Ciências Sociais Unisinos (Jan 2017)
A concepção dos espíritas sobre assistência social
Abstract
The article addresses the spiritist’s conception of social assistance, starting with interviews done with 30 heads of assistencial work from spiritists’ centers in Florianópolis. The analysis was based on authors from sociology that thought about social assistance. Thus, the theme was investigated in a relational form, incorporating its formulation in a broader political context. In order to do the data analysis, the “AntConc (3.4.4)” software was used for observing the most frequent words in the authors’ discourses and the statistical correlation among them as well. Some categories to analyze were pre-selected, such as: charity, assistant and assisted, among others. Hereafter, the software was used to enlarge the meaning of the discourses from other discursive elements. The aim was to establish a conceptualization of social assistance aggregating relational and contextual elements. The analyses show, among other conclusions, that the conception built from the interviewed spiritists was more referred to a religious internal universe than to a dialogue with the social context.
