SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the relationships that permeate human life and environmental practices, which, since the modern era, have been constantly and directly associated with legal and economic discourses and practices. In contemporary societies, the capital, assets and profit assume the protagonist role of a life assumption to be reached at any cost by individuals. States, under such conditions, are increasingly pressured and coerced by the dynamics of the “financialized” economy and reduced to the condition of agencies guaranteeing remuneration contracts with global financial capital. They demonstrate a lack of commitment to qualitative public policies inherent to health, safety, education and a balanced environment. In this sense, for the benefit of access to investor credits, States are compelled not to apply or deregulate socio-environmental issues, among other initiatives inherent to the fundamental rights of the Brazilian population. As a consequence, new forms of social malaise are linked to human alienation, loneliness, insecurity, the breakdown of family and community relationships, professional breakdowns, individualism, affective stress, as well as aggressive competition, generating consequently, visible losses resulting from the overall balance of integral development. This research was developed based on bibliographic and documentary methodology. It is based on a vast theoretical reference present in the works of the philosophers Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, as well as in books and articles by some of his commentators on Brazilian soil.