Criação de novos municípios, capital social e desenvolvimento.

Abstract

Among the several aspects which contribute that different regions have different developmental dynamics, two of them seem to have a very important relevance. We speak of political-administrative partitions and social capital. The partitions mentioned here are the towns. Due to this importance, the present work target is to analyze the various meanings that compose the concept of social capital, how they are perceived by the leaderships of two “localities” with distinct political-administrative situations (one already emancipated and another one, not yet), aiming to evidence how the creation of new towns may or may not interfere in the territories social capital directly involved in this process. It is a qualitative research, taken from a comparative study of cases between a district and an emancipated town in the penultimate consignment (1995) occurred in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Such territories are Alto Paredão and Herveiras. The last one was a district of Santa Cruz do Sul, and the second one still is, however, aims its political-administrative autonomy. These “localities” offer a sufficiently significant situation due to very similar historical, cultural, geographic, social, economic and ethnic formations. Because of these distinct features, they could influence in the respective realities of the social capital, we have a scenery where the political-administrative status is the main differentiator factor between the two “localities”. The results obtained show that the anxiousness for local development, shared internally by the respective leaderships that make, or made part of the emancipation movement, even facing opposite political positions, and not accustomed to cooperating, resulted in the emancipation as the most viable option. So, the relations produced by the desire of autonomy stimulated by the search of development, tended to favor the “cooperation”, the “confidence”, the “civic commitment”, the “team actions”, among other subjects worked. That is, the creation of a new town, according to the perception of the respective leaderships, indicates that it is a process capable to influence positively on the social capital of those “localities”. However, the persistence of this vitality is vulnerable, once the relationships between the leaderships regarding social capital, tend to suffer alterations after the effectiveness of the politicaladministrative autonomy, because of the hard cooperation with all its intensity until the creation of the town, persisting or ceasing, where the expectations of development generated by the emancipatory process, are to be confirmed or not. So, the creation of new towns, the social capital and the development are processes and concepts that are affected mutually.