Políticas públicas de esporte e lazer em Ponta Grossa/PR: representações sociais dos agentes públicos municipais vinculados à Fundação Municipal de Esportes

Abstract

This study aimed at identifying the Social Representations that municipal civil servants, linked to the Municipal Sports Foundation in Ponta Grossa/PR – Fundesp – had of the Sports and Leisure Public Policies in 2017. To achieve such objective, a review of the concept that permeates the field of Public Policies was presented, and the main characteristics of the Theoretical Background on Social Representations were highlighted. The study was developed in an interdisciplinary perspective, with qualitative and exploratory features. The data collection was carried out through interviews with nine public actors, four in commissioned positions and five civil servants, all linked to the Fundesp. The interview was organized in two moments, one using the free choice of words technique and the other a semi-structured interview. The data analysis was based on the use of Content Analysis assumptions aided by the software Iramuteq. To present the results, six categories were employed that outstood in the analysis of similarities in the text corpus, which were: Sport, Leisure, Public Policies, Projects and Actions developed, Fundesp, and Competition/athlete/performance sports. In the category sports, the central nucleus of the Social representations is mainly related to health, education and social aspects. Moreover, it became evident that there is a Social Representation that sports activities can be used in children’s and adolescents’ free time, preventing them from getting involved in illegal activities, in addition to enabling the identification of new athletes. In the category leisure, both the results of the free choice of words and the textual data of the interviews, related leisure to pleasurable aspects, quality of life, health and family. The category public policies pointed out that the main aspect of the central nucleus is financial resources. On the other hand, it was possible to identify some factors influencing the elaboration of public policies, among them, the influence of individuals in charge of management, which is seen as the main one, and the demand by the inhabitants. The category of projects and actions developed was divided into three groups: projects, events and actions, which were briefly described from the material produced in the interviews. Regarding the category Fundesp, the actors’ representations of the Foundation role were portrayed. Finally, in the sixth category, arguments appeared that reinforce the idea that the current government tends to prioritize activities that involve the participant dimension of sports. The study enabled the identification of a connection between the actors’ Social Representations and the actions developed by Fundesp. Both the discourses and the activities mentioned pointed out that the priority at this moment is to broaden the access to sports and leisure. In this sense, performance sports are not prioritized, mainly due to its high cost and the reduced number of people that might benefit from it. In general, there is coherence in the actors’ discourse, with a focus of attention on social aspects.