Family and public space in Brazil

 Modernity dismantled the traditional macro-social role that the Church played (organizando a estrutura social elementar através do domínio dos principais rituais e dos discursos éticos balizadores dos "comportamentos normais"). This occurred because its deepening requires a new pattern of social relationships that is very close to what we today call utilitarianism.. Once the Church was reduced to the liturgical domain, Modernity was able to concentrate its forces on the other base institution of the social macro-structure – the family. The family, as ideal-type, is the refuge to which the individual retreats when he is saturated with the public. In it, the individual becomes a person and gains a status hierarchical and unequal. Therefore, the opposition between society and family (the public and the private), still within the ideal type, would be difference and inequality, respectively. It is important to note that the modern conception of public space emerged historically after the family. Even though today they constitute separate social systems, interference is multiple and in both directions.
In what is today considered the supreme public space, nominally equal relations and the mechanical principles of democracy must prevail. Thereby, it is expected that all inequalities will be annulled and that all differences will find channels of exposure, exchange and compatibility with the whole. Inside this, and the current size and complexity of public space, relationships follow a ritualistic and formal pattern.
The family, on the other hand, finds direct internal communication channels that, increasingly, do without relationship rituals (exception to those in which the family opens up to the outside world, like birthdays, baptized, weddings and wakes). The absence of formal mechanisms for resolving conflicts and harmonizing differences leads to situations different from those found in public space. Faced with a persistent hierarchy that, in the Brazilian case, tends to be stronger at the extremes of the social stratum (in the richest in the face of conservatism and in the poorest in the face of nostalgic reactionism), in the family, consensus is based on very specific standards. Instead of a consensus based on coexistence and preservation of differences, as is the case of those found in public spaces, here seeks unitary consensus, that is, the different positions must be summarized into one, since she will speak and identify the family as a whole, which will be automatically extended to all its members. Those families that openly expose (what it means within your relational framework and to the external world) profound differences over matters of private life, they will easily be labeled as misfits and, probably, will face a constant relational crisis among its members. In addition to identifying its members, unitary consensus is important to consolidate the family hierarchy (one of the strictest I know), which will allow the head of the family to impose, largely unilateral, of its principles.
Given the almost opposite trends between family and public space, How can both coexist?? one will overlap the other?
More than a conflicting opposition, between them we find a self-reinforcing continuity. To reach this conclusion, we must first overcome the institutional barrier, seeking to avoid the simple comparison between institutions and focus on the real sweat that is made of it. Isto levar-nos-á para aquilo que é o principal elemento de compreensão de uma sociedade: a relação entre cultura e instituições sociais.
Dos parágrafos acima, depreende-se as diferenças entre as instituições família e espaço público. However, passada essa primeira aproximação, importa-nos exatamente o indivíduo/pessoa. Já foi apontado, ainda que um pouco descompromissadamente que o indivíduo atual no espaço público e a pessoa na família. Isso não deve conduzir-nos à falsa impressão de separação entre eles, da facto, trata-se do mesmo ser humano. Thereby, the greater someone's aptitude or tendency towards a certain type of behavior, stronger and more important will be the institution that follows these same parameters. The other institution, in its turn, will be weakened or, when this is not possible, addict.
In Brazil, our history stimulated the hyper-development of the family, putting the use of public space, which requires the ideal-type, as a waste of time and something threatening to socio-relational stability. currently, as we go through a phase of more radical modernization (no sense stricto of this word), the culturally given use of the two institutions under analysis is exposed more clearly. Perhaps the most famous decoding we have of this is the one that indicates our ability to separate public and private or even the privatization of the State.