Abstract

This article derives from my participation in the II Congress of Childhood Studies: Politicizations and Aesthetics, held in September 2019, at UERJ/Maracanã. My speech entitled Childhoods, Culture and Intergenerational Relations in everyday life, was delivered in the conference “The ethnic-racial issue and the generational issue in childhood” having at its core extreme burning issues in Childhood Studies: both ethnic-racial and generational issues, arguing how these intersecting points have effects on the daily life of Brazilian children, especially children from the popular classes who live in the outskirts of the big cities, such as the slums and urban borders of the state of Rio de Janeiro. In this pre-text, I chose to speak of this Other, named the child from the popular classes, the one who lives in the outskirts, in slums and popular areas. Those who, despite being infants deprived of speech, dare to speak among themselves and are spoken of by us, teachers and researchers of childhood. Considering our proposal of establishing conversation as a device for an encounter, I tried to speak of this Other, using my notes from the day of the conference, and the voices of authors with whom I dialogue in my studies, researches and daily work in different territories of the city, understanding the contemporary city as a place of encounters, both good and bad. Above all, the city is a place of intergenerational meetings where the co-existence is possible.