Associações comunitárias e participação social: um estudo de caso no Sul de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The research, "Communitarian Associations and social participation: A case study in the South of Minas Gerais", it seeked to analyse the functions that the dwellers associations of periphery develop to encourage "participation" in local administration. In that sense, this study was developed according to the history of those Associations, involving the nature of its sources, leaderships, its trajectory and the influence of local political elite. Duríng the investigation, qualitativo techniques of research were used to get information. It observed that the organization of the Associations was moved for specific interests of a fraction from local leadership politics. And it got a manipulative significance. There was no reaction presented by the dwellers through of the countervailing power, probably because they maintained the feeling of impotence and negative vision concerned to themselves, producing the favourable conditions for the relationship patronage an clientelism, conducting to articulation "Communitarian Associations - Influenciai People - Benefits". The dwellers possessed a reduced participation in the decisions of their associations. The ambit of their claiming was no more than flghts by Immedlate lawsuit as asphalt, dralnage and public telephone. The association was used to attend strategy of amplification of the political basis even to supply portion of the infra-structure deficits. Thus, the associations were involved in a cooptation process, without representating, "a connecting channel between them and the municipality administration". Such results put in evidence that the analysed Communitarian Associations do not represent pressure canais for the administration of the district and 1t could not be interpreted as instruments of countervailing power.