In Brazil, the process of building an effective local level of governance has been taking place for a long time. More recently, stimulated by the 1988 constitution, terms such as participative budgeting, priority inversions and democratic governance are increasingly being used in technical debates and statements by political leaders. They reflect the viability of a different administrative practice, focussed on individual and collective rights. Local, however, is not necessarily synonymous with municipal. In a series of meetings that took place on the topic of povertry reduction, the term that seemed to better describe what was happening was place, a horizon of links, of meaning production and conflicts that could be submunicipal, municipal or intermunicipal in form. For organizational theory, the focus on place as a space for action throw light on a series of questions not normally focussed and may allow a different approach to the study of the organization as a social phenomenon.
social inequality; place; organizational theory