Community health workers (CHWs) are framed as the link between communities and the formal health system. CHWs must establish trusting relationships with the community and with the broader health service. How to find the optimal balance between the various strands of work for CHWs, and how to formalise this, has been the focus of different studies. We performed an extensive documentary analysis of federal legislation in Brazil to understand the institutionalisation of the CHW workforce in Brazil over the last 3 decades. The paper offers three contributions to the literature: the development and application of an analytical framework to consider the institutionalisation process of CHWs; a historical analysis of the professional institutionalisation of CHW in Brazil; and the identification of the paradoxes that such institutionalisation faces: firstly, institutionalisation focused on improving CHW remuneration created difficulties in hiring and paying these professionals; when CHW are incorporated within state bureaucracy they start to lose their autonomy as community agents; and that the effectiveness of CHW programmes depends on the improvement of clinical services in the most deprived areas.

Dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic requires that the State make hard decisions that involve the action of bureaucrats who interact with the population through the implementation of public policy, the street-level bureaucracy (SLB). In this paper, based on a mixed- method exploratory study, we analyze how the daily performance of street-level bureaucrats in different policy areas- health and social care, access to the justice system, public security and education - has changed during the pandemic. We also explore the repercussions of those changes. Based on the analysis of the perceptions of bureaucrats, changes in their work and in their relationship with the public, we identify three categories that illustrate the dynamics of SLB work during the pandemic: the SLB who faces the crisis on the front lines; the SLB who suffers the effects of the pandemic, but whose work does not require her to face it directly; and the SLB who began to work remotely. We conclude that, during the pandemic, SLB suffered in varying degrees an aggravation of structural problems, such as their removal from decision-making processes - now restricted to the highest government level - and the exacerbation of already existing conflicts and ambiguities.

RESUMO Sonegação fiscal continua sendo um problema relevante no Brasil e no mundo. A Economia Comportamental tem buscado compreender este comportamento por meio da realização de experimentos que visam entender o processo decisório dos indivíduos. Este trabalho se propõe a analisar como a estrutura do contexto de tomada de decisão pode influenciar a eficácia das intervenções comportamentais que buscam aumentar a conformidade fiscal. Por meio de análise de conteúdo de artigos científicos da área, foram identificadas cinco categorias contextuais que influenciam os experimentos. Assim, a pesquisa provê entendimento sobre os aspectos contextuais e como estes influenciam no desenho das intervenções.

Gender intersects with healthcare systems; this is equally true for arboviral vector control efforts. However, there is as yet no comprehensive analysis as to how vector control is gendered. Hence, our objective is to provide the first thematic scoping and spatial distribution of the literature on gender, community health workers, and vector control. The authors use a systematic review approach to collect the academic literature on gender, community health workers, and vector control in Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed (7,367 articles). After applying the exclusion criteria, 2,812 articles were analyzed using machine learning techniques: text mining and quantitative text analysis. The authors use topic modeling to assess the thematic scope of the literature and analyze the spatial distribution of themes. Our results show that the literature’s spatial scope is strongly represented by the global south as research was conducted mainly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, places with greater incidence of vector-borne disease and with health systems, which incorporate community healthcare workers. However, there are significant spatial heterogeneities in where and how research is conducted. The topic analysis reveals that the literature predominantly considers issues of sex (e.g., pregnancy) and gender as it relates motherhood. Gendered considerations occur upon implementation of vector control policies, rather than being mainstreamed into their development and delivery. There is a need to deepen the analysis to allow for gendered aspects to be understood beyond binary sex differences and/or reproductive health.

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The right to the city represents a critique of the city as a place and an object of capitalist accumulation, in which priority is given to exchange value over use value. This critique references an ongoing and collective struggle for urban production to be radically democratic, as the expanded participation of city users would lead to appropriation, with social movements occupying a central role. This paper discusses the practices of urban social movements that cooperate with governmental institutions participating in and influencing the design and implementation of public policies. We focus on the possibilities of transformation towards the right to the city as well as the conflicts and contradictions that social movements face when partnering with the State. We carry out an in-depth investigation of two social movements involved in building housing units in Brazil as part of a federal government programme. By conceptually translating the right to the city into the economies of worth, we propose an original theoretical approach. Our study contributes to advance the understanding of the role of social movements that collaborate with governments without abandoning the goal of struggling for the right to the city. We add a pragmatic perspective to the radical conception of the right to the city by showing how different logics of action enable or hinder the possibility of the right to the city horizon. We propose that the prominence of the civic common world might transform operational processes mainly through self-management.

Resumo Utilizando a teoria política do discurso (TPD), desenvolvida por Laclau e Mouffe, como lente teórica, este artigo tem o intuito de investigar se o direito à cidade pode ser considerado uma articulação hegemônica na cidade de São Paulo. Para isso, percorremos historicamente o surgimento do termo e salientamos a emergência de grupos que se relacionam com este tema a partir das Jornadas de Junho de 2013: um evento que desestabilizou o sentido atribuído à hegemonia prévia, a cidade do capital. A resposta do poder municipal às manifestações foi a implantação da Coordenação de Promoção do Direito à Cidade, em uma tentativa de tornar o termo um ponto nodal. Ao analisar o discurso dos diferentes grupos, chegamos à conclusão de que o direito à cidade assume o papel de uma contra-hegemonia que se relaciona de forma antagônica com a hegemonia vigente. A principal contribuição do artigo está em identificar e analisar os diferentes significados adotados para o termo direito à cidade em São Paulo e como os atores mapeados interagem discursivamente no intuito de propor novas práticas de produção do espaço urbano.

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