Integrating perspectives: proposal for the analysis of work as a multifaceted phenomenon.
| Autor | Colomby, Renato Koch |
| Cargo | Integrating perspective |
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Introduction
The authors from different theoretical lines agree on one point: work is crucial in society. According to Mercure and Spurk (2005, p. 7), "work can never be ignored for its presence, its strength and the space it occupies." We could also quote Mow (1987) and Morin (2001) in a functionalist and managerial perspective and the authors like Antunes (2002a), Dejours (2004), and Cattani and Holzmann (2011) in a critical and non- functionalist perspective.
Work is the core of wealth production, individuals' identity construction and collective behavior outlining. Though some authors announce the end of work for countless reasons, including the use of technology or the drastic changes in the market and labor relations, over the last decade (Antunes, 2002b; Rifkin, 2007), whereas others defend that these deep transformations make bringing the world of labor back into the center of research and reflection imperative (Cattani and Holzmann, 2011). Workers have collectively shared feelings regarding the construction of their tasks. Such feelings are marked by ideologies that are associated with and derived from the social, economic, political, legal, cultural and spiritual perspectives they are inserted in. Thus, these elements influence meanings and senses associated with work.
Work senses have been some of the most relevant themes in academic production and require additional investigative effort. Spinelli-de-Sa and Lemos (2015) stated that there are still many gaps about this theme to be filled in the Brazilian context. Several studies are being carried out on meaning and senses of work; however, future studies, with special attention to the phenomenon and analyses under different perspectives, respecting the theme's multifaceted character, are necessary (Rodrigues and Barrichello, 2015). It is necessary to stimulate different perspectives on the meanings of work for the individuals, mainly considering the moment of intense transformations in society and economy (Bastos et al, 1995).
Dourado et al. (2009, p. 352) rescued four instances of work and affirm that those "are the interconnections between economic, political, ideological and psychological instances that influence the individual phenomenon of attributing sense to the labor action." The intention of this paper is to go further in this point and it proposes eight perspectives to analyze the phenomenon of work: physiological, cultural, spiritual, ideological, economic, political, legal and psychosocial.
To do so, this paper used a survey method, contributing to increment quantitative research works, which present 14 percent of the publications on the theme from 2000 to 2015, according to a study carried out by Spinelli-De-Sa and Lemos (2015). In addition, the aim of this study is to obtain a panoramic view of the phenomenon of work, going in the opposite direction from most research works, which, according to the same authors, are directed at specific and less conventional work situations and categories.
After this introduction, we present the review on the literature about the different perspectives of work. The next section refers to the methodological procedures; the fourth part is dedicated to the analysis and discussion of the results and the fifth part presents reflections on this theme. Finally, the last section is dedicated to final considerations.
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The different meanings attributed to work
Problematizing the theme "work" from eight different perspectives leads to a ground of historical analysis, provided it follows relevant social changes. It is necessary to rescue several authors to understand those multiple perspectives, as well as to elaborate a synthesized plan. However, the already-consolidated discussion on the work process in different production models or the consequent passage from Fordism to post- Fordism has been avoided. The focus relied on the theoretical discussion about work nowadays, once the subjects investigated live it currently. Thus, the theoretical review goes from authors who studied the themes after the productive restructuring of the 1990s, the consolidation of the so-called "post-Fordist" production and work model, and characteristic of a globalized and flexible society.
Since the 1990s, several authors have been proposing to discuss work from profound social changes, which have affected the way of working and labor relations. The contemporaneous outbreak factor can be considered the petrol crisis in the 1970s and the consequent termination of treaties, such as the Bretton Woods from 1944, that kept currencies from ally countries linked. The consequent recession, associated to a gradual exhaustion process of the Fordist model, resulted in a great need of revising the production world: organization size, command lines, quality, productivity, among others. So, the post-Fordism is born, as well as its inherent need of making work and markets flexible. On the one hand, these changes can be understood as necessary for the period, but then, they were taken to extremes by several economic interests. Nowadays, work is flexible, disposable, and replaceable by individualist technology, marked by the fast obsolescence and the continuous need of education and refinement (Rodrigues, 2014).
Several concepts fit into these contemporaneous characteristics of work. Maybe the first author to broadly translate them was Sennett (2009), who approached the corrosion of the character in the flexible man and, not limiting himself to this concept, attentively analyzed the new capitalist order. Bauman (2005, 2007) had also understood the changing times, he called them liquid, to the point of denouncing the wasting of lives (wasted lives), which stems from the human inability to follow the fast social changes.
Other authors named current days as second (Beck, 2000) or high modernity (Giddens, 2002), characterized by a widely globalized world, with new moral values and ephemeral relations. Though not directly addressing the theme "work," these last authors provide a broad view on social transformations, which forged the changes in the world of labor over the past decades, like for instance, the crescent competitiveness arising from globalization, the lack of safety from an ever more global and less local world, that is, a society of risks, to quote Beck (2006).
According to Fontoura and Rocha-De-Oliveira (2014, p. 2), "work is a complex activity, difficult to conceptualize for the diversity of objects, events and situations it involves and for the diversity of meanings it assumes in different historical contexts." Cattani and Holzmann (2011, p. 7) defined the phenomenon as follows:
Work, as a vital activity that ensures satisfaction of production and reproduction needs of any human grouping, is a universal practice and a social realization that defines multiple conditionings and possibilities. Its concreteness, distinctively materialized in each historical context, can be configured in social relations marked, on one side, by the effects of power, by domination and exploitation, presenting negative symbolic meanings and forming a complex thread of contradictorily arranged. On the other hand, it could express cohesion, consent and pleasure by creating a collective work, aiming at overcoming the limits imposed by nature. For Castel (1998), work is configured as an economic, psychological, cultural and symbolic reference in structuring existences, like an enrollment support in social structure. Starting from these ways of understanding and conceptualizing the current work, we selected different concepts from the authors who approached the theme from eight supplementary categories, which guide this article's discussion.
From the physiological perspective, along with cultural, political and legal aspects, one can discuss the problems faced by injured or sick workers, who no longer comply with the excellence standards required by organizations (Schlindwein, 2013). Likewise, aging could be analyzed from the physiological point of view. With the increase in life expectancy, the natural aging process results in impacts on the professional life of workers, who experience physical alterations, for example, loss of control over the body (Duncan and Loretto, 2004; Lima et al., 2012).
In this sense, current discussions about the social welfare reform, which would extend the minimum age required for retirement, are factors to be considered in work relations and its physiological, legal, social and cultural aspects. This makes us think about aging, not only in biological terms, but also in cultural--that is, how different social groups (de)value their elders (Locatelli and Dos Santos Fontoura, 2013). The same can be said about the gender division of work, as throughout history, different labor activities remain considered more fit for men and/ or women (Hirata and Kergoat, 2007). It is stressed that all societies define such distinction with more or less rigidity and exclusiveness; however, the distinction between male and female activities regards social production and gender conception and gender itself (Holzmann, 2011). We can notice, for the discussion so far, that work analysis perspectives overlap, which makes it difficult to try to clearly define one without referring to other(s).
The cultural point of view cannot be underestimated in work-related discussions. Professions loose or gain prestige over time, according to perceptions, knowledge and beliefs cultivated by a society. In different locations, or period of history, professions were and are still considered as deviant from what is valued or accepted by given social group (Becker, 2008). According to Laner (2005), work, in its relational aspect, becomes cause and consequence of a culture and its respective social formations. Thus, work is molded by and molder of culture and these aspects transcend time--influencing future generations--and space, impacting the worker's private...
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