Affiliations: [a] Production Engineering Program – COPPE, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| [b] Production Engineering Department – DEP, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Correspondence:
[*]
Address for correspondence: Amanda Fernandes Xavier, Production Engineering Program –COPPE, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Av. Horácio Macedo 2030, 21941-598, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. E-mail: amandaxavier@pep.ufrj.br.
Note: [1] ORCID: 0000-0001-7190-5745.
Note: [2] ORCID: 0000-0001-9178-3458.
Note: [3] ORCID: 0000-0003-4373-6424.
Abstract: BACKGROUND:This article discusses expanded governance of territorial issues as the basis for a sustainable way of producing and commercializing, as well as the relevance of work analysis within this governance. This discussion is developed from the Functionality and Cooperation Economy approach and from Brazilian experiences of organic food production and community-based solid waste management. OBJECTIVE:To identify and analyze the relationship between territorial issues and work activities in initiatives that seek territorial solutions for food and waste management in order to reflect on a sustainable economic transition and its challenges. METHODS:This article presents a reflection, a posteriori, concerning the follow-up of two initiatives that seek a sustainable economy and that, facing territorial issues, adopted different economic strategies. The field of research, by which the intended reflections are guided, originated from two intervention projects conducted by two different research/intervention groups. RESULTS:Our study highlights how the central focus on the effects of work in a territory can support the development of reflexivity and, consequently, the production of transversal cooperation and the sharing of material and immaterial resources, thereby leading to multifunctional territorial solutions. CONCLUSION:This study presents how the co-construction of multifunctional territorial solutions, involving cooperation among different actors, can be developed by an analysis of the respective activities involved. This analysis confers centrality to real work in order to feed the governance devices and enable the development of relationships of trust, necessary for living and producing in harmony, along with the construction of conventions and dynamic cooperation.
Keywords: Functional and cooperative economy, work activities, territorial issues, territorial solutions
