EDITORIAL

A Brazilian internationalization

Maria de Fátima Aranha de Queiroz e Melo^I; Marília Novais da Mata Machado^II; Larissa Medeiros Marinho dos Santos^III; Marcos Vieira-Silva^IV

^Ie-mail:fatimaqueiroz.ufsj@gmail.com
^IIe-mail:marilianmm@gmail.com
^IIIe-mail: medeiros.lara@gmail.com
^IVe-mail: mvsilva@ufsj.edu.br

The internationalization of Brazilian academic journals is a topic that is the order of the day. National vehicles of scientific dissemination, large and well evaluated, have been published in English. In them, it is understood that to internationalize is to write in this language that, in the present day, allows exchanges between scientists of the most diverse places of the planet, occupying the space that was the one of Latin, from the Roman Empire to the end of century XIX.

In this special issue, the journal Psychosocial Research and Practices, in its own way, participates in this movement. Similar to the previous issues, this one takes care, above all, of the discussion of Brazilian psychosocial issues: inequality, racism, constant return to authoritarianism, the annulment of the subject. After all, our research, our audience, our problems and questions have been Brazilian.

On the other hand, this number also offers to the "international" reader - that one who not only reads but also writes in English - the possibility of knowing what Psychosocial Research and Practice does (and how it does). Especially, it shows how the journal addresses itself to the Brazilian public, as well as offers hints at how it participates in the discussion of public policies and psychosocial problems, using (and also creating) methodologies to democratically address to citizens suffering from mental illness, impoverished communities, roofless, landless, marginalized.

Psychosocial Research and Practice is not intended to be a journal written in English. On the contrary, besides being an invitation to the participation of authors from other countries, the number intends to awaken in the users of English language the interest in translating from Portuguese to English (or to another language, since they are many), if they find it useful, our articles, just as we have done for decades with European and North American works.

The reader of this issue will be able to know about themes and methodologies that concern us, quite different from canonical experiments and field research, even qualitative, in which the distance between researcher and researched is great. They are attempts to think, practice and research with concrete subjects and with them.

The first set of articles was written by invited authors, senior and experienced, who attended our invitation.

Thus, with Observances: Psychology, public security and incarcerated youth, Oriana Holsbach Hadler and Neuza Maria de Fátima Guareschi, from UFRGS, as well as Andrea Cristina Coelho Scisleski, from the Catholic University Don Bosco of Campo Grande (MS), with Foucaultian and ethnographic positions, critically analyze psychological acts practiced in the field of public security.

In Some reflections on race and racism in Brazil, Claudia Mayorga, from UFMG, seeks to clarify how racism and racial inequalities have been implanted in Brazil, linked to the interests of the local elite, the colonial logic, the modernization of the country and the myth of a racial democracy. She also highlights contributions of the black movement to recognize racial equality as a public issue in Brazil.

Maria Stella Brandão Goulart and Leísa Ferreira Amaral Gomes, from UFMG, along with Listhiane Pereira Ribeiro, from the Minas Gerais Federal Institute, Ribeirão das Neves Campus, with a phenomenological reading and use of content analysis, present in the article Psychosocial Research and Practice: a Re-view, part of the conclusions of the research "State of the Art in Social Psychology in Minas Gerais", related precisely to our journal in the period 2007/2008.

In Field diary: The author as a protagonist, Estela Scheinvar, from UERJ, and Maria Lívia do Nascimento, from UFF, present analyses of interventions in schools and tutorial councils, based on the theories of institutional analysis (Lourau and Lapassade) and of event (Foucault), with emphasis on the use of the field diary as a tool that allows us to make strange the ways of codifying practices.

In Psychosocial Practices: Methodology, Epistemology and Ethics, Marília Novais da Mata Machado, researcher at UFMG and UFSJ, questions the capacity of psychosocial practices to generate and construct psychological and social knowledge, theories, methods, and also devices for action, research, self-assessment and regulation, with attention to the ethical issues involved.

In the article Tensions and challenges in the community health agents with the teams, Roberta Carvalho Romagnoli, from Puc Minas, and Jania Lurdes Pires Samudio, from the State University of Montes Claros, emphasize the importance of the work of community agents working in Primary Health Care. The authors show that these professionals suffer from work overload and devaluation by the graduated professionals who make up the team.

In Underprivileged youth and school permanence: understanding fashioned by Fellows of Prouni in Belo Horizonte (MG), Maria do Carmo Sousa and Maria Ignez Costa Moreira, from PUC Minas, with a socio-historical perspective and use of interviews, sought to understand how poor young people, fellows from the University for All Program (Prouni) see their permanence in school.

The second set was written by authors who, when they learned that Psychosocial Research and Practice was willing to publish a number in English, spontaneously sent us their papers.

Celso Francisco Tondin and Alan David Evaristo Panizzi, from UNOCHAPECÓ, in Family-School relationship expectations, present results of a participant observation of 21 professionals and 16 family members in a school. The field diary and the semi-structured interviews allowed pointing out the different expectations of these two groups regarding the pedagogical attendance and the participation of the families.

In the article Vulnerability of children and adolescents in the use of social networks and parental mediation, Emanuela Maria de Araújo and Pedro Paulo Viana Figueiredo, from the Faculty of Human Sciences Esuda, Recife, PE, expose strategies of supervision of Internet use adopted by mothers and fathers of children between 9 and 17 years. Semistructured interviews and discourse analyses have shown that parents value the internet in the social interaction of their children, have difficulty evaluating the risks related to it and employ different and non-specific ways to mediate their use.

In Perceptions of young offenders about the police: A qualitative study conducted in Brazil, Jéssica Balisardo Coelho, from the Universidade do Oeste Paulista, Alex Sandro Gomes Pessoa, from the Universities Estadual Paulista (UNESP) and Federal of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and Dorothy Bottrell, of Victoria University, Melbourne, presented qualitative research with adolescents who have committed wrongdoing and highlighted the harmful effects of truculent police approaches.

In The theory of subjectivity in the study of chemical dependency: Reflecting about existing theories and practices, Thamiris Melo Caixeta, Valéria Deusdará Mori and Marília Santos Bezerra, from the Centro Universitário of Brasilia, using the constructive-interpretive method of González Rey and based on a case study that values the singular and the dialogic, reflect on chemical dependence and emphasize the production of social and individual subjectivities and the processes related to health in the context of the clinic of chemical dependence.

With this small set of articles, we believe that we present to the scientific community that reads in English a little of what we do, think and know.

This number counted on the indispensable work of the team of the Electronic Publishing Department (Sedit) of the Federal University of São João del-Rei: Rogério Lucas de Carvalho and his administrative assistants: Adalberto Nunes Pereira Filho, Laércio Carlos Ribeiro dos Santos Maus and Michel Montadon de Oliveira. We also thank the competent final revision of the English made by Prof. Carlos Renato de Almeida.