The History of Social Assistance Policy in Santa Maria/RS: between welfare and the guarantee of rights
Social Assistance; Santa Maria; Historical Research;
This thesis investigates what are and how socio-historical, economic and political determinations have been producing impediments to the implementation of the Social Assistance Policy (AS) in the sphere of law in the municipality of Santa Maria (SM), located in the central region of Rio Grande do Sul (RS). Together with this, specific objectives were established: a) to build the historiography of the Municipal Social Assistance Policy of Santa Maria/RS (PMAS-SM) in the period from 2006 to 2021; and b) to evaluate how the researchers, technical workers and other individuals involved with the SA conceive the implementation of the Policy in the Municipality; c) Identify the conservative and militarization crossings existing in the city of Santa Maria. To achieve the objectives, we carried out: bibliographic and documentary research, through access to documents published on websites and facebook pages, which included articles, dissertations, thesis, books, reports in electronic media, pronouncements, municipal laws and works produced in recent decades related to the city of Santa Maria and the PMAS-SM and semi-structured interviews conducted with individuals involved with the AS. The analysis of the collected data was guided by historical-dialectical materialism: totality, contradiction and mediation. The research shows the imposition of a conservatism in the social tessitura of Santa Maria metabolized by a bourgeois moral who insists on eclipsing "the social question" and guiding the PMAS-SM in the charitable logic of benepoence and philanthropic. Important milestones are structured for the composition of the PMAS-SM as a public policy based on the sphere of law through the political organization of the workers defenders of the Policy. However, we highlight the presence of disaggregating elements, demobilization and illness of individuals in the face of struggles in favor of politics. Finally, we seek to problematize the consequences and permanence of political action and state intervention, to unattend conservative social forces present in the municipality and in the PMAS.