This paper investigates how the neoliberal ideology can influence the formation of contemporary social thought with regard to the socio-economic structure of Brazil. To this end, we seek to reflect critically on some propositions present in everyday life and incorporated into our language, such as the concept of poverty, the overevaluation of the practice of voluntary work, the market around the human suffering with the expansion of the Third Sector, among others. Although in recent decades the field of study and intervention on poverty and its impact has been magnified by the state and civil society, the hypothesis put forward here is that many of these discourses, apparently in favor of reducing social inequality, tend to legitimize the maintenance of low social mobility and, consequently, the acceptance and naturalization of poverty in everyday life.
social thought; neoliberalism; naturalization; poverty