Necesidades, bienestar e intervención social del estado: ejes de debate conceptual para el desarrollo de políticas sociales

the concern to provide social intervention with theoretical tools capable of "traveling" transculturally to be applied in different social, economic and cultural contexts, that is the fact of being able to think about the needs in the categories of research and intervention, is one of the most frequent theoretical problems in the field of social intervention. we will start by presenting some of what we consider outstanding perspectives of the topic we will adress. afterwards, we will adress the relation between the obligations of the government and social needs and rights to finally indicate some conceptualizations referring to the specific mechanisms in which the concepts of needs and wellbeing are located in our region. we believe that in face of the acknowledgement of needs and the lack of goods and services to satisfy said needs, social policies to be implemented must render an account of the ethical and moral commitments which translate into social obligations of the government. these instances of political intervention must come from two resources: technical knowledge about needs and the knowledge about the perceived needs of social actors.