Future without present – Ethnographic notes on the Criança Feliz Program in the interior of Paraíba

• Autor(a) principal: Nascimento, Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Gioriatti Lunkes, Amanda
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Anuário Antropológico (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/anuarioantropologico/article/view/47860
• topic: Etnografia do Estado; Programa Criança Feliz; Programa Bolsa Família; Gênero; Primeira Infância; ethnography of the state; happy child program; family grant program; gender; early childhood

The article discusses the Programa Criança Feliz (PCF) (Happy Child Program), aimed at early childhood education, seeking to understand its articulations with the Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) (Family Grant Program), a conditional cash transfer social policy. By analyzing these policies, based on ethnographic research carried out in a municipality of the State of Paraíba, our main goal is to reflect on these programs as government technologies based on the implications of the relationship between public policies, family and gender. We interpret these both programs as a government technology that presupposes the universality of the category “childhood” and the practice of care as a feminine attribution. The main action of the PCF is the “visitas domiciliares” (“home visits”), carried out from the work of the visitadoras (“visitors”), women who accompany the children in their homes, proposing educational activities to stimulate child development. This perspective allows us to relate the PCF with the PBF – a program that makes women responsible for care, through a series of conditionalities. At the same time, it indicates the specifics of the PCF that, through the “home visits”, the aim is to develop the skills of children aged 0 to 6 years and of their caregivers, with the aim of improving their lives – in the future.