The State’s decomposition and the protagonism of civilian society in the coping with the social issue in Brazil: the dillemas of citizenship and democracy in the contemporarity

Abstract

The idea of the present article came from professional concerns towards revealing the existence and the confrontation by the State and civil society, of social matters in the historical-cultural scenery of the Brazilian society, which became evident in the nineties and, above all, when structural reforms of neo-liberal stamp of the Brazilian State promoted the “privatizing mentality”. In the Brazilian case, such project reaffirms one of the particularities of our political culture: the modern is constituted through the “archaic”, recreating our historical inheritance when updating persistent aspects and, at the same time, transforming them in the context of the globalization. We intend to discuss how the historical permanence of social inequality and citizenship and democracy limits served as facilitative element for the implementation of the neo-liberal calendar in Brazil.

Key words – State. Civil society. Social matters. Citizenship. Democracy.