A reconstrução histórico-crítica do serviço social no Vale do Mucuri (MG): institucionalização, consolidação e expansão da profissão

Abstract

The present thesis aims to historically reconstruct the Social Work profession in the Vale do Mucuri (MG) from the 1980s to the present day. Understanding the Brazilian socio-historical formation articulated with the regional formation as well as knowing the professional profile and the elements that culminate in the insertion, development, and expansion of the profession in the Vale do Mucuri has its unprecedented importance insofar as there are no studies that carry out this movement of historical reconstruction in the region. History is a category and central element of this process, as it is apprehended and understood as movement, as becoming, refusing linearities and a “finished structure,” thus allowing the unveiling of Brazilian political culture and professional culture in its phenomenal essence insofar as historically reconstructing the dynamics of a profession with the particularities of the region goes beyond the discourse of an “official history,” that is, capturing its movement from the reverse, giving voice to social subjects originating from the working classes, namely: Social Workers. The methodological path was sustained in Marx’s Social Theory, which starts from concrete reality in its phenomenal appearance and allows the researcher to understand the contradictory elements of the real under the scrutiny of the Reproduction of Social Relations, relations that are based on the relations of production in capitalist sociability, determining the aspects of spiritual reproduction, that is, the ideological, philosophical, artistic, and religious elements that aim to “sustain” the prevailing sociability, but, in the same dynamic, reveal its limits and contradictions. The research was based on its bibliographic and documentary character, contemplating aspects of Brazilian and regional socio-historical reality, as well as the vast production of professional Social Work literature in the field of its foundations. Oral History, as a research modality, was fundamental, since, by valuing the subjectivity of social subjects without incurring in ahistorical subjectivisms, it seeks to capture the objective determinations of social reality, which are constructed and reconstructed in the framework of the reproduction of social relations. For data collection, 16 interviews were conducted with Social Workers from the region, aiming to capture in their reports the reality of the Social Work profession in dialogue with the regional socio-historical formation. It is noteworthy that the professionals interviewed are temporally located in the region from the 1980s and remain until the present day, which made possible a Historical Reconstruction of Social Work in the Vale do Mucuri.