O que há de novo no horizonte historiográfico sobre assistência?

Abstract

What new developments related to assistance are on the historiographical horizon?Since the late eighteenth century, assistance institutions have been an important source of support for government policies, and organized themselves from more general discussions on philanthropy, a concept which brought together seemingly disparate issues such as the abolition of slavery, the medicalization of hospitals, work regimes, the evils of poverty, civility, and hygienism, among many others. Philanthropists proposed the reform of "society" and advocated solutions for abandoned children, hospitals for the poor, freedom for slaves, education for workers, dignity for prisoners, extension of health policies etc.It was from this broad repertoire that policies for organizing assistance were formulated, granting a global relevance to the local solutions which were proposed at different points in Brazil. These multiple meanings permitted prescriptions broad enough to establish a type of common heritage of civility and progress, but which also at the same time needed to be organized according to "national" issues (such as slavery and its consequences, for example) to formulate policies related to care for poor workers. The network of hospitals that arose in the interior of Brazil did not have a minimum standard of services, but pragmatically took advantage of a general sense of philanthropy understood in very generic terms as "love for humanity."While the states were effectively key actors which replaced charity with notions of civility and citizenship, the model based on elite participation in line with new meanings for this activity (without removing the old religious implications) remained personalistic and localist, decrying the intimate relationship between the state and grassroots-level entities that gave rise to assistance activities. The formulation of "public" policies carried out by individuals and/or private institutions was key in understanding the origin and structuring of political powers nationally as well as locally. In this sense, any mechanical separation between delay and progress labels assistance as an intransigent archaism and proves damaging.The challenge is to understand the success of traditional institutions which were also the main vectors of scientific thought and the reinvention of modern assistance. But this does not entail creating an "origin myth" for assistance establishments, which would inexorably bring welfare back to the government, as an idea devoid of all the personalism of the old models. It is important to understand how the values and actions that drove social groups were historically targeted within the logic that affected them. Despite the apparent "modernity" of philanthropy, assistance institutions for the most part remained GUEST EdiTorS' NoTE