Help the poor
Ethnography of the Welfare State and Assistance Practices

This book addresses aid to the poor as a political object, meaning an instrument of politics through which society will transmit normative ideas about itself; in short, a contested field. In this sense, aid is a mode/means of social reproduction while also being understood as a field of interest that arises from decisions and power plays. This implies recognizing its capacity to construct reality, that is, its productive potential. The research has, therefore, been constructed from the interdisciplinary and critical intersection of political anthropology, the sociology of aid, and the study of affect.