Les aventures de l’ambiance à São Paulo. Une appropriation pragmatique pour transformer l’environnement

This article presents the process of appropriation by a Brazilian epistemic community of a notion, the ambiance, developed by the Cresson, a French laboratory. The challenge is threefold: the dialogue between cultural contexts of France and Brazil; the meeting of environmental psychology and ambiance theories; operationalization of the ambiance to invent a new way of doing environmental policies. Following its appropriation process, the ambiance was abrasileirou (Brazilianized) on the lands of Sao Paulo. It has become a composite notion that articulates the ambiencia (closer to the French term ambiance) and ambiente (broader conception of the environment), the first component being one of the modes of access to the second.