This article aims to clarify the understanding of participation in the UFT management according to a study of institutional documents and of the perception of the university community. The discussion about the participation in the UFT management had as starting point the understanding of the social regulation process and the intertwining of the public and private spheres and the liberal and historical-materialist approaches of democracy. In this way the mercantile private sphere has been strengthened in detriment of the public, evidencing the marketization of college education and its neoprofessional nature, heteronomous, competitive and operational characteristics. So, the liberal/neoliberal minimalist democracy values have been strengthened in the IFES/UFT, operationalized in the management logic and the business-strategic participation. In this logic, the barriers to the participation in the UFT management process do not differ from the society participation in general, and is related with the organizational mode and the enforcement of the capitalist production and reproduction system.
Mercantile-private sphere; Democracy; IFES; IFES