 2013; 21(2):265-73.^,44 Salles MM, Matsukura TS. Estudo de revisão sistemática sobre o uso do conceito de cotidiano no campo da Terapia Ocupacional na literatura de língua inglesa. Cad Ter Ocup. 2015; 23(1):197-210., everyday as a concept, has been increasingly used by Brazilian occupational therapy to support a practice that contemplates in a more solid way the socio-political and cultural relations that permeate singular and collective subjects, proposing a displacement of biomedical and positivist conceptions. Galheigo⁵5 Galheigo SM. O cotidiano na terapia ocupacional: cultura, subjetividade e contexto histórico-social. Rev Ter Ocup USP. 2003; 14(3):104-9.

6 Galheigo SM. Perspectiva crítica y compleja de terapia ocupacional: actividad, cotidiano, diversidad, justicia social y compromiso ético-político. TOG (A Coruña). 2012; 9(5):176-87.^-77 Galheigo SM. Terapia ocupacional, cotidiano e a tessitura da vida: aportes teórico-conceituais para a construção de perspectivas críticas e emancipatórias. Cad Bras Ter Ocup. 2020; 28(1):5-25., an author that has highlighted this debate and its reflections for a long time, states that the “studies on everyday life incorporate subjectivity, culture, history, and social power as elements that influence the understanding of the phenomenon, they definitely break with any reading of a more positivist character”⁵5 Galheigo SM. O cotidiano na terapia ocupacional: cultura, subjetividade e contexto histórico-social. Rev Ter Ocup USP. 2003; 14(3):104-9. (p. 107).

Considering this set of interests, concerns, and studies, this essay aims to systematize some contributions, having as interlocutors Marxist-based authors, namely: Agnes Heller⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016., Henri Lefebvre⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991. and Karel Kosik¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002., being the latter still little present in discussions about the topic in occupational therapy. Furthermore, we intend to advance in relation to the concept of circulation, taking the French geographer Jean Gottmann (1915 - 1994) as a reference, interpreted as an aspect associated with everyday life, making use of what we call “everyday circulation”.

Finally, it aims to compose a dialogue that seeks theoretical and methodological subsidies that inform the therapeutic-occupational praxis with population groups facing processes of disruption of social support networks, as well as deficits of integration through work and that experience situations of disaffiliation and social vulnerability, as proposed by Castel¹¹11 Castel R. As metamorfoses da questão social: uma crônica do salário. Petrópolis: Vozes; 1998., which includes barriers to an emancipatory everyday circulation, posing an ethical-political challenge to professionals in terms of developing alternatives to solve this problem.

Everyday and circulation

Plots of everyday life: between alienation and emancipation

According to Kosik¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002., “every mode of human existence or of existing in the world has its own quotidianity” (p. 79), according to each epoch. In feudal society it had its own marks, which changed with the rise of capitalist and industrial society, which brought new instruments of production, new social class compositions and political institutions. Heller⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016. has a stance against this perspective, arguing that everyday life is the life of every human being, regardless of their position in the social division of labor, it is the place where subjects are actuates, active, fruitful, and receptive, at the center of the historical event, therefore it is the essence of social substance.

It is in everyday life that people live, die, live badly or well, “make or unmake a living, in a double sense: not surviving or surviving, just surviving or living fully. It is in everyday life that one either enjoys or suffers”⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991. (p. 27)(^c(c)Lefebvre9 points out that the realm of everyday life is a mark that arises from the nineteenth century, related to the competition capitalism and the effervescence of the commodity world. This is what distinguishes it from the conceptions of Heller8 and Kosik10, which understand everyday life in all areas.), is the rational core of praxis - the place of production (in a broad sense) of human existence.

Kosik¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002., by problematizing everyday life proposes that it is a space where human beings have a supposed intimacy, trust, and familiarity, in which they move based on a supposed and false “natural” way of being. The contents of the phenomena that shape quotidian life are characterized by regularity, immediacy, and evidence, penetrate the consciousness of the subjects, constituting the terrain of pseudo-concreticity, based on the division of labor, the division of society into classes, and the hierarchy of social positions. The world of pseudo-concreticity is the place of external phenomena, which are on the surface of the essential processes, as it does not capture the relationship of the phenomenon with its concrete and organic essence (inner core of reality); it is the world of what is tragic, of manipulation, of the fetishized and utilitarian praxis; the world of fixed objects, which gives the impression that they are the consequence of natural causes, not been recognized as the fruit of action and social relations.

It is in this dimension that the pseudo-concretized consciousness is announced, in which praxis is not a work that is created, but the subjects just occupy themselves without thinking, in mechanized actions, separated from the genesis of the human world, of culture, of the humanization of nature. It is expressed by the praxis of everyday operations, in which the human being himself is the object of manipulation, as “treatment and manipulation of the apparatus of the world, but not the ‘creation’ of the human world”¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002. (p. 74, author’s emphasis).

According to Heller⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016., everyday life is the sphere most lending itself to alienation, which stems from the “mute” existence of particularity within generality. This limits action and perception in relation to everyday life; the particular individual dimension ends up being placed above the generic human dimension, as this author defines it⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016.. “In the midst of everyday, it seems ‘natural’ to break up, to separate being and essence”⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016. (p. 63). At this point, resembling what Kosik¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002. called pseudo-concreticity, Heller⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016. also adds that in this sphere the human being is subsumed by the fulfillment of his “roles”, spontaneously assimilating the dominant customary norms.

The everyday life has structures that open up to possibilities of explicit, fruitful and creative action movements, however, if the subjects configures themselves into what is set, alienation would occur “in view of the concrete possibilities of the generic development of humanity”⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016. (p. 62-3). A gap is created between human-generic production and the individual’s participation in the everyday movement of production/action/relationship, a gap that becomes abyssal in modern capitalism.

Lefebvre⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991. discusses everyday alienation, bringing the marks of society’s historical transformations, especially since the 1960s(^d(d)Lefebvre9 puts that this period is circumscribed by the failure of the Soviet Union and the rise of capitalism, with the dilution of the working class’ forms of consciousness and the detour of its creative and revolutionary capacity.). This period is characterized by the advance of capitalism, the market society, technique, abundance, productivist rationale (in the strict sense of the term), mass consumption (creative activity is transformed into the ideology of consumption), leisure (such as the consumption of generalized spectacles: television, cinema, tourism), of the changes in relation to work and the rise of state power after World War II. Based on this, everyday life is conformed to modern capitalism, as a terrain to be programmed and organized, in which there is an administration, subdivision (work, private life, leisure) and control of the use of time, making it functional to the interests and maintenance of the consumer-driven society.

As a result, there is the construction of an alienated everyday life, imposing the experience of “everyday misery” upon the working class, related to the realm of numbers and things, the commodity, the immediate, subordinated work, scarcity and the fetishization of desires⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991.. This becomes the core of the problematic social issue¹¹11 Castel R. As metamorfoses da questão social: uma crônica do salário. Petrópolis: Vozes; 1998. produced by modern capitalism, which ends up metamorphosing everyday life into miserable, alienated, and pseudo-concrete.

Alienation conceals the place of creation and production of life, alienates the everyday from its richness, and transforms the creative consciousness into a passive and unhappy one⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991.. Nonetheless, everyday life, despite being conducive to alienation, is not necessarily alienated⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016..

Everyday life carries the possibility of being the place of creative activity and the production of the work. The work is the activity of subjects taking in their hands their agent role in the social destiny, associated with a revolution that destabilizes the contradictory structures of property and law, therefore making essential the questioning of quotidianity. “In order for it to rediscover the quality and properties of being human, it must overcome the everyday, within the everyday, from the everyday!”⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991. (p. 204). Therefore, it is necessary that everyday life becomes a space of questioning, problematization, and protagonism, especially for the subjects of the classes that endure a denied everyday life (reality without truth), having “the possibility of creating a work from the everyday, from its ups and downs”⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991. (p. 43). The latter are requirements to experience the greatness of everyday life, in the appropriation of the body, of desire, of space, of time, and of inhabiting, not reduced to numbers; it is the creation of the practical-sensible world in gestures and in living.

The possibility of overcoming alienation occurs supported by the elevation or suspension of the everyday, in which “man becomes conscious of the human-generic of his individuality”⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016. (p. 47). Art, science, a great passion and free work are potent processes for this suspension, they promote “catharsis”, a tension for the subject to understand himself within a broader and less immediate humanity, denying the impositions of the social roles that condition him. From this point on, it may arise a moment for the construction of a conscious relationship of the individual with the generality of society and with the contradictions that move lives, the subjects would find their potential and resume their everyday life in a different way.

In order to configure a praxis with this suspension, it is essential for the subject to discover the true brutality of alienated everyday and to approach it also with violence¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002.. A violence that, according to Kosik¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002., comes from activities that destabilize the supposed naturalness of everyday life; yet, like Heller⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016., The arts (literature, theater, cinema, and the plastic arts) are placed as potent activities for this destabilization, deconstructing the apparent independence of immediate everyday life. The “destruction of pseudo-concreticity - which dialectical thinking must effect - does not deny the existence or objectivity of those phenomena, but destroys their pretended independence”¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002. (p. 20-1), showing its character derived from reality, thus demystifying utilitarian praxis.

In this way, the deconstruction of naturalized elements in everyday life requires the revolutionary critique of praxis, the dialectical thinking of things in themselves, and, finally, the engagement of the subjects as participants in the social-historical and cultural construction of society.

The everyday life as a space of creative, revolutionary, and authentic life is always resisting, keeping the possibility of being a place for conscious life and for facing contradictions. This does not mean that the immediate, repetitive, mechanized everyday is a dimension of the quotidianity to be extinguished, even because these aspects are fundamental for the reproduction of life⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016.. But what is emerging is the need for subjects to understand themselves in the world, consciously and as agents, where the mechanical and utilitarian does not forge alienation, and where individuals, groups, and classes understand themselves as actors of collective life, capable of bringing about transformations and creative life. It is necessary, on the grounds of suspension⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016., violence¹⁰10 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002. and creation⁹9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991., rescind with manipulation and naivety, to critically examine life processes.

Freire¹²12 Freire P. À sombra desta mangueira. 11a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 2013.(^e(e)Paulo Freire12 in this understanding has as a reference Karel Kosik, whom he characterized as a remarkable philosopher.), bringing reflections about the everyday life, proposes that human beings in this dimension run the risk of not asking why things happen, but curiosity at the level of existence will always be present. Despite the conditioning, critical curiosity exists, and would not cease to exist, in everyday life, “we not only have ‘life’, but ‘human life’, that is, ‘existence’”¹²12 Freire P. À sombra desta mangueira. 11a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 2013. (p. 134, author’s emphasis), Thus, there will always be creative life possible to resist the alienations that impoverish the senses of living.

Circulation as the substance of everyday life

This essay points out that a substantial dimension of everyday life is circulation, conforming what we call “everyday circulation” as a field of elements associated with everyday life, forged -in and by- contradictions.

This field of elements is captured in the work above Ways (figure 1), which refers to essentially natural processes of circulation of life; they are the movements, flows, coming and going in which the production of beings’ existence takes place; however, this production at the level of nature is submitted to what is determined by the biological/chemical-physical flow. It should be noted that although human life carries the elements of natural flows, its circulation in territories and spaces is forged in historical, social, political, subjective, and cultural processes. Those processes are established by social reality, in contradictions, dilemmas, accidents, alienation, power relations, inequality, resistance, choices, the possibility of freedom, conservation, transformation, intentionalities, i.e. in the praxis that makes up everyday life.

Therefore, within the social-historical flow of the human it is located a social dialectic, not the dialectic of nature¹³13 Paulo Netto J. Entrevista: José Paulo Netto. Trab Educ Saude. 2011; 9(2):333-40., essential point to understand that the circulation of people imposes itself upon social practices.

The notion of circulation, in the field of geography, has historically been used in an non-critical and epistemologically impoverished way, marginalizing the issues around the displacement of people, ideas, information and goods in the production of spaces, as Silva Junior¹⁴14 Silva Junior RF. Circulação, epistemologia e a constituição de um ramo da ciência geográfica. Bol Campineiro Geogr. 2012; 2(3):389-417.. For this author, it is necessary to redeem the term, defending a Geography of Circulation.

Silva Junior¹⁴14 Silva Junior RF. Circulação, epistemologia e a constituição de um ramo da ciência geográfica. Bol Campineiro Geogr. 2012; 2(3):389-417. states that “the inspiration for the idea of circulation comes from the analogy with the flows of nature, especially blood circulation”¹⁴14 Silva Junior RF. Circulação, epistemologia e a constituição de um ramo da ciência geográfica. Bol Campineiro Geogr. 2012; 2(3):389-417. (p. 413). This notion ascends and is tied to a conservative intention of sciences, including social sciences, taken from physiology, mechanization, positivist and organicist viewpoints based on technical rationality, on the efficiency of the body/machine-thing, of a civilizing project of society. Thus, the circulation is initially established with the intention of modern science, spread by René Descartes and other contemporaries, responding to the “’need’ for a new interpretation, which would be more efficient and would ‘contribute’ to the construction of a ‘true science’, analogous to the observation of nature and its mechanisms, for the establishment of its domination by the realm of man”¹⁴14 Silva Junior RF. Circulação, epistemologia e a constituição de um ramo da ciência geográfica. Bol Campineiro Geogr. 2012; 2(3):389-417. (p. 391). This perspective gradually changed until it developed proposals to distance itself from the physiological analysis.

One of the authors who propose a dislocation to understand the phenomenon of circulation in a non-physiological sense is Jean Gottmann. Gottmann¹⁵15 Gottmann J. La politique des États et leur Géographie. Paris: Armand Colin; 1952. analyzes circulation in the geopolitical dimension, defining it as a movement that “is, of course, creator of change in the established order in space: it consists in moving”¹⁵15 Gottmann J. La politique des États et leur Géographie. Paris: Armand Colin; 1952. (p. 214, author’s emphasis)(^f(f)“est tout naturellement créatrice de changement dans l’ordre établi dans l’espace: elle consiste à déplacer”15 (p. 214, author’s emphasis).). Circulation promotes movements in the political, economic and cultural order, forged in the displacement of people, ideas, goods, capital and techniques in the society, that is increasingly fluid and ramified. It appears as a social process that promotes change in spaces and territories, allows the organization and differentiation of space, “the circulation of men [human beings] and their products is the great human dynamic”¹⁵15 Gottmann J. La politique des États et leur Géographie. Paris: Armand Colin; 1952. (p. 215)(^g(g)“La circulation des hommes et de leurs produits, c’est la grande dynamique humaine”15 (p. 215).), is an organizer of networks, itineraries.

The circulation of people propitiates changes in the territories, but these do not happen without resistance, because, at the same time that the principle of circulation exists, there is also the principle of iconography in the geopolitics of the territories. “Circulation, the principle of movement, and iconography, the principle of stability”¹⁵15 Gottmann J. La politique des États et leur Géographie. Paris: Armand Colin; 1952. (p. 221)(^h(h)“La circulation, principe de mouvement, et l’iconographie, principe de stabilité”15 (p. 221).). It derives from the principle of iconography a set of different symbolic systems (abstract and concrete) built in the modern nation-state, bringing regionalism and internal territorial cohesion to the consolidation of this mode of society, functioning as a unifying principle of life in common, in which the other is always a foreigner.

With these “maps” and their representations, national interests, habits, and common beliefs are formatted, in which the nation-state configures a system of resistance to movement, is the cement that gives cohesion and personality to a community, a factor of political stability, and is an obstacle to the circulation¹⁶16 Gottmann J. La politique et le concret. Polit Etrang. 1963; 4-5(28):273-302..

To establish men [human beings] in the space they occupy, to give a sense of the links that unite nation and territory, it is essential to bring regional geography into iconography. This is how iconography becomes in geography a kind of resistance to movement, a factor of political stabilization¹⁵15 Gottmann J. La politique des États et leur Géographie. Paris: Armand Colin; 1952.. (p. 221)(ⁱ(i)“Pour fixer les hommes à l’espace qu’ils occupent, pour leur donner le sentiment des liens qui unissent la nation et le territoire, il est indispensable de faire entrer la géographie régionale dans l’iconographie. C’est ainsi que l’iconographie devient en géographie un môle de résistance au mouvement, un facteur de stabilisation politique”15 (p. 221).)

This resistance to circulation, necessary to some extent for the constitution and organization of the nation-state, is strategic for the maintenance of the status quo. This may help to reaffirm logics of oppression, when it legitimizes the non-recognition, or bars the rights to circulation of different subalternized groups, especially the poor, to preserve the privileged place of dominant classes in the social and economic hierarchy, preserving the idea that there are better and worse groups, for the maintenance of places of power and material and symbolic hegemony. It is understood that the circulation is an important factor to bring the symbols closer, to promote movements and exchanges, enabling the democratization of the use of the territories(^k(k)It is understood that any given territories have been “delimited by human action and are used by a number of people for specific reasons, such uses and intentions being determined by and belonging to a political process”17 (p. 523).) in the social, political, and cultural process, and can destabilize oppressive social hegemonies.

Therefore, it is necessary to note that the circulation of people, within an unequal society, “for hegemonic agents, [...] means ‘widening the contexts’, whether for control, domination, or to carry out exchanges [...]. For hegemonized agents, circulation means survival, whether for their social reproduction (labor mobility) or for refuge”¹⁴14 Silva Junior RF. Circulação, epistemologia e a constituição de um ramo da ciência geográfica. Bol Campineiro Geogr. 2012; 2(3):389-417. (p. 408). Thus, strategies and factors that condition every day’s circulation to survive are tied to the maintenance of relations of oppression and alienation, not allowing the enlargement of contexts in an emancipated and autonomous way.

The misery of everyday circulation, in a compulsory way (tied to everyday alienation, to the dominant customary norms, to the impositions of social roles, functional to the interests of the directed consumer society and to the maintenance of the status quo), is tied to the subalternized classes, in view of institutional and non-institutional forms that condition the movement, the coming and going, since circulation does not happen by itself, it depends on technical, organizational, social, cultural, economic and political factors that configure the networks, that is, the conditions for mobility¹⁴14 Silva Junior RF. Circulação, epistemologia e a constituição de um ramo da ciência geográfica. Bol Campineiro Geogr. 2012; 2(3):389-417..

Praxis of social occupational therapy: everyday circulation for social participation

In order to think about social-occupational therapeutic action using as a notion the everyday circulation of the subjects to whom it is directed, it should be understood how inequality, exploitation, and oppression mark Brazilian society. In a country built on colonialism, slavery and fragile democracy¹²12 Freire P. À sombra desta mangueira. 11a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 2013., everyday circulation for people from subalternized classes is permeated by several material and immaterial barriers, which impose the maintenance of the old regimes, an everyday circulation intensely generated by conditioned, immediate and compulsory need, marginalizing the desire, emancipation and the search for meaningful social participation.

If “the material conditions for a particular social revolution existed, it became an imperative-ethic, a duty, a free option (possibility) for minds and hearts that considered the happiness of men, of all men, the ultimate purpose of states”¹⁸18 Nosella P. Ética e pesquisa. Educ Soc. 2008; 29(102):255-73. (p. 262). Thus, solving the problems surrounding everyday circulation is an ethical duty in society, “taking the obstacles as challenges, the task is to seek appropriate answers to them”¹²12 Freire P. À sombra desta mangueira. 11a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 2013. (p. 73).

Considering the existence of a scope of technologies and knowledge capable of promoting and/or facilitating the everyday circulation of people in the territories, this alternative opens up the possibility of being placed in a democratic way. Thus, it would be feasible to break away from the condition of compulsory everyday circulation, associated to the alienated and pseudo-concrete everyday experience, making possible the necessary articulations for freedom, in a conscious and autonomous way¹²12 Freire P. À sombra desta mangueira. 11a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 2013.^,1919 Gramsci A. Cadernos do cárcere. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira; 1999. v. 1., promoting an emancipatory everyday circulation, from the awareness, “catharsis”, and creation to experience and enjoy the movements, to go and live, and even to stay, in the different spaces of existence.

Understanding social occupational therapy as a field of knowledge and practice with ethical and political commitment to reduce the limits and activate the potentials of living everyday life and expanding social participation²⁰20 Galheigo S, Simó S. Maestras de la terapia ocupacional. Sandra Galheigo: la poderosa emergencia de la terapia ocupacional social. TOG (A Coruña). 2012; 9(15):1-41.; is its professional thinking/doing capable of promoting an emancipatory everyday movement with populations that find barriers to experience this dimension of existence?

The notion of everyday circulation is understood as interesting to instrumentalize the professional exercise, directed to face the challenges with vulnerable populations that have difficulties to have their rights and their concrete opportunities of participation in social life guaranteed. For example, the poor urban and rural youth, the transvestite and transsexual population, the street population, the immigrant and refugee population, among others, are groups and subjects that experience conditions of limitations in their processes of emancipatory everyday movement. They have difficulties, due to social and cultural contradictions, to use the territories and social goods (institutional and non-institutional devices that make up the social spaces).

To establish this movement, social occupational therapy can benefit from the use of social technologies, key theoretical and methodological strategies for praxis²¹21 Lopes RE, Borda PLO, Trajber NKA, Silva CR, Cuel BT. Oficinas de atividades com jovens da escola pública: tecnologias sociais entre educação e terapia ocupacional. Interface (Botucatu). 2011; 15(36):277-88.^,2222 Lopes RE, Malfitano APS, Silva CR, Borba PLO. Recursos e tecnologias em Terapia Ocupacional Social: ações com jovens pobres na cidade. Cad Ter Ocup UFSCar. 2014; 22(3):591-602., placing as an assumption the possibility/necessity of the everyday circulation of the subjects. The therapeutic-occupational actions in this sense are carried out within a panorama permeated by micro and macro-social aspects²³23 Malfitano APS. Contexto social e atuação social: generalizações e especificidades na terapia ocupacional. In: Lopes RE, Malfitano APS, organizadores. Terapia ocupacional social: desenhos teóricos e contornos práticos. São Carlos: EdUFSCar; 2016. p. 117-33., to articulate alternatives that deal with the historical-political, cultural, and affective contexts of individuals and groups, for the expansion of emancipatory everyday circulation. To this end, it makes use of activities and unique follow-up, the articulation of community resources (affective, political, economic, cultural), the strategies for dynamizing the integration of public policies, for the strengthening of social support networks, and the webs that are woven by circulation.

Furthermore, it is understood that the promotion of emancipatory everyday life presupposes proposals for the suspension of everyday life - destroying the pseudo-concreticity of everyday life, in a critical and dialectical way⁸8 Heller A. O cotidiano e a história. 11a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2016.

9 Lefebvre H. A vida cotidiana no mundo moderno. São Paulo: Editora Ática; 1991.^-1010 Kosik K. Dialética do concreto. São Paulo: Paz e terra; 2002., to raise awareness of the subjects as protagonists of their movements. Fomenting spaces of coexistence and meetings to carry out this exercise of suspension, “this suspension of everyday life is not an escape:

In face of the contributions that we intend to bring/build in this text, these practices may contribute to the development of the possibilities of circulation, of creativity, for the effusion and promotion of the enrichment of a restricted/alienated/conditioned everyday, which need to be associated to strategies that make this a concrete alternative in the society in which we live, putting stress in the paths through which we go, dealing with limitations, but, literally, opening paths.

The occupational therapist is able to foster a critical elaboration of everyday life with the subjects⁵5 Galheigo SM. O cotidiano na terapia ocupacional: cultura, subjetividade e contexto histórico-social. Rev Ter Ocup USP. 2003; 14(3):104-9., so that they can opt for a refusal that is envisioned as resistance and for transforming it in an active way.

The “emancipatory everyday circulation” - richness of life movement, in antagonism to the compulsory everyday circulation - reduced to respond in a subordinate way to social oppressions, knows that every movement is linked to desires, to critical curiosity, to the discovery and enjoyment of territories and their social goods, as an important factor for the production of creative life, for existing and living the territories, for a directly democratic and citizen life.

It is an emancipatory circulation as “characteristic of authentic democratic regimes and [that seeks] to correspond to highly permeable, interrogative, restless, and dialogical forms of life, as opposed to the ‘dumb’, quiet, and discursive forms of life of rigid and militarily authoritarian phases,” creative and dis-alienated everyday life is the “re-encounter with democracy”²⁵25 Freire P. Educação como prática da liberdade. São Paulo: Paz & Terra; 1967. (p. 60).

It concludes that in everyday life “liberation is ‘possibility’; not fate, destiny, or chance”¹²12 Freire P. À sombra desta mangueira. 11a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; 2013. (p. 50, author’s emphasis), demanding from the individual and collective oppressed subjects to engage in the fight for such liberation, in the widening of the possibilities to circulate and to widen social participation. In a conception of educational action of social occupational therapy, based on Manacorda²⁶26 Manacorda MA. Aos educadores brasileiros [entrevista a Paolo Nosella]. Campinas: HISTEDBR – FE/ UNICAMP; 2007., it seeks to contribute to joint strategies with the subjects, not only to let them to be themselves, “but also to enter society, if not with the ability to be a producer of culture in all fields, at least to enjoy all the contributions of human civilization, the arts, techniques, literature”, so that groups with barriers in their social insertion process can “participate in all human pleasures²⁶26 Manacorda MA. Aos educadores brasileiros [entrevista a Paolo Nosella]. Campinas: HISTEDBR – FE/ UNICAMP; 2007. (p. 15), in its full and autonomous everyday circulation.

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