And the Brazilian, how are you?
How are Brazilians living? Their families, health, sanitary conditions, migratory movements, social inequalities (poor, black, women, elderly), the environmental impacts of population growth, reproductive health, sexuality? Answers to these questions have been offered for twenty years by the Population Studies Center (Nepo) at Unicamp, which during this period became one of the two major reference centers in demography in the country.
Created on May 25, 1982, Nepo celebrates the date with two events: a lecture on the 22nd (Wednesday), with the president of IBGE Sergio Besserman Vianna; and an international conference on August 12th and 13th, putting into discussion the data from the book População e Ambiente no Brasil, organized by researchers from the nucleus – together with the National Commission for Population and Development and the Brazilian Association of Population Studies – to be distributed to the official Brazilian delegation present at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (or Rio + 10), scheduled for Johannesburg, between August 26th and September 4th.
“We have grown a lot”, says professor Maria Coleta de Oliveira, coordinator of Nepo from 1994 to 1998. She remembers the small initial group created by professor Elza Berquó, who coordinated Nepo for 12 years, and at the time was retired from USP for AI-5, and who surrounded himself with Daniel Hogan, professor of sociology at Unicamp, Neide Patarra, who together with Maria Coleta came from the area of demography and urbanization at FAU, Andréia Loyola, anthropologist at PUC in São Paulo, and Maria Isabel Baltar , then a PhD student in political science at USP.
The first project, financed by Finep, was a study of social transformations and demographic changes in São Paulo, recovering the history of the State from the 19th century – a period for which there was insufficient demographic data – until reaching current times. “We looked for scientific initiation grants from funding agencies and started to form a group with human sciences and mathematics and statistics students. We have become a center for training qualified labor for research”, says Maria Coleta.
In the last ten years, two large projects, developed with varied funding sources, marked Nepo's production: the Reproductive Health and Sexuality Program – under the coordination of Elza Berquó –, which mobilized a large part of its researchers in training and research throughout the period, mainly with resources from the Ford Foundation, McArthur Foundation and the World Health Organization; and the Support Program for Centers of Excellence (Pronex), in the area of redistribution of population and environment, directed by professor Daniel Hogan, former coordinator of Nepo, which also required a large volume of resources and has been producing comparative results about the State of São Paulo with the Central-West region. “Alongside this, we continue to do research on family, mortality, historical demography, gender and sexuality...”, adds Maria Coleta.
Education – The formation of several centers and nuclei was a project by rector Aristodemo Pinotti, with the idea of encouraging interdisciplinary scientific production at Unicamp. In the case of Nepo, there was an interest in introducing the subject of demography, which existed in an incipient form at the University.
When, in 83, the IFCH decided to create a doctorate in social sciences with an interdisciplinary approach, Nepo participated from the beginning of its implementation, being responsible to this day for an area of concentration in this discipline, population studies. “We supervised many theses, we trained a lot of people during this period”, observes the researcher.
Maria Coleta explains that the Center for Development and Regional Planning (Cedeplar) at UFMG, the other reference in demography in Brazil, adopts a more economic focus, while Nepo has a social science bias. Within this interdisciplinary concern, a sociologist or anthropologist, for example, seeks specialization in demographic mathematics. “With the creation of the doctorate in demography in 1993, we also began to attract statistics graduates. And we are planning to start the master's course next year, thus completing the population training alternatives at Unicamp”, she informs.
Recycling – Another important activity at Nepo is research and recycling training. These are special and intensive study programs. In reproductive health and sexuality alone, there were nine programs in the 1992/2000 period, lasting three weeks, for people from all over Brazil, mainly from non-governmental organizations and public administration bodies. With resources from the Latin American Consortium of Reproductive Health and Sexuality Programs, it was possible to encourage the participation of people from Latin America and the Caribbean. The 8th Study Program also included the presence of participants from African countries.
Maria Coleta states that the training and recycling courses constitute Nepo's support for society's organization efforts, as it offers people outside academia the opportunity for specialized training. “We find former participants in Nepo programs saying: 'we are organizing a nepinho in reproductive health, or a nepinho in migration...'. Even if on a smaller scale, we are serving as a model. We want to train multiplier agents and we have succeeded.”
Center brings together 6 thousand titles
In these twenty years of existence, Nepo has brought together countless researchers. Some have already retired and young people are being incorporated, in a demonstration of great dynamism. “But we resent the impossibility of hiring more people, we lost many that we helped train because we were unable to absorb them”, laments professor Maria Coleta de Oliveira.
To expand its staff – not only through research, but also through teaching – Nepo counts on the national and international recognition achieved by its researchers and the consequent trust of funding agencies to release grants and financing. “All of this requires a lot of effort, as the centers receive little funding from the University administration and have to make do with extra-budgetary resources. Since its creation, Nepo has had a single microcomputer purchased by the administration. I can say that it was twenty years well lived”, jokes Maria Coleta.
Concerned with offering more precise numbers, the professor uses the last three-year activity report, which in 1999 indicated a body of 16 full-time researchers, three associated researchers (from other institutions, but who participate in Nepo projects), four interns, 62 scholarship holders (for scientific initiation or technical support) and seven doctoral students. “In this three-year period, 37% of the resources were budgetary (basically for salaries) and 63% extra-budgetary.”
In the same period, according to the report, 97% of IT equipment was purchased with its own resources. Each researcher has a state-of-the-art microcomputer in their room, with network integration. The apparatus includes a graphics tablet and a dedicated server system. “The equipment needs to be strong, since we work with censuses. And we run everything here, including work from other units”, highlights Maria Coleta.
The Documentation Center brings together approximately 6.000 titles. These are publications and research reports that are available to the public via the internet. All material for future use is microfilmed.
This network was practically set up with resources from Fapesp, which has projects to support research infrastructure. “We competed in all of them and won funds in all of them”, the teacher is proud. “If a doctoral student needs to do research in this area, the tendency is for them to do it within Nepo. He would have laboratories in physics or biology, but these are difficult to find in the humanities. We are practically a laboratory”, she concludes.
