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This paper intends to analyze the role played by ideology in regard to the historical implementation of human rights, questioning whether this implementation has fulfilled an eminently ideological function. The reflection will pass through the vision of two scholars who have held one of the most interesting contemporary philosophical discussions: Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. At first, the Althusserian theory of ideology will be outlined, in order to defend that human rights have operated as an "ideological apparatus", questioning the individual from an immanently capitalist context. Then, we will verify that Michel Foucault was very critical of the Althusserian approaches. The notion of a transcendental subject will be crucial in such criticism, since in the Foucaultian perspective there are never subjects that are constituted prior to effective dynamics of power. In Foucaultian analysis, ideology will no longer occupy an essential place. The contributions of Slavoj Žižek will also be, by the way, decisive throughout this discussion. Finally, some critical reflections will be drawn to think about the emancipatory possibility of human rights in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the notion of "gambiarra", a feature of Brazilian and Latin American culture, as a literary element in two short stories of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano. In this sense, some theoretical-critical approaches will be proposed for possible meanings to "gambiarra," not only as a materially objectified element, but also as a process, an action and a production method. I present as hypotheses some of the socio-historical determinations that enable "gambiarra" as a social phenomenon as well as its categorization as a concrete expression of a certain ontological human tendency. The analysis of the short stories, after brief considerations about the author and his work, seeks to understand how the articulation of the "gambiarra" manifests itself in the narratives, allowing also dialectical glimpses about its social dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article, first part of a paper on the subject, develops an approach to those tensions faced by the profession of Social Work, in the context of the beginning and consolidation of the industrialist State in Costa Rica. It details the transformations of the production mode, the changes in the world of work, and the political-institutional image that was expressed in matters of social security in those years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]