A família como dispositivo de privatização do social

Abstract

The present text aims at analyzing the family as an institution in its political dimension and, to this extent, as a constituting element of what is hegemonically understood as social. It proposes a discussion of the family as a device of depolitization of social relationships and, more than that, of individualization, affirming thus the private character of modern society. Taking Brazilian reality into consideration, this article seeks to understand how some policies involving families operate and the effects they cause on them in terms of social control of an unequal, disseminated and privatized society. This way, in the context of neoliberalism, this paper discusses how the notion of rights, as inscribed in the Children and Adolescent Statute, for example, has relapsed into a more intense criminalization of the family, depoliticizing the movement that claims in favor of public policies and affirming an increasingly more private conception of social relationships.

Keywords

• Family; Social policy; Childhood; Youth.