Understanding the Assistential Action

Abstract

The paper “Understanding the Assistential Action” focuses the social assistance in a sociological
point of view and, particularly, on the action perspective. Thus, recovering the classical authors
form the sociological thought – like Simmel e Jacobson, and Tocqueville–, seeks to nuance which
elements make understandable the action, as: the context, the agents and the forms of actions, in
addition the own object of assistance, the social. Following this thread, the paper is subdivided
in three main parts: the approach to the social as a new question, established by the capitalism;
the public and private actions and the assistance as a field of power relationships. By the end, the
text shows that the assistential action closes difficult dilemmas to be overcome.