Food purchase program: compensation, emancipation and the debate of social services

Abstract

This paper analyses the Food Purchase Program (FPP), which is
part of the No Hunger Program (Programa Fome Zero), in order to question the theoretical conceptions of Social Work regarding professional practices related to public policies of compensatory nature and with emancipatory practices of associate workers gathered in solidarity economy enterprises. The text questions the hegemonic theoretical positions that bet on the restructure of the welfare state under late capitalism and which ignore new social and political practices which are generated within a new working class. FPP is seen as an interesting observation laboratory, since it is proposed as an articulation between an emergency action (compensatory) for workers in a situation of food insecurity, and a structuring action (emancipatory) for family farm workers organized in associative economic enterprises, who are food suppliers to the Program.