Social work and positive peace in Brazil: inequality and structural violence

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between positive peace, structural violence, and social inequality in Brazil, focusing on the period from 2016 to 2022, marked by the deepening of neoliberal policies and the dismantling of social protection systems. Grounded in Johan Galtung’s theory of positive peace, the study incorporates contributions from critical social theory and Brazilian Social Work to understand inequality as a historical expression of structural violence. The analysis shows that, during the period examined, fiscal austerity and the selectivity of public policies intensified social exclusion, producing a necropolitical rationality that governs life and death unevenly, particularly affecting racialized populations and peripheral territories. The paper concludes that positive peace, when critically appropriated from a Latin American perspective and articulated with Social Work practice, constitutes a fundamental analytical and political tool to confront structural violence and to reaffirm social rights as essential conditions for building a just and democratic society.