Construindo o projeto de sociabilidade neoliberal: o voluntariado como componente do processo educativo

Abstract

This study searches analyzing the volunteering as an expressive social phenomenon of 1990´s and also functional to the sociability neoliberal project, relating it with the educational process. To the development of the research, three points were the core for outlining the directions of the investigation: What relationship has been established among education, citizenship, and volunteering nowadays? Which collective-political subjects have whether operated or still operate in the spreading of the linking between volunteering and education? Which political-pedagogical guidelines are presented in the purpose for establishment of the relationship between volunteering and education? Based on these notes, the general aim of this study concentrates on analyzing the formulations that tie up the volunteering phenomenon with school education, leaving from the notion of citizenship proposed by collective-political subjects, seeking to apprehend the meaning of these formulations, in view of process of human formation and the standard of sociability. As specific objectives are indicated: a) interpreting the emergence of a new concept of citizenship and its functionality to the project of neoliberal sociability; b) apprehending volunteering as a brand new social phenomenon, as expression of active citizenship; c) analyzing the meaning of formulations proposed by collective-organic intellectuals as guidelines in the relation between volunteering and education. The epistemological framework assumed is historical materialism, considering that this method seeks the apprehension of historical reality in a dialectical thinking. Such a research consists of on documentary analysis of formulations proposed by collective-organic intellectuals - the United Nations, Volunteer Center of São Paulo, and fundamentally Institute "Faça Parte" (Join).The study reveals that the spread of neoliberalism in Brazil, aiming at the maintenance of capitalist social relations, has produced a new model of sociability, in which civil society has been established as a space of social cohesion, attenuating the contradictions and class struggles. For the construction of a new pedagogy of hegemony, the notion of citizenship has shifted from the field of social struggles for civic engagement plan, acquiring a new determinant social function: social activism expressed in the notion of volunteering. In this sense, citizenship and volunteering are articulated as essential elements for the formation of the new collective man proposed by neoliberal precepts, which takes the responsibility to minimize social inequality, while builds a humanized face of capitalism. The pattern of neoliberal sociability has showed significant implications for school education, making it subordinated to the development of skills and abilities essential to those social subjects to be adjusted to the demands of the capitalist system. Volunteering, supported on the concept of human capital and social capital, reinforces a subtle strategy of domination, strengthening the maintenance of social order. The research concludes that volunteering as a component of the educational process fulfills the function of contributing to reaffirm the centrality of the project of neoliberal sociability in the country. Pointing as formative horizon of the school education for the preparation for citizenship, this embodied in volunteering, does not allow the process of human emancipation and reaffirms social conformity directed by the ruling class.