The contemporary debate on social management

Abstract

This text presents a critical reflection about social management trends. In spite of the widespread and generalized use of the expression social management in the 1990’s, it constitutes, under multidisciplinary perspective, the object of professional intervention of the Brazilian Social Work, since the genesis of the profession in Brazil, in the 1930’s, even under different approaches, that have promoted opposite society projects. The social management involves the reproduction of the social life, responding, either direct or indirectly, to demands of the production sphere. Its object is the goods and social services provision, emphasizing the solution of the social demands, in opposition to the mercantile logic. Social management has been the arena of struggles for access to social wealth and social and political participation; it is studied under the perspective of searching alternatives toward an egalitarian and just society.