TEXTBOOKS IN COMMUNITY SPACES. BEYOND THE SCHOOL WALLS, NEW MEANINGS AND FUNCTIONS

The incentive to reading practices must be understood as a duty and a right, for it is a factor of social development, especially in countries with accentuated social inequality and restricted access of a large part of the population to higher levels of schooling. This exploratory research investigated what happens with textbooks after their legal use period in order to find out if they remain being used, how and where they are used, by whom and for which purposes. The study included the analysis of the legislation regarding book disposal, interviews in schools aiming at understanding the processes of reusage and disposal of books, and the collection of experiences of book reutilization beyond the school walls. The results presented the ways books circulate outside of schools, particularly through subjects working at collectives of gatherers of recyclable materials, who collect the books and forward them to social projects, reading rooms in community spaces and to families in peripheral areas. The conclusions highlight the importance of individual and institutional experiences to reuse textbooks, indicating their relevance in disadvantaged communities. These communities, on their turn, provide the textbooks with new meanings and functions and reveal the importance of these actions to the local social development.