Relações entre a Fundação Lemann e o Estado brasileiro: um aparelho privado de hegemonia no campo educativo

Abstract

This research analyzes the relationship between the Lemann Foundation and the Brazilian State in the educational field. In the context of the advancement of the commodification of education and the emergence of neoliberal principles in Brazil, the study identifies the strong presence of the Lemann Foundation, understood as a private apparatus of hegemony, in public education. In examining the research object, the concept of the expanded State is mobilized, enabling the demystification of the relationship between the Lemann Foundation and the Brazilian State from a Gramscian perspective, as well as the theorization of the connections between political society and civil society manifested through the actions of this private apparatus of hegemony. Accordingly, the central research problem is formulated as follows: how does the Lemann Foundation, as a private apparatus of hegemony, relate to the Brazilian State and influence the educational field? To address this question and to approach the research object along with its mediations and determinations, the main objective of the study is to analyze the relationship between the Lemann Foundation and the Brazilian State in the educational field. The investigation adopts historical-dialectical materialism as its theoretical and methodological framework and employs documentary and bibliographic research as its methodological path, with documentary analysis centered on the Foundation’s annual reports. The findings indicate that this mercantile-philanthropic organization has established a robust arrangement between its technical devices and its institutional capillarity within the expanded State. As a result, this private apparatus of hegemony influences educational processes by shaping both the normative agenda, through its leadership networks and its influence on educational policies, and the daily practices of schools, through programs and technical solutions aimed at addressing challenges in Brazilian public education. It is concluded that, in contemporary capitalism, private apparatuses of hegemony such as the Lemann Foundation are structurally integrated into the expanded State, operating as trenches that sustain the bourgeois order. Furthermore, the capillarity of its actions enables the elaboration, dissemination, and consolidation of a project of intellectual, moral, and political leadership that articulates consensus, management, and direct intervention in educational policies, imprinting neoliberal rationality on their content.