The fabrication of the inevitable: rhetoric and performance in the bureaucratic rites of a Child Protection Council in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Abstract

As a singular instance of mediation between institutions, ways of life, and generalizing norms, the experiences and testimonies of child protection councilors vividly reveal how authority is rhetorically performed within institutional circuits, as a central element in the coordination of bureaucratic rites. To this end, we follow councilor Ana’s work in the “handling” of Carla’s case: first referred to institutional care in childhood for being in a “risky situation”, Carla reappears years later denounced by a neighbor as a “negligent mother,” accused of leaving her daughters “wandering in the streets”. In three ethnographic scenes—a home visit, the production of reports, and the drafting of an official letter to the Public Prosecutor’s Office—we show how rumors, traces, and impressions are converted into plausible justifications for emergency measures, such as institutional care. We argue that the formality of procedures is anchored in a rhetorical calibration oriented by “urgency”, “risk”, and “responsability”—an expertise in handling what we call the moral idiom of tutelage. In contexts of institutional precariousness, it is the articulation of this idiom through culturally sedimented rhetorical formulas that enables minimal conditions of protection. By integrating field observation, document ethnography, the councilor’s testimony, and the analysis of rhetoric applied to decision-making processes, we propose an analytical model capable of deepening the understanding of the everyday dilemmas faced by state agents. Finally, we highlight how stereotypes simplify and naturalize complex situations, serving as conditions of possibility for coordinating state action, while also opening space to reimagine ways of enacting social protection.