Argumentum was a semi-annual publication from 2009 to 2015 and quarterley publication from 2016 to 2024. From 2025 onwards, it has been published continuously. It is linked to the Postgraduate program in Social Policy at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, created in 2009. It is classified as A1 by Qualis Periódicos. Of an academic nature, it has an interdisciplinary character and publishes research, articles and discussions on the themes of Social Policy, State and Society and their diverse interactions. It also opens up spaces for other relevant works on the theme according to Section Policies. The mission of the journal is to be a periodical of excellence in the area of Social Service by means of the publication of research, articles and discussions on the themes of Social Policy, State and Society and their diverse interactions.
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Política Social da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
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Gramsci and Social Work: philology as a method of study
This article presents the methodologies developed since the 1970s for the reading and study of the Cadernos do cárcere. The appropriation of the Cadernos by Social Service is investigated and an interpretive hypothesis is made associated with two cycles of Gramscian research in which the outcome depends on the sources of access to the work. Finally, a reading of Gramsci is suggested that seeks the “rhythm of thought” through a chronological reading of the entirety and fragmentary nature of the notes, understanding their nuances, developments, and reformulations, and how the Brazilian “critical-thematic” edition can offer endurance in this regard. It concludes that the eventual incorporation by social workers of updated reading tools and even new interpretations will, once again, generate important research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Argumentum https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Political polarization in the presidential elections (2018 and 2022): the Northeast and the “others”
This research analyses the discourse surrounding Northeastern migration in social media posts on Instagram and Twitter (X-Twitter) during the 2018 and 2022 presidential elections. The study reveals that perceptions of the Northeast are symbolic and shaped by stereotypes that reinforce inequality and prejudice. Employing a qualitative approach, using Content Analysis, the research investigated how these narratives place Northeasterners in a subordinate position and what these stereotypes reveal about the “social question” in Brazil. The results show that the posts often stigmatise the Northeast, blaming the region for socioeconomic problems, and exploit the “social question” as a form of entertainment without addressing its structural causes. These representations reinforce misleading imaginaries and strengthen exclusionary discourse and historical violence.
Challenges for Social Work in basic education in Minas Gerais
This study analyses the challenges and possibilities for the critical praxis of social workers in basic education in Minas Gerais post Law No. 13,935/2019. A scoping review of twelve studies identified four insertion models (Belo Horizonte, the State’s educational system, Uberlândia and Maria da Fé), ranging from temporary contracts to civil service examinations. Expressions of exploitation‑oppression manifest themselves in school dropout associated with poverty and child labour, domestic violence, racism, and LGBT-phobia. Resistance strategies aligned with the Ethical‑Political Project (PEP) include the collective construction of protocols, socio‑educational actions, intersectoral coordination, and professional organisation. It concludes that, although the PEP guides the confrontation of these forms of oppression, adverse conditions limit professional action, and demand permanent mobilisation of these resistance strategies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Argumentum https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Management of public hospitals by Social Health Organisations in Piauí
The Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) resulted from of a process of disputes, in which the role of Health Reform played an important role, and which was linked to a democratic and emancipatory societal project. This is in contrast to the neoliberal project of capital which transforms health into a commodity. Employing a qualitative narrative literature review, this article analyses the management of public health facilities, especially that of hospitals, by Social Health Organisations (OSS) in Brazil generally, and specifically in the State of Piauí, as an expression of a process of privatisation of the SUS and sequestration of public funds. In the case of Piauí, management by OSS, carried out without broad debate within civil society, challenges the public, free, universal, and participatory character of the SUS, reinforcing the consolidation of a privatised health model that serves the interests of capital.
Fundamentals and Work with Families: Perceptions in Social Work
This article analyses the contemporary work of social workers with families, based on the mediations of the foundations of Social Work. It is a qualitative study based on field research conducted with nine social workers working in social assistance, health, and socio-legal policies, combined with a literature review. The results reveal broadened concepts of family, aligned with the profession’s ethical-political project, and practices shaped by familism, conservatism, and the privatisation of family responsibilities. Key aspects highlighted include the central of women role in family arrangements, the complexity of demands, and the limits imposed by public policies. The article contributes to the debate by linking social workers’ perceptions with the mediations of the fundamentals of Social Work foundations, revealing advances and contradictions in professional practice.
Democratisation of Venezuelan Higher Education: The pathways of women in university
This article analyses women’s access to, retention in, and advancement within the Venezuelan university system from a socio-historical and gender perspective, drawing on Social Reproduction Theory (SRT). Through a historical overview spanning from the colonial period to the present, it examines the incorporation of women into higher education. The study adopts a historical-documentary approach, grounded in the historical-dialectical method and Social Reproduction Theory, which allows the university to be understood as an institution of social reproduction. The analysis identifies continuities, ruptures, and institutional reconfigurations, as well as the historical struggles that have expanded women’s participation in university spaces in Venezuela.
Expediente: Argum., Vitória, v. 17, 2025.
Editorial Argumentum, v. 17, 2025 (Publicação contínua).
From wet nurses to Ismálias deprived of parental authority:an intersectional analysis
This paper presents the results of a qualitative study analysing the profile of women who lost parental authority in a judicial district of a large municipality in the northern region of the state of Paraná, Brazil. The research combines literature review with documentary analysis, based on the examination of seven judicial cases followed by the Social Work service of the Juvenile Court, between August 2023 and August 2024. The analysis revealed a convergence of race/skin colour, social class, gender, and abusive use of psychoactive substances in the profiles of the women affected. The termination of parental authority operates selectively on Black and poor women, exposing the role of a punitive State embedded in punitive neoliberalism, and grounded in structural racism and patriarchy, which shifts the absence of public care policies into the moral blaming of women.
The Brazilian state in the light of Marxist tradition: the relevance of bourgeois autocracy today
This text highlights the particularities of the formation and current historical situation of the Brazilian State based on the theory and methodology of historical-dialectical materialism. Through theoretical and documentary research, it presents the characteristics of political power and the State in Brazil. It places them within the context of economic concentration and the country's historical landmarks, with an emphasis on the contemporary context and the rural and rentier class fractions. It concludes that, in Brazil, an autocratic State predominates, even under the guise of democracy, which restricts and alienates society from economic and political participation.
Forms of capital, fictitious wealth, and the externalisation of recent capitalist crises
This article identifies the characteristics and particularities of recent capitalist wealth and crises based on the functional forms of capital and its processes of autonomisation and Marx’s (1985) fictitious capital in particular. In addition to explaining the constitution of the forms of capital, it discusses some indicators that point to the expressions of capitalist crises observed at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.
Universality in digital health: digitalisation and datafication in the Unified Health System (SUS)
This article analyses how universality is addressed in Brazil’s Digital Health Strategy (ESD28). It starts, Centre for from the idea that this principle, enshrined in the 1988 Federal Constitution, emerged as an ethical imperative in modern times but became an adjective under neoliberalism. Using a qualitative methodology and bibliographic and documentary sources, it was observed that ESD28 led to the development of telehealth in remote areas and offered specialties but that it reproduces technological dependence and the risk to digital sovereignty. Access to information should not be confused with universal access to comprehensive healthcare, although it can contribute to this end. The weaknesses of infrastructure and interoperability in the Unified Health System (SUS) in Brazil together with digital inequality constrain universality.
Priscilla dos Santos Peixoto Borelli Tavares
The role of US networks in Brazilian education: The New High School
The reform of secondary education in Brazil, which established the ‘New High School’ (‘Novo Ensino Médio’ – NEM, in Portuguese), has brought about a series of changes in Brazilian schools, such as curriculum flexibilization and a focus on skills that reflect neoliberal discourse. These changes are aligned with the maintenance and perpetuation of capitalism and are closely connected to U.S. actors. In this context, this research seeks to identify the U.S. networks operating within the NEM and to understand how their actions contribute to maintaining the hegemonic power of the U.S. ruling class. The study relies on the analysis of documents related to the High School reform, the institutional websites of the private foundations involved, and the historic and social media profiles of their leading members. The results are presented through tables and network graphs created using the Gephi software, highlighting how the NEM is the outcome of the actions of a set of U.S. and Brazilian organisations, companies, financial institutions, universities, government agencies, and private foundations. In this regard, the Lemann Foundation and the Movimento pela Base stand out as two of the main nodes within these transnational networks.
Income tax and inequality in Brazil: The real “Income Transfer”
“Income transfer” programmes have a significant impact on the lives of the poorest sectors of the working class, giving those who promote them a significant political advantage. This is the subject of debates and challenges regarding the fiscal impact of such measures. This article problematises this issue, employing political economy critique methodology, and fiscal and budgetary data. It seeks to demonstrate that a much more significant "Income Transfer" occurs through the benevolent taxation of the profits and capital gains of the wealthiest in Brazil, a topic that does not receive the same concerned coverage, hiding a tax structure that oppresses the poorest.
Mental health in the Paris of the Tropics: Social Work in Amazonas (1970-2000)
The article focusses on the professional work of social workers in mental health in the city of Manaus, the state capital of Amazonas. It discusses the treatment of people with mental disorders, the pathways taken by professionals for the period 1970-2000 at the Eduardo Ribeiro Colony Hospital and the Eduardo Ribeiro Psychiatric Centre, and the challenges they faced. The historical-dialectical materialist method was employed, along with qualitative research and the use of oral history. Six testimonies were collected from social workers, which made it possible to recover the history of mental-health work in the state of Amazonas and its participation in the Anti-Asylum Movement and psychiatric reform. It allows new generations of social workers to understand mental-health work in Amazonas by means of historiography.
Brazilian immigration in Portugal: State and power relations
Recently, migratory determinants of countries in the global North have shifted public opinion, policies, and relations between countries and human rights. This article presents the results of a doctoral research project and analyses the relationship between immigration and the mechanisms of State power. It focusses on the living conditions of Brazilian immigrants awaiting regularisation in Portugal. The methodology follows qualitative procedures with a mixed approach, using semi-structured interviews and online questionnaires directed at the immigrant population. Results point to the Portuguese state's governmental tactics that create a bureaucratic limbo, block fundamental rights, and result in the precariousness of immigrant life and citizenship.
The status of occasional benefits within Social Assistance Policy: some notes
This article reflects on occasional benefits within Social Assistance Policy, problematising the main challenges to their implementation from a rights perspective. It employs bibliographic research and documentary sources from a survey available on the World Wide Web, based on historical-dialectical materialism. It concludes that the trajectory of occasional benefits has faced obstacles related to their definition, regulation, and funding, and that this has hindered their achievement as a social right.
Maria da Conceição Vasconcelos Gonçalves
Determinations of class, race and sex in the Sergipe prison system
This article offers a critical reflection on the prison system and its class, race, and gender determinants, and its implications for Black women in Sergipe. Using an exploratory survey and Marxist analysis based on documentary sources, it problematises indicators that demonstrate a process of the mass incarceration of women, based primarily on the feminisation of poverty and the so-called war on drugs. It reveals that these women are subject to rights violations and exposes the involvement of the racist-patriarchal policies operated by the Brazilian/Sergipe State under the aegis of the current capitalist stage.
Fundamentals of Social Work: analysis of the debate present at XVII ENPESS
This article quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the presence of the debate on the Fundamentals of Social Work in the annals of the XVII ENPESS, held in 2022 in Rio de Janeiro. The analysis considers the various perspectives on the understanding of the Fundamentals of Social Work. The article highlights authors who have dedicated themselves to this debate and demonstrates the varied definitions that they have constructed on the fundamentals of the profession. It points out the existence of three main trends in the discussion and, finally, presents the results of the research through an analysis that points to a paucity of output on this theme in the XVII ENPESS and signals a lack of clarity around a conception of Fundamentals among these authors.
Crisis, cracks, and the emancipatory struggle for food and food sovereignty
Humanity is experiencing a global capitalist crisis, which has been ongoing since 2008. This has been accompanied by a poly-crisis in which several crises have converged and interconnected: food (hunger, food production, obesity, and malnutrition), health, economic (inflation and recession), ecological (climate and pandemic) and geopolitical (war and international divisions). It is around food that gender relations, and individual and collective identities, are constructed and challenged. This article addresses the emancipatory struggle for food and food sovereignty, and the political uses of hunger, from theory to practice, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and its new contours within the contemporary context. This is a critical study that uses historical-materialist theory as a research method and dialectical argument as a method of exposition. It seeks to understand the crisis as the cracks where we have the greatest possibility of echoing our struggles against capital.
Anti-crime package and drug policy in Brazil under the Bolsonaro government
This text analyses measures taken by the Bolsonaro government, specifically: the Anti-Crime Package and Law nº 13,840, of June 5, 2019, which instituted the New National Drug Policy. It identifies the use of crime as a strategic issue, especially for political purposes, as a way of earning positive evaluations of the government by the population. It also recognises the use of fear and a sense of insecurity as elements to justify the removal of fundamental rights, through the enactment of more onerous laws and increased control, as witnessed in daily city-life.
The aging process and challenges for the job market in Brazil
This article sets out the insertion rates of elderly people within the Brazilian job market to highlight the challenges of aging in capitalist society. It is based on mixed documentary research, focused on indexes provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the Institute of Applied Economic Research, the Annual Social Information List, and the National Employment System, supported by a bibliographic survey. There is an evident age bias towards the inclusion of elderly people in the job market. The elderly population is not the most likely to experience unemployment and joblessness, it is in second place in terms of access after young people. Research bodies indicate that since 2016 the number of unemployed elderly people has been increasing, and that, faced with this scenario, they have been entering the informal job market.
This article discusses samba and considers it’s denotations as presented in recent academic publications. Bibliographic research was conducted through a survey of the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações, BDTD) on the subject. The research indicates that the statement that samba is a musical genre symbolic of national culture, and not of African-Brazilian culture, conspires with the violent erasure of references to an African culture that was reinvented in Brazil by the diaspora, and that it is functional to the myth of racial democracy in the country. Samba stands out as one of the main expressions of inventiveness and Black resistance of African roots in Brazil, whose contributions were decisive in the conformation of Brazilian society in its social, economic, political, and cultural aspects.
Epistemological and historical aspects of the anti-racist fight in Brazilian education
Considering that the coloniality of power is impregnated in Brazilian schools and universities, institutionally reproducing racism, the aim of this article is to analyze the historical-normative process of resistance of the black movement for the anti-racist struggle through the epistemological disputes and tensions existing in the elaboration and implementation of educational policies. With an emphasis on Law 10.639, which made it compulsory to teach Afro-Brazilian history and culture in schools, it was possible to see that the law in question is an important milestone, but it is still far from achieving the reach and effectiveness needed to identify and make progress that, beyond hegemonic Western epistemologies in the field of education, makes it possible to confront and overcome racism and promote human rights.
Contributos foucaultianos sobre racismo: aproximações entre soldados Indígenas estadunidenses e brasileiros
Este artigo tem como objetivo empreender um esforço reflexivo acerca da participação de indígenas nas Forças Armadas (FA) estadunidense e brasileira, na qualidade de profissional militar, a partir da perceptiva foucaultiana sobre o racismo. Trata-se de pesquisa qualitativa, com base em análise bibliográfica e documental, além de coleta de dados e informações em sites (YouTube) e vídeos institucionais, com o termo indutor soldados Indígenas. Como resultado destacou-se o racismo biológico, seja na expectativa do estereótipo de guerreiros naturais ou na ideia do compartilhamento de saberes do efetivo indígena, reduzido a perspectiva da troca de conhecimento, estabelecendo uma maior distinção de classes, caracterizada pela diferença de patentes e valores recebidos pelo ofício.
The place of racism: a discussion on O fascismo da cor by Muniz Sodré
This article critically discusses Muniz Sodré’s book O fascismo da cor, in which racism in Brazil is conceptualised as a social rather than a structural form. By engaging with authors who approach the issue from a sociological perspective, the article argues that interpretations recognizing race as a key factor in shaping positions within the system of social stratification should not be disregarded.
Professional ethics and the labyrinth of precarisation: challenges and resistance in the work of Social Workers
This article analyses the professional ethics of social workers in the context of labour precarisation based on bibliographic and empirical research conducted with 168 professionals in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The findings reveal a resurgence of conservatism in everyday professional practice, shaped by processes of alienation, sickness, and intensified exploitation. Against this background, the study identifies ethical-political strategies as both individual and collective forms of resistance. It highlights the paradox between the formal adherence to the ethical-political project and the persistence of conservative personal values. The study concludes by emphasising the need to overcome alienation and to strengthen professional ethics as a critical mediation between objective conditions and professional action, reaffirming its historical, collective, and emancipatory character.
Bolsonarismo: da guerra cultural ao terrorismo doméstico: retórica do ódio e dissonância cognitiva coletiva
Resenha do livro Bolsonarismo: da guerra cultural ao terrorismo doméstico: retórica do ódio e dissonância cognitiva coletiva, publicado pela editora Autêntica, em 2023, com 167p, autoria de João Cezar de Castro Rocha.
Direitos humanos e dependência no período Pós-Independência em Moçambique
This study analyses the determining correlations of Human Rights in the context of peripheral countries, with a particular focus on Mozambique’s dependency on core economies in the post-independence period (1975–present). It aims to describe the dialectic of human rights development in peripheral countries based on World-Systems Theory and to analytically delineate the “human rights issue” in Mozambique in the post-independence period. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study with a descriptive objective, carried out through bibliographic and documentary reviews. The study found that although Mozambique has legislation addressing human rights issues, civil war, poverty, and economic dependency have eroded human rights. There has been a resurgence of hun@ger hotspots, precarious primary healthcare and education, and a lack of freedom of expression and assembly.
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