Identidade profissional e cultural dos militares e a contabilidade aplicada ao sistema de proteção social militar

Abstract

Despite the professional and cultural condition of military personnel having been legally recognized through Law No. 13,954/2019, the Federal Audit Court (TCU) has been equating it to a public pension system, in which the payment of benefits (post-employment) pension benefits, as occurs with retired civil servants, is considered an expense and must be treated in accounting as a pension deficit. In this sense, the main objective of this research is to understand how the professional and cultural identities of the Brazilian Armed Forces condition the accounting treatment that must be given to the Military Social Protection System of the Armed Forces (SPSMFA), especially to reserve military personnel paid, based on the phenomenon of 'being a soldier', that is, the “military spirit” (CASTRO, 2004, p. 15), from the perspective of this same military personnel. To this end, the present study revisited the literature developed by the Sociology of Professions and inherent cultural conceptions (BERLATTO, 2009; CUCHE, 1999; DUBAR, 2006, 2012; FIALHO, 2017; GIDDENS, 1998; SANTOS, 2005), as well as examining studies sociological studies in the military field as a way of understanding the professional and cultural identities of military personnel shaped by the concept of disciplinary subjectivity as that which manufactures 'docile' bodies (FOUCAULT, 1987). Furthermore, it presented the conception of SPSMFA and the postmodern context in which it arises, taking into account international and national experiences (BRASIL, 2019; CAFORIO, 2018; CARRILHO, 1978; COBRA, 2005; CUNHA; MENICHINI; CROCKETT, 2015; SILVA, 2017a; VAZ, 2001). Regarding the accounting aspect, accounting was considered as a linguistic phenomenon and closely linked to the culture of a people, in function of representing how certain social groups interpret the environment and communicate with it (GOMES; SALAS, 2001; HOFSTEDE, 1997; MINTZBERG, HENRY; AHLSTRAND, BRUCE; The fact of understanding it as a product of social relations encourages a more critical conception of accounting performance and its relevance in society (HORVAT; KOROŠEC, 2015). To achieve this purpose, a study was carried out based on an interpretative approach with phenomenological inspiration as a way of capturing the exogenous and endogenous aspects related to the professional and cultural identities of soldiers in the Brazilian Armed Forces. The locus of the research involved military personnel from the paid reserve of the Brazilian Navy (MB), considering that the researcher is a military member of the respective Armed Force, therefore having easy access to people and accounting documentation related to the phenomenon object of the study. The chosen data collection methodology was the structured life narrative and the application of Focus Groups with officers and soldiers who voluntarily agreed to participate in this research. To analyze the collected data, Van Manen's Phenomenology in Practice (1984) was used. The main results found show that the characteristics perceived by Brazilian Navy soldiers in post-modernity present greater aspects related to the Institutional Model than the Occupational Model (MOSKOS, 1977, 1986). Congruent with this finding, it is also evident that most of the attributes of the Armed Forces present characteristics and contours that are more in line with Early Modernity (pre-Cold War) and “Late Modernity” (NUCIARI, 2018). On the other hand, when referring to social values and their relationship with the dynamics of society, the military presents some evolutionary changes that, at the same time as they approach the social environment, bring tensions and cultural struggles that distance them from society, encouraging greater pragmatism and skepticism towards new entrants, as well as expanding the perception of the military's professional and cultural identity crisis. This crisis may be encouraging the creation of government practices encapsulated in universalizing international accounting and actuarial techniques by Brazilian society, represented by the TCU, which rationalize and socially control the Armed Forces as a reductionist solution that tends to generate indeterminate future effects.