Abstract
We argue that the majority of civil society conceptualizations employ a narrow concept of the state and a narrow concept of civil society. The life history of a Brazilian woman demonstrates that as individuals travel through state institutions and civil society organizations (CSOs), they carry conflicting worldviews with them which bear on the practices of CSOs. With Gramsci we recognize civil society as a space where movements and the state struggle for hegemony; beyond him we conceptualize CSOs as contradictory, being simultaneously of and against the state, while the state is simultaneously outside and within them.