ABSTRACT.
This article analyses the institutionalization of Social Assistance in Brazil and the implication of social workers in this field. For this, we start from Maria’s life narrative, which from religious experience, starts to militancy in social movements and institutionalizes its practice in the expansion of Social Assistance. Maria invests in practical knowledge that becomes the beginning for construction of an overimplication. Through theory and institutional analysis, the work contemplates the micropolitical field of a biographical path to reach socio-historical aspects of the constitution of the paste in the country and the building of a peculiar sensitivity on the part of the workers. This sensitivity, built on experiences prior to social work and enhanced in the encounter with institutionalized politics, can make professionals sick and favors the precariousness of public policy when it feeds a personal commitment that refuses to see the complexity of what it means to maintain social security with competence and seriousness in the country.
Keywords:
Social services; institutional analysis; subjectivity