Institutional variety as a theme for the study of assistance to childhood in the city of Sao Paulo in the nineteenth century

Abstract

In this article, we analyze themes and approaches concerning the study of assistance to childhood in the city of Sao Paulo during the nineteenth century. To the extent that we conceive assistance as a central problem in the rise of urban life in nineteenth-century Brazil, the research is based on official reports that are analyzed in light of the bibliographical contributions published on this theme. In this sense, the constitution of assistance, once it was grounded in a relationship between the public and the private, implies three main points: the division of tasks and internal procedures (labor, discipline, etc.), the rationalization of institutional management and the moralization of labor as an educational component concerning childhood (the future citizens). To sum up, our effort is an attempt at analyzing the constitution of the social as an area for intervention and correction of deficits by situating the variety of institutional assistance and the institutional proposals of child care in the context of the formation of national society in the nineteenth century.