Public Policies as a Social Counterinsurgency Practice

This article states that Public policies constitute a social counterinsurgency practice, because the mechanisms of definition, application and follow-up on the policies are oriented only in few cases to promoting the social organization and active participation of the beneficiaries; on the contrary, the organs and actors of hegemonic power exercise control through them over the organizations and people whom these policies address. The position of this paper is supported by hermeneutic analysis of the discourses of a group of social leaders in Pedro de Valdivia, an area of Temuco, Chile, with whom a research process was begun in 2008, together with a group of college students in the seventh semester of social work, that allows for mutual recognition to later be inserted in professional practices. The contributions developed by Gramsci regarding hegemony and historical background allow the authors to establish the analysis, interpretation and comprehension of the discourses of those social leaders.