Bolsa Família and COVID-19

mapping a cosmogram through Actor-Network Theory in Araraquara-SP

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to follow the actors involved in the Bolsa Família Program (PBF) and outline the network that forms the program — whether these actors are human or non-human. To the extent that the PBF is endowed with agency, it constitutes a specific social space — a sociotechnical network — that mobilizes categories and generates changes and impacts on society. The objective of this research is to follow the human and non-human actors involved in the Bolsa Família Program (PBF) and outline the network that forms the program. To this end, the research uses ethnography. In this sense, we start from the hypothesis that the PBF is hybrid because it constitutes a network that passes through science, society and discourse, being, therefore, real, collective and discursive. Therefore, it is social in Latour's terms. Taking as a premise the idea that social aggregates need to be explained and not taken as an explanation, the social is composed of a principle of connections. There is no “sphere of politics” and “sphere of science”. As a crucial empirical space for this study, there is the Municipal Social Assistance Secretariat (SMADS), which is a reference place for social protection in Brazil together with the Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS). The leading role of SMADS is due to the fact that it is the space where the management of the Cadastro Único and the management of the PBF are allocated, thus being responsible for families' contact with the State's social programs. What emerges, therefore, is that such a vision will allow us to perceive the social, economic and cultural phenomena that constitute it in its magnitude, as well as, to perceive the PBF as an encounter between beneficiaries and the State, which, finally, will allow us to understand how such disputes arise over the meanings mobilized within the implementation of the PBF, outlining its network and cosmogram.