State and civil society in Brazilian political thought

Abstract

This article reflects on the Brazilian intellectual production about the state and civil society categories, the context in which such analytical keys become central and main authors who contributed to this debate. We will Search to reflect how the Brazilian political thought was marked by a strain of centralization of the state, then to check a turnaround and a theoretical shift in the ideas of democracy and civil society have become dominant. To do so, we shall consider the process of emergence of new ideas, adoption of new theoretical concepts, the social substratum on which this process takes place, as the dispute over the direction for the nation opened up space for debate of ideas and to what extent the new analytical category with which the Brazilian thought began operating – civil society – was reflected in social movements, and even being conceived. Therefore, we analyze the character of this epistemic shift, basically trying to understand the role of the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, and the social and political landscape of the country that proved significant in this theoretical shift.