YOUTH AND PLACE: CITIZENSHIP, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE DIMENSION OF AFFECT

Abstract

It is with immense joy and a feeling difficult to put into words that I present this work. This is not merely a book, but the materialization of a journey of dedication, curiosity, and intellectual courage that I have closely followed. I write this introduction as an advisor, certainly, but also as someone who witnessed, year after year, the blossoming of a young researcher who transformed his initial inquiries into a solid, sensitive, and necessary body of work.
I met Ian Felipe Nascimento when he was taking his first steps in academic research as an undergraduate research fellow at the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC). He was a Geography student like so many others, yet always driven by curiosity and a thirst for intellectual and professional growth.
But what impresses me most—and what makes this introduction so meaningful—is the way Ian built his path. There were no shortcuts. Every step was taken with effort, dedication, and that quiet commitment characteristic of those who know that knowledge demands time and devotion. During his undergraduate research years, he was one of those students who make the work of advising a pleasure—not because everything was easy, but because he never gave up in the face of difficulties. The research that now takes shape in this book was born during that formative period and matured with the patience of someone who understands that the best questions cannot be answered overnight.
Today, he is a Geography graduate (UESC), a Geography teacher (ETEP/SP), and a specialist in Curriculum and Teaching Practice (UFPI). He is currently pursuing a master's degree at the Federal University of the South of Bahia (UFSB), and I can state with conviction: this is just the beginning. The path he has forged with his own hands reveals not only technical competence but also an early academic maturity and a sense of social responsibility that are, unfortunately, increasingly rare.
The book *Youth and Place: Citizenship, Environment, and the Dimension of Affect* is the direct result of this process of intellectual maturation. This work rigorously and sensitively investigates how 9th-grade students at a public school in the municipality of Aurelino Leal, southern Bahia, perceive three concepts fundamental to geography and civic education: place, citizenship, and the environment.
What sets this study apart is the way it bridges the empirical and the theoretical. On one hand, it features meticulous fieldwork, employing well-designed instruments and genuinely listening to the young people interviewed. On the other, it rests on a solid theoretical foundation that engages with Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action and key figures in geographic and social thought—such as Yi-Fu Tuan (with his concepts of topophilia and emotional attachment to place), Milton Santos (with his critical reading of space as a social dimension), and Henri Lefebvre (with his analysis of the right to the city and the production of space).
The choice of this theoretical framework is no accident; it reflects the author’s commitment to understanding young people not as passive objects of public policy, but as active agents in shaping their relationship with the world.
The book goes beyond merely diagnosing the problem; it invites reflection on the role of geographic education in fostering a form of territorial citizenship that is active, critical, and environmentally committed. It innovatively links school geography with citizenship education, demonstrating that lived space serves as the starting point for understanding the rights and duties that define us as political subjects.
As I conclude this introduction, I look at the book now passing into readers' hands and see in it not only the fruit of academic labor but the promise of a brilliant career just beginning.
I invite you, the reader, to immerse yourself in this work with the same curiosity and generosity with which the author wrote it. May the pages that follow inspire new questions, new perspectives, and—above all—a deeper understanding of what it means to be young, to be a citizen, and to belong to a place.

Professor Fábio Massena
Research Supervisor

Professor at the State University of Santa Cruz (UESC)