Abstract
This article offers a critique of the hegemony of the factory model as the organizational matrix of social institutions. This factory model has hindered an understanding of both the ontological complexity of the social world and the singularity of territories. Drawing on a theoretical articulation that includes contributions from Nietzsche, Spinoza, Bourdieu, Elias, Santos, Deleuze and Guattari, as well as traditions from critical geography and institutional analysis, the text argues that the uncritical adoption of the industrial paradigm dehumanizes and fragments social problems, reinforcing the reproduction of social inequalities. It examines how, in the nineteenth century, the relationships between states and professionals developed within "processes of integration and differentiation" that excluded territories. In contrast, the article underscores the need to design small-scale, rhizomatic, relational, and playful institutional arrangements capable of engaging with situated forms of knowledge and strengthening processes of publicizing social problems within territories. The article concludes that transforming social fields requires abandoning the factory imaginary, recovering the artisanal character of social work, and building institutions rooted in the power of territories, proposing that "the way out of the labyrinth is from above."