Abstract:

This essay aims to discuss the process of institutionalization of environmental education, using as a category of analysis, the concept of governmentality, developed by Michel Foucault as a set of procedures, analysis, reflections, calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of a particular form of power. We look as well at a trend produced by the West to develop a series of specific apparatus of government, involving, therefore, a particular set of knowledge. The intention of this paper is to dialogue with some libertarian criticism of the process of institutionalization of Brazilian environmental education, and from there, discuss some possibilities to understand this appropriation by the state of environmental education as a way to make it a tool of governmentality. We examine the active potential of the relationship between education and the environment through crystallization and neutralization to be turned into laws and public policies.

Keywords:
Governmentality; Power; Enviroment education; Environment