Abstract

MALVASI, Paulo Artur. Self-entrepreneur under suspicion: path and suffering of a teenager during socio-educa­tional intervention. Etnográfica [online]. 2011, vol.15, n.3, pp.501-521. ISSN 0873-6561.

This study examines the social and political nature of the suffering of a young person subjected to “socio-educational measure”. From a Foucaultian perspective of power, the article considers the subjective experience of the young individual in his interaction with the socio-educational system, and observes how power is manifested in the acts of some over others, in the reiterated deeds revolving around knowledge and authority that delineate the ways of action of the youngster within his own field of action. The analysis of the subjective experience of the teenager subjected to a socio-educational measure shows how that intervention can place him at the limits of the possibility for integration, intensifying the sufferings of a life under constant suspicion. The adopted approach allows us to observe how this young person produces meanings about the socio-educational system and how he expresses through words, gestures and movements the contradictions of the public policy. The position of the teenager as someone who should individually explore the risks, the losses and the gains of his own choices defines an area of ​​confluence between the socio-educational speech and that of crime. Simultaneously, a diffuse government apparatus and a management model of the drugs trade compete in the path of the youngster subjected to socio-educational measure, each of the systems having its own strategies and management schemes for his life.

Keywords : social suffering; power and violence; socio-educational measure.

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