Political redefinition or depolitization? The conceptions of "third sector" in Brazil

Abstract

In the scope of political changes that emerge in the context of reestablishing the democracy in the Latin American countries, a new idea of “civil cooperation” blunts as a privileged theme of the debate about the structural reforms of social relations. This work discusses the penetration of the idea of “Third Sector” into Brazil, its inscription in the debates about the State´s reform, and the reestablishment of new relations between the economic sector and the civil companionship. In addition, it is seeking to demonstrate that the possibilities of the emancipation of the civil society can not be reduced to the institucional instumentality in the Third Sector approaches. The metaphorses that the brazilian civil society undergoes in the 90´s, if in one hand seal its instrumentalization, in another hand show that new drives of democatization associated mainly with the introduction of new cultural values emerge from that society.