Money and morality in the Bolsa Família

Bibliographic Data

ID2494448
AuthorsTalita Jabs Eger (Hospital Alvorada), Arlei Sander Damo (0000-0003-4368-6754, Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas em Educação, Cultura e Ação Comunitária)
Year2014
Volume11
Issue1
Pages250-284
Publication date2014-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVibrant Virtual Brazilian Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1809-4341 • E-ISSN: 1809-4341
PublisherAssociação Brasileira de Antropologia (PUBLISHER • BR)
DOI10.1590/s1809-43412014000100009
OpenAlexW2006141747
SCIELO_PIDS1809-43412014000100009
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited8

This paper brings some findings from research on the meanings of money from Brazil's Family Grant Program (Programa Bolsa Família, PBF). The ethnography on which it is based was carried out between 2010 and 2012 in the cities of Alvorada and Porto Alegre. It shows, firstly, that even though it is received in cash, the PBF money is not just an abstract mediator. Rather, access to this kind of money, or to the PBF itself, is accompanied by a series of moral values that go beyond the legal conditionalities that characterize the program. Drawing on ethnographic instances, our discussion highlights some of the key elements of this morality: negotiations around the notion of vulnerability (a central concept for the social workers in charge of enrolling beneficiaries in the PBF), and the different meanings of the PBF money, from the beneficiaries' point of view. This diversity of meanings is presented synthetically in terms of some key domains: money of women and for women; money of children and for children; money interdicted and shameful to men

Cash · Economics · Ethnography · Morality · Negotiation · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Vulnerability · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Social and Economic Solidarity · Social and Political Issues · Finance

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