Participation and aging in the council

The research is about the participation and the representantive of elderly, in order to think how the public policies are defined, how the aging is thought by the public policy and has been experienced by the members of elderly council.  The study aims understand what is the aging in the policy context of participate and rights. 

The councils are a space created by the Constitution of 1989 in an effort to implement a democratic state in Brazil. They are an instance formed by representatives from government and civil society in order to supervise the actions of the state, to define resolutions and needs of the population. Their existence is regarded as one of the elements that became the State more democratic. 

Each two years, there is a event that join representatives of councils and others instances that work for and with old people to discuss and deliberate the priorities for the public policies that the state will follow for this population.

The ethnography works with three elderly councils in São Paulo in order to understand the way to think, to classificate and to indicate about the aging, and life course in the public policy and in the state. These councils studied are formed by aging: more than sixty years old, as the Statute of the Elderly – a important brazilian document elaborate in 2002 - defined.

The research pretends investigate the way the aging is defined and what it is though in the public policies in Brazil, also the efforts about how, when and why do they are considered elderly.