Schools 'without walls' during the portuguese revolution: the student civic service (1974-1977)

Abstract

This article deals with the Student Civic Service (SCS) of 1974–77, and in particular the Labour and Culture Plan, which was concerned with the collection of ethnographic data and with intervention within the population as it existed in 1975. The SCS was affected by a combination of political conflicts and social dynamics that demanded a new form of political language and social experiences. It facilitated a new appreciation, new discoveries and new challenges between the students and the populations within which they served in terms of politics, customs, generic identities, religion, food, housing and hygiene. Some of the interventions were of a nature that could be characterized by the assumption of identities that were, to a large extent, marked by collective hope. This article pays attention to the history/memory binomial as well as to the relevance of the social movements during the revolutionary period.