Território e assistência social: uma análise do serviço social a partir da produção social do espaço

Abstract

This thesis is a study about social production in a determined context. The research included social workers who materialized the Social Assistance Policy in the West and on the Coast of the State of Santa Catarina. The study was developed based on the historical and dialectic perspectives of the qualitative and quantitative approach. It aims to reveal new implications and challenges that social work faces to bring effectiveness for social assistance rights according to the territorial dimension incorporated in the Social Assistance National Policy stated by the Social Assistance Single System perspective. The three main categories of this investigative study are: territorial, social assistance policy, and social work. Data were collected by using bibliographic and documental research, focus groups and on-line questionnaires. Empirical data were collected through five focus groups which were made up with forty subjects mostly social workers connected to CRAS and CREAS teams from the West and the coast of the State of Santa Catarina. Based on the principles of the historical and dialectic construction of the human being and the social space, the study considers human labor as the central category in the social context production. The social and territorial analysis approaches problems regarding different social and historical processes of usage, production and the fight for the territorial ownership by traditional Indian populations, African-Indian descendents and landless peasants from the West of Santa Catarina State. The construction of hydro electrical plants, which involved thousands of workers, reveals itself as a restricted territory even for the effectiveness of public policies able to preserve fundamental human rights. The study also explores elements related to urbanization processes that are associated to the tourism industry on the state coast. In this sense, the study shows multiple social processes of perverse inclusion of broad social segments that have become poor as a consequence of the inadequate market production of the touristic space. According to these parameters, the current globalized and urbanized capitalist society is deeply unequal and it determines the social context for the Social Assistance National Policy based on territorial perspectives. The results demonstrated that the comprehension of the critical and dialectic dimension of the territorial category is essential to guarantee social assistance rights and the effectiveness of social assistance policies. Such comprehension of the facts is only possible for those professionals who are able to use instruments rooted in the critical method. Territory is an element of life pulsation and partnership dispute and social work is a profession that is constructed in this arena. Social work means to give sense to the Social Assistance Policy as a contradictory space in the struggle for exceeding in the capitalist society.