Instituições, Linguagens e Poder: as novas tecnologias de controle social

Abstract

This issue of Cadernos de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas (CCSA) offers a critical exploration of the fundamental tensions that underlie the development of modern institutions and the advancement of human rights. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the discussion in this editorial focuses on the duality of social structures: on the one hand, their primary function of guaranteeing human dignity and autonomy; on the other, their propensity to become mechanisms of social control and the commodification of existence. The theoretical framework examines how languages, curricular frameworks, and public policies operate within a field of constant contention, capable of functioning both as vectors of emancipation and as instruments of subtle domination. The six studies in this issue, though spanning different fields of knowledge — from law to economics, from public administration to social psychology — converge in their analysis of the tensions between institutional development and the realization of fundamental rights. By addressing such diverse topics — pedagogical omission, digital exposure in childhood, the effectiveness of women’s rights, local public safety, the ethics of humor, and the roots of our monetary system—the publication reaffirms the need to decipher the languages of power, in order to enable the effective protection of the human condition in the face of contemporary technologies of control.