Notes on the complexity of neoconservatism and its impact on social policies

Abstract

It is impossible to discuss neoconservatism without highlighting its importance in the current Brazilian economic, political and cultural context. It is worth stating that the intensity and pace of neoconservative manifestations further involve social workers in the task of analysis, critical positioning and intervention in social relations. The effort to think about them must always be plural and complex. Neoconservatism is deeply related to neoliberalism and the need to build a conservative morality in the present moment of capitalism. There are multiple incidents that operate in the construction of this conservative morality and of a docile “new man”. In Brazilian specificity, the rise to power of the extreme right is analyzed as an expression of neoconservatism and its simultaneous manifestations in gender, ethnic-racial relations and in the field of sexual rights and its search for hegemony. Understanding it is a sine qua non condition to overcome economic analysis of the contemporary Brazilian scene.

Keywords:
Neoconservatism; Neoliberalism; Hegemony