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The paper presents an initial analysis of issues related to health work in Brazil, in the context of COVID-19 Pandemic, seeking to contribute to a debate about the relationships between work process, the ongoing psychological dynamics and the struggle for health. It is based on a framework of Work Organizational Psychology, guided by the point of view of the activity and experience, to account for materials emerging from an experiment that has been developed within the scope of “University Extension”, under the coordination of the two authors of the paper. Initially, both the international emergency context of COVID-19 and general characteristics of the work situations that are being faced by health professionals are presented. Then, upon selection of a main axis as the object of attention, the analysis of some work situations, present in that dramatic context, is carried out, which allowed to present some clues, as conclusion.

In the companies, the Digital Transformation (DT) implies several organizational changes with consequences on effective tasks and working conditions. However, these changes are analyzed under the scope of technology-centered approaches, where the “tool” is considered the main solution to solve all work-related problems or by a human-direct approach focused on quality of life at work. This paper aims to show that the work determinants evolve under the effect of the interactions among several changes related to DT. The findings are based on two field studies about practical ergonomics interventions in two different services companies. The results underline the need to change conventional approaches ruling projects of technological change. This paper proposes alternatives to implement such projects, by considering at the same time project leading, tool designing and change management.

The scope of this paper is the digitalization of the service at the National Institute of Social Security – INSS, the federal institution in charge of implementing the Brazilian Welfare Services policy. Based on the framework of Work Psychology and Activity-centered Ergonomics, a field study has been carried out in order to understand the conditions under which the “Digital INSS Project” has been implemented and their impact on the activity performed by the public servants. It revealed the heterogeneity in terms of production control and resources to enable the appropriation of technological tools by the workers from different units. Given the intensification of work, the regulatory strategies try to balance the production demands and the health preservation. They do so through schemes to use the computer tools that confront these workers with additional workload, given the accomplishment of several simultaneous operations and the necessity to validate the work using paper, in the face of the unexpected generated by the digital support and the experience still to be built in its resolution.

SMACH (Multi-agent Simulation of Human Activity and Household Consumption) is a simulation platform within EDF’s R&D framework. It uses simulation to anticipate and reduce energy consumption at different places of analysis (home, district, town, country). With this paper we aim to explain what the course of action technological research program involves, and to this end we refer to several years of SMACH research. We essentially focus on the importance of the organic relationship between technology and human activity, and we show how this organic relationship evolves over the different stages that this technological research program involves. This paper may be viewed as a basis for generalizing and clarifying the criteria required to validate such a program and as a contribution towards reflection on design in ergonomics.

Since the 1950s, failures in the development of anthropocentric technologies suggest that general design principles open the way for socio-technical projects. However, the latter do not sufficiently integrate the social, the subjective and the technical aspects underlying any kind of industrial project. This paper shows how the "course of action" theory, which is part of the "activity" ergonomics field, supports this integration. This is achieved by showing how the concepts and methods of the course of action theory, used to design new work situations when automating small hydroelectric power plants (SHPPs), leads to a broader empirical praxeology for addressing H-H (training) and H-M (automation) interfaces, or H-H-M systems. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the technological pole of the Research Program of the Course of Action while, in practical terms, it warns Industry 4.0 professionals not to repeat the old myth (and expression) of the "manless factory".

This paper is intended as a contribution to risk and security analysis in organizations dedicated to the execution of measures for the population in conflict with the criminal law. In other words, this paper attempts to advance within a theoretical framework that allows for an analysis of the particularities of risk management in environments of deprivation of liberty, such as prisons. For this purpose, information is taken from the case of the National Institute for Adolescent Social Inclusion (INISA), in Uruguay. This is the only institution in the country dedicated to the management of measures on adolescents who were convicted of a crime. The central objective will be to analyze what different meanings of security coexist in everyday work and how these different perspectives converge in real work.

This paper presents a brief discussion about Work psychology, in Brazil, and its interfaces with the Work clinics and the Worker's health field. Our starting point is the set of papers presented by Brazilian researchers in the "France-Latin America Symposium". A methodological cut has allowed us to elect these disciplinary fields by reading titles, reviews and paper references. The texts showed a significant convergence between the following themes : social and critical orientation, keeping interest in the working subjects ; the complexity and singularities that lead their work experiences ; the processes of constitution, the psychic and political-social commitments of these workers. We believe that a synthesis of the researches presented in this colloquium reflects the current moment of the Work Psychology in Brazil, in its connections with the Work Clinics and the Worker's Health.

The present paper seeks to highlight the institutional dimension of the analysis that was developed within the research project "Return to Work after an Accident: Overcoming Obstacles", promoted by the Associação Nacional de Deficientes Sinistrados no Trabalho (ANDST). Combining the cross-reading of legal and administrative documents, legal doctrine, data from a survey by questionnaire, and the testimonies collected through interviews and compiled on journey maps, this paper tries to analytically reconstruct the main moments that constitute a post-sinister path. Thereto it describes the contacts in the institutional approach to reparation, and articulates it with the representations of the victims about their personal cases and the obstacles they have faced.

This paper discusses some preliminary results of a mix-method sociological study about the experience of physical and social suffering lived by Portuguese workers involved in work accidents. Based on an extensive survey to a national sample of injured workers and in-depth interviews, the paper identifies the major characteristics that define how such physical and social pain was experienced and explores, with the help of Multiple Correspondence Analysis, the gains obtained from a socio-relational reading of this information. Besides showing that inequality is heavily inscribed in the (re)production of work accidents, the paper argues that social inscriptions and institutional devices play a major role in the definition of the post-accident pain experiences felt by the surveyed injured workers.

This paper is based on the results of two research projects of the research group “Women in men’s worlds”: the research project “Women in men’s worlds: Barriers to enter and strategies to overcome them” (Ref.: FEM2011-25228), financed by the National Plan of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness between January 2011 and December 2013; and the project “Women in men’s worlds: Socialisation, labour organisation, and image” (CSO2014-54339-P), also financed by the National Plan between September 2015 and September 2018. In both research projects we have analysed occupational horizontal gender segregation in masculinised occupations in Spain. In this paper we present the results of both research projects about female garage mechanics, whose training and occupation reveal a very high rate of gender-related segregation or cases of gender-related discrimination and harassment or sexual harassment.

Cooperation is a fundamental part of the construction of the workers’ mental health and an essential pillar for building a work environment where there are trust at work. The objective of this paper is debating the formal and the informal cooperation networks which exist in the work of labor judges and the impacts they exert in facing the real work. Although the formal evaluation methods of judges are basically quantitative and individualist and there are no institutional mechanisms which reinforce the peer-to-peer exchanges and value the return of experience, we can observe the creation of cooperation networks within peers. This paper is part of the research “Constructing intersectorality in the field of occupational health: Perspective of Professionals in the Services Network of the City of São Paulo", sponsored by FAPESP. The methodology is based on the concepts of Psychodynamics of Work.

The paper examines three Uruguayan forest companies of wood and paper pulp sector with high capital investment, whose work processes have been modernized and achieved a relative improvement in working conditions. However, it still remains patterns of production and recruitment that come in strong contradiction with those changes. The outsourcing of work processes is associated with the presence of forms of hiring by productivity, which reproduces the conditions in which the physical burden of the day and the competition to achieve the performances required by the companies, exacerbate the difficulties in establishing efficient politics of risk management.

The article analyzes the time spent at work and the time spent at home, taking for granted the assumption that time is the raw material through which gender relations are expressed in social practices. Having the work of Norbert Elias as a starting point, the paper aims to reflect on working time in public and domestic spheres, from a relational perspective. The notions of configuration and interdependencies are articulated to the proposition of the sexual division of labor (Kergoat, 2009). The paper describes the outcomes of research on nursing teams in Brazil using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The centrality of domestic work permeates the lives of the female workers, demanding the management of complex relationships between the domestic and the professional spheres, with implications for health. The text highlights the need for research instruments which are sensitive to the sexual division of labor, in order to support discussions on social policies aiming at social reproduction, as proposed by Dedecca, Ribeiro and Ishii (2009) in the Brazilian context.

Anchored in the works of Ivar Oddone, this paper tries to reconstruct a research path with particular utility for activating a new reflection on how to develop a work psychology centred on the workingman and on his experience. In an upfront and informal style, reflecting Oddone´s character and the “non-rituality” of the documents on which this paper is based, we will start at the first reflections and concepts through which we originally met Oddone: the rediscovery of workers´ experience and its importance for the transformation of work itself. From that, we will derive matters of method as well as Oddone´s proposals for experience construction and for the exploration of its transforming potential. In this regard the “instructions to a double” stand in a place of honour. The text will be developed around the concepts of “language”, “system” and “interface”, materialized in concrete situations on which Oddone´s team has been reflecting. Particular relevance will be given to his System of Concrete Information (SIC, in its original acronym), from which we will try to set some reflections and challenges elicited by Oddone´s works.

The building sector is clearly undergoing the digital transition with the willingness to move from paper to absolute digital. Our research aims to study the transformation of the activity of “lifting of reservations” of a construction site manager using a business application. To grasp the complexity of this activity, a systemic approach seemed relevant and we proposed a theoretical articulation between the situated and incorporated dimensions of the activity and its historical-cultural development. We carried out an ethnographic investigation, for six months, in immersion on a construction site, in the form of an observant participation along with a shadowing observation. The main results indicate that the activity of "lifting of reservations" is part of a culture marked by the importance of the exchanges and the body. The business application transforms this activity which is sometimes strengthened, and other times thwarted. The construction site managers must adapt the use of the application to the site situations.

In this paper, we address the question of possible conceptual ways of thinking about organizations in the making. We begin by introducing the concept of border, which seems heuristic to us, to define organizational development as crossing borders. We then propose to consider the border crossing from an intrinsic point of view by adopting a transitional perspective. To address these transitional phenomena, we articulate two conceptual ergonomics frameworks: the course of action and the instrumental approach. Through two contrasting researches from the point of view of the fields of activity (travel narratives and a process of treating a customer demand in the energy field), we confront the ways to hybridize these two theoretical frameworks conceptually, methodologically and empirically. We highlight what results from this hybridization: the so-called transitional instruments that confer continuity to different scales. Finally, we discuss the perspectives opened by a transitional approach to think about organizational genesis.

A recurring problem in longitudinal research on human activity is the lack of articulation between qualitative analytical models and quantitative synthetic models of the dynamic evolution. This absence creates difficulties in justifying the choices of analysis and synthesis and prevents a deductive approach to longitudinal dynamics. Within the framework of a 3-year longitudinal empirical and technological research on appropriation, this paper discusses the conditions of production and the usefulness of a quantitative synthetic model of the longitudinal complexity of individual activity, in conjunction with a qualitative analytical method. More than the mobilization of a single, pre-data model, the modeling work involves an active articulation between analytical model-methods (classical in activity analysis) and synthetic model-methods. We discuss the contributions and limits of this work with respect to activity analysis in French-language ergonomics and the complexity sciences more often mobilized in human factors.

The aim of this paper, based on a study conducted with a 26-student class engaged in an annual “Arctic Kayak” project, is twofold. The first challenge is to present the dynamics of joint construction, going back and forth between observation analysis and theoretical object. The second is to introduce two new concepts that might benefit the course-of-action research program. The first, “story of experience”, helps designing and conducting observation research to collect and analyze the experience of large groups of actors over a relatively long period of time. Such stories offer a condensed description of students’ individual experiences during the kayak classes, providing multiple angles of analysis. The second concept is “action field”, which is a subset of the “course-of-experience” theoretical object. For an actor and a given unit of time, this corresponds to all elements of its environment to which it attributes characteristics. Analysis of the students’ action fields allowed us to identify evolutions and transformations which are typical of the students’ perceptual judgments during classes. These results clarify the hypothesis of the three processes (in-situation, in-corporation, in-culturation) of appropriation proposed by Theureau.

This paper presents a theoretical reflection to study the processes of work learning and development proceeding in the training environments which intentionally bring together the trainees to other people’s world. These environments are built up from movies of real work or from observations in simulating and/or supported practices situations. These environments seek articulation between mimetic, reflexive, projective and ludic processes. Over the 2011-2020 period, three studies regarding video-training and/or simulation situations in various professional fields (teachers, midwifes and carriage drivers training) have been led within the framework of the empirical research program known as the “Course of action” or “enactive cultural anthropology”. A theoretical modelling has been developed to account for these silent and complex social mimesis processes of linking agents experiences (immersion, imitation, emulation, “acting similarly to”, representation, anticipation). This theoretical reduction based on the hexatomy of the course of action unit opens up some methodological paths to both better comprehend the implicit dimensions of body and sensitive activity, very active in this relation to other’s world, and to better understand the performativity conditions of action (mimesis as a creative remake vs mimesis as a copy of reality).

This paper aims to present the methodological process adopted in a doctoral research (Magalhães, 2019) carried out with two language teacher educators at the State University of Ceará (UECE). In order to (co)construct the discursive corpus, the researcher resorted to the selected dialogues produced during the theoretical-methodological process of self-confrontation, as well as to a 10-hour training course carried out based on the assumptions of the clinical and ergonomic activity approaches. The chosen methodology allowed some reflection on how corpus construction can be made, along with its protagonists, in an interventional research based on the principles of Bakhtinian dialogism and Vigotskian cultural-historical theory of human development. We conclude that, to be detected, a phenomenon needs to be reflected within a socio-historical dynamic; also, the active and constant participation of each professional in a self-confrontational (co)analytical process would enable a greater understanding of work activity, mobilizing its recreation and/or its transformation.

Clinical Sociology is characterized by the commitment of researchers to the construction of actions contrary to the logic of culpability and the individualization of the existential contradictions in the world of work. In this context, the purpose of this study is to understand the methodological and technical supports of two research and intervention devices in Clinical Sociology (the Implication and Research Groups and the Organidrame), in order to explore them as instruments for analyzing the conflicts experienced at work in our society. Through a qualitative, transversal, and descriptive approach, this study is part of the in-service research modality, starting from the production of knowledge from the professional activities developed by the researchers. The paper concludes with an explanation of the differentials of the devices, linked to the possibilities of working collectively on family, social and existential phenomena, but also political, ideological, and managerial ones engendered in the subjects’ work contexts.

Personal care workers (PCW) are responsible for all nursing assistance activities for residents in geriatric organizations. The experienced PCW have two characteristics. On the one hand, they use informal know-how that are essential for achieving the prescribed objectives. At the same time, they constitute a very fragile job category, particularly in terms of occupational health. The objective of our paper is to present the point of view of these workers on the factors relating to the organization of work which cause this fragility. We carried out qualitative research consisting of interviews with twenty experienced PCW with more than ten years of experience, working in four Long-Term Care Centers (CHSLDs) in Quebec (Canada). The three main factors identified by the professionals are : The intensification of the workload causes difficulty in carrying out the prescribed work ; the work activity becomes more complex ; and the distance of the immediate manager prevents collective discussions on the quality of the activities.

This paper offers a reflection about the "taboo" of "seduction work", which appeared during a work investigation on psychodynamic with a group of actors. This has indeed revealed that an important part of an actor/actress real work consists in "seducing" the director, then the audience. At the end of the investigation, part of the collective of actors temporarily refuses to share the resulting report with the director. The argument was the fear of "killing the magic, killing desire" by disclosing this "work of seduction”. Therefore, after a first moment of presentation and methodological discussion, which will put into perspective the clinical elements emerging from the investigation, such elements, and their links with the organization of work, will be exposed. We will then question the meaning of this “taboo” related to the specific difficulties of an actor/actress’s work as it appears in this investigation and to the sufferings they face when performing the seduction work.

Starting from a research in psychodynamics of work, the paper aims to explain the consequences of the new forms of work organization on the activity of deliberation and cooperation of workers, on the one hand, and on their possibilities of development and action, on the other hand. It is particularly concerned with showing how the denial of reality and living labor, supported by managerial transformations in the organization of work, disqualifies the language of activity emanated from workers and bars access to effective work, thus "preventing” deliberation on living labor. Finally, it questions the necessary conditions for a reinstatement of deliberation, so that it takes precedence over a thought invaded by the social imaginary and that can open the way to the challenge of symbolic domination and to the resistance to governance by numbers.

The paper aims at problematizing the process of contemporary work transformations in Chile. Three experiences are described from a clinical point of view (pedagogical, psychosocial and socio-analytical) in different work scenarios. Then, it reflects on the relevance of the clinical approach as a form of intervention, which contributes to the understanding of the workers’ subjective processes, in their individual, group and political dimensions.

This year, spaces to exchange practices have been created by and for young ergonomics practitioners in Peru. This initiative stems from the observation that the ergonomist is an operator as any another, and that as such it is necessary to discuss the daily action in order to advance and build tomorrow’s practice. If these spaces are recent in Peru, they exist for more than 5 years in France and are proposed by the Committee “Jeunes Pratiques en Réflexion” from the French Speaking Ergonomics Society (SELF). In this paper, we propose to tell their genesis, their functioning and the challenges of their development.

Healthcare work in extreme situations is the guiding principle of this paper, which investigates the activity of workers in the NGO Doctors Without Borders, seeking to understand the uses of self in the confrontation with the reality of healthcare work, help and lifesaving. The challenges posed by complex contexts make this work more demanding, exposing the vulnerability of patients, workers and organizations, but also their capacity to confront and overcome difficulties. Schwartz’s ergological perspective, the Psychodynamics of Work and Canguilhem’s conception of health provide the theoretical-methodological direction to the qualitative research that used interviews as well as visits to MSF Operational Centers. The results show a challenging activity, where there is desire, institutional protection and professional appreciation ; but also strain and the pressure for a “normal” life ; conflicts of values, and the relevance of cooperation for the preservation of the sense of work in humanitarian care.

The paper briefly reconstructs the perspectives of approach to the relationship between health and work that contribute to understanding the problem of occupational health in Argentina. In the discussion, their main assumptions and orientations are considered in a stylized way ; subsequently, contributions from the work clinic are considered, discussing some principles that guide these interventions, their scope and challenges. The analysis is positioned in the work clinic -which is just emergent in Argentina- highlighting the contributions that differentiate it from predominant approaches, both at the basic proposals and at its methodological derivations. As a closing, some challenges of the work clinic in our disciplinary field are outlined ; if assumed, they will enrich the debates and current practices of psychology about the tensions that are finding expression in the health area at current work scenarios.

The paper aims at communicating the origin and evolution of the application of psychological science to the multidisciplinary field of occupational health in Cuba. Several factors are taken into account in this process : the social and socio-labor context, with a relatively extensive exposure, given the uniqueness of the Cuban social system. The trajectory of occupational health in the country and its current critical situation. The contributions of the professional practice of psychologists in work scenarios, which gave rise to occupational health psychology as a line of work in research, teaching and professional practice. It emphasizes the need to develop theoretical and methodological work in this area from a psychodynamic point of view, which takes subjectivity into account, for which the cultural historical approach of L. S. Vygotsky is proposed.

This paper aims at exploring a methodological instrument – the accident journey charts –, depicting their structure and the challenges and potential related to their use. The accident journey charts were designed under the scope of a research which focused on the analysis of the circumstances and consequences the work accidents have on the individuals and on the back-to-work process. Additionally, the accident journey charts took an exploratory role in looking at processes of reconstruction of experiences after a work accident, focusing on the institutional path the injured people had to follow. Their use, within the study, was determinant to reveal and depict the paths and journeys of the injured workers after an accident, through the temporal reconstruction of a story and a health event – the accident. It also contributed to a better understanding of the accident’s impact on the injured workers’ life (on the institutional path, on the interactions that took place, and on the feelings and emotions they have been through).

This paper discusses the obstacles the injured workers have to face upon their return to work after the accident. Two studies developed in Portugal support the analysis and the reflection on this issue. One of the studies is the outcome of a request from a company settled in the North of Portugal involving the workers with medical restrains to perform their usual work. The order consisted in an intervention to define an alternative work context. The other study, ordered by the Associação Nacional dos Deficientes e Sinistrados do Trabalho [National Association of Disabled Workers Injured On-the-job], aimed at depicting the workers’ post-accident paths from different activity sectors. Three main categories of obstacles emerge from the findings, namely, when the workers return to the same function with no prior analysis and planning; when the content of the job is assigned without taking the workers’ opinion into account; and when the return neglects the need for the collective work to be reorganized. The concept of the work accident as a turning point in the professional path is reinforced. The implications are always unique and the analysis to that singularity makes it possible to sign specific intervention proposals beyond the individual paths.

This paper aims at exploring a case study of a group of teachers of the 2 nd Cycle of Basic Education, for pupils aged 10 and 11 according to the Portuguese Education System, who belong to the disciplinary group of Visual and Technological Education. The analysis is twofold: it focuses on the one hand on understanding the changes in the work activity and the constraints that resulted from changes in education implemented at national level; and on the other hand on the identification of regulatory strategies developed by the teachers. Based on the fieldwork (individual interviews, activity analysis, documentary analysis) there is evidence of variations and constraints, as a result from the changes, both in the teachers' activity (e.g. increase in the workload) and in their health (e.g. tiredness, anxiety, disappointment). In order to face the constraints they were experiencing, the teachers developed individual, but also group regulatory strategies, demonstrating the protective and supportive effect the group had in the continuity of the work and in the preservation of these teachers' health.

This paper presents a review of the epistemological and theoretical contributions of the Theory of Organisational Action about the relation between organisational change and technology. On the one hand, the rhythm and sophistication of the technological development produce visible consequences on work; on the other hand, the interpretative views about this phenomenon follow different paths, though sharing the same deterministic rationale. Drawing on the possibility to conceive technology as technical rationality of the action process, we propose “Matriosca” approach as a methodological option to interpret technology not an external variable or an exclusive outcome from social construction, but instead as an organisational choice, in which multilevel actions/decisions are combined in interaction to build the process regulation. This proposal is complemented by the presentation of a case in a Portuguese company, whose results provide evidence for the possibility to establish a dialogical process for the material definition of the technological artefacts.

This paper is intended to identify the factors that contribute to accidents involving a CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) Industry Centre in a metalworking company. Through an Ergonomic Work Analysis (AET), it was possible to observe action and regulation strategies used by the workers to deal with the work interfaces. The results show that the most obvious constraints are services unpredictability, difficulty in using instruments, short deadlines, complexity in the machine configuration and physical hazards in the environment. It appears that such constraints require the machine operators certain skills and competencies to manage different work situations. To handle these situations, the operators establish regulatory strategies developed along the experience gained on the job, experience and shared values which make the execution of their duties possible.

During the seventies, the Italian Workers' Model represented the "most complete" participatory action research (PAR) proposal in the field of workers' health. From Italy, it spread and influenced the struggle for the protection of the workers' health of other national contexts. This article presents a historical reconstruction of three experiences in implementing the Italian Workers' Model in Chile during the 90s of the last century in three different working places (sectors). These experiences show, on the one hand, the ability of the model to adapt to new contexts and demands and, on the other hand, the problems linked to the practice of non-delegation. The paper intends to be an historiographical contribution to enrich the study and understanding of the Italian Workers' Model and its past success, pointing at the same time, to rediscover it as a contribution to rethink the current ways in which workers and experts address the occupational health domain.

This paper discusses the preliminary results of a research on the work of cable excavators in the extraction of iron ore. The research responds to the demand of the company, which seeks to develop a program of “high-performance” operators. Based on assumptions of the Clinic of Activity, using interviews, field observation, instructions to the look-alike and self-confrontation, we focus on the collective nature of the work, articulated with the notion of cooperation. That practical-theoretical alternative is opposed to the demand for individualized training, limited to the “operator-athlete”. It is understood that the collective dimension of the activity bases the cooperation, structuring the productive process and the solidarity of the work teams. Preliminary results show that, although the organization does not privilege the logic of cooperation in the demands of productivity and in the preservation of workers’ health and safety, it opens for the debate on this new perspective of collective work.

The work intends to make a study of two cellulose pulp production plants that have had a high impact on the Uruguayan industrial reality. Both plants of international origin, with important differences in the operation of their parent companies, are considered as examples of HRO models in the national industrial production. The type of automated technology implemented has significantly reduced the classic risks of this work. The hypothesis that is sustained in this paper is that these models require for their implementation a model of labor relations different from that which prevails in most of the national companies. The high safety conditions that are developed in the sector are based on a strategy of permanent dialogue on the part of management with a union with a strong corporate orientation, which prioritizes economic goals and tends to reduce the ideological component in its forms of action.

This paper aims to analyze the cooperation in the Mobile Emergency Care Service (SAMU) of a Brazilian city from the perspective of the workers. The theoretical references include the debate on the cooperation developed by the Work Psychodynamics and by some Sociology authors. The study consisted of holding collective interviews with twenty-four SAMU workers. The data was analyzed through the Thematic Content Analysis and the results evidenced the cooperation as determinant in the SAMU service, since the ability to work in a coordinated way results in the efficiency of the service rendered. There are also reflections on strengthening the bonds between workers, mitigating the hierarchical rigidity that characterizes certain health organizations. The exchange of experiences as a way to improve coping with emergencies is a common practice among workers, reinforcing the relevance of cooperation in SAMU service.

This paper analyzes the work of nursing technicians in Brazil, in primary health care and hospital emergency. 48 interviews were analyzed; their scripts sought to understand who these workers are, how they build the relationships between training and labor insertion, and how they perceive social relations at work. From the analyzes emerged three thematic categories: the (un)predictable trajectories of nursing technicians and the search for a more socially recognized work; times of precariousness of the ways of being a worker and the sufferings of the work of the nursing technicians; only dissatisfaction or multiple possibilities of implication with the work? A tendency for the training of super-qualified technicians is configured, who keep on, to a great extent, performing the same activities, with little freedom of choice in their professional trajectories. The results show overload and difficult working conditions, which coexist with the presence of feelings of satisfaction associated with the affinity with the production of care, the resolubility of care and learning.

The Belgian occupational diseases compensation system results in massive inequalities between men and women. The compensation of permanent work disabilities caused by occupational diseases represents accounts for the major part of the budget of the Occupational Diseases Fund. On 10 compensated cases, there are approximately 9 men and one woman. This paper develops hypothesis on the legal mechanisms which cause such inequalities. It underlines the role played by medical expertise at collective level (in the definition of a list of occupational diseases) and at individual level (in the decisions of accepting or rejecting workers’ claims). The sub-registration of occupational diseases for women contributes to a vicious circle: prevention is less systematically organized in numerous female jobs and this situation strengthens the stereotype that female jobs are at lower risk from the point of view of occupational health.

This paper´s objective is to discuss the notion that competence makes use of the theoretical reference to ergology considering competence as acting here and now, activity in motion. Empirical research of a qualitative nature was carried out with 18 managers from the hotel sector in João Pessoa and Campina Grande - PB, Brazil, making use of a semi structured interview script. The findings show that these managers’ competencies are based on real work situations they have encountered, developed and updated in a demanding workplace full of variability. It was established that the manager´s job demands constant handling of unforeseen situations, which requires rapid and creative decisions. It also calls for these professionals to manage work situations with caution and astuteness, courses of action that make use of different components for the competent practice of their activity.

The current paper analyzes the experience with the Program of Health, Gender and Labor Formation in Schools, developed in Brazil, and its methodological basis – Extended Research and Intervention Community (CAPI). It was conceived as a means to develop the ability of understanding-changing the relationships among labor, processes of subjectivation and health-illness within schools, according to the dialogue-confrontation between the scientific knowledge and the knowledge resulting from the experience of female workers in schools. The main epistemological and theoretical-methodological contributions came from “Modelo Operário Italiano (MOI)” – Italian Worker Model – and from the ergological demarche. Specifically in the city of João Pessoa (Paraíba), research professionals and female workers ventured in a changing-comprehensible action over the harming situations. Even taking under consideration the challenges that were faced, this action has shown the potential of such experiment on promoting health, on changing the labor conditions in schools and on reinforcing the female workers’ political intervention capacity.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory research focused on the career of primary and secondary school teachers as they approach retirement in France. While the government implemented measures to lengthen careers, it is observed that many teachers retire before the retirement age set for this profession. Through in-depth interviews with women and men in their fifties, focusing on the work activity, the strategies implemented in the daily work and their impact on their private life, we sought to understand the reasons for the early retirement and the difficulties encountered at the end of the career. The objective was to study the dual problem of ageing at work and ageing because of the work, so both the ageing issue and the problems related to burnout. The interviews revealed that the more the teachers advance in age, the more the human cost of the work increases, despite the experience acquired in the meantime. Health problems increase, the fatigue related to the activity becomes more noticeable, the need for recovery is more important; the sensitivity to the constraints of the working situations increases. Their feeling of personal efficiency decreases, generating concerns on their ability to “hold on until the end of the career”. It forces them to more and more regulative strategies at the same time at work and in their private life. Sometimes, it consists in a reduction of working hours or, in the ultimate situations, in early departures. Based on these results, we propose avenues of reflection about working conditions which could help preventing older workers from leaving their jobs. The approach we present is defined according to the gender lens.

The paper presents the results of the research Working Relations and Conditions in the Granite Extraction in the city of Vila Pavão - ES: understand the work to think about the training, whose objective was to understand the working relations/conditions in the mineral sector, unveiling aspects related to the training of workers in granite quarries. The qualitative research was accomplished through the review of literature and documents, observation of workplaces in several companies and semi-structured interviews with workers of this sector in the northern region of Espírito Santo/Brazil. The results point to the strategic importance of the miners’ work activity in the development of the mineral sector in the region. The effort to understand the working relations/conditions in the sector under research provided knowledge about the process of extraction, the vocational training on the job and other aspects regarding the human training of workers as miners.

This paper proposes a reflection on work in call centers given the proposals presented by the anthropotechnological approach. The issues addressed relate to researches conducted especially in the 1990s and 2000s in different companies located in Brazil, where health problems, such as RSI / WMSD, together with mental disorders, emerged with high levels of incidence and prevalence. The results of the chosen approaches, activity ergonomics and work psychodynamics, were discussed in terms of the widespread dissemination of this type of work throughout different countries, setting a type of transfer and technology. Thus, the transfer of forms of work organization inspired in assumptions derived from Taylorism, disregarding the reality experienced by the workers and the uniqueness of each context, are questioned.

Two paradoxes seem to appear throughout Alain Wisner’s Anthropotechnology. The first one, from his studies on human labour, leads him to assert that all human beings have equal potentialities, while maintaining at the same time that this universality emerges through history and inheritance which are always specific. The second one leads him to request the cooperation of various areas of human sciences, but without a critical approach, as if they could disregard the consequences of the first paradox.Firstly, it is suggested how it is possible, through the ergological approach, to clear up the first paradox by going deeper into this concept of activity, largely inherited from the wisnerian ergonomy. From an anthropological point of view, it is possible to define live as a universal effort for partly redesigning the frame of local norms which surround human beings and groups.Secondly, the question is : through which crucial scenes the «setting in history» of this universality is developed? Three knots of this « setting in history » are successively considered: body, technical activity and social building of the various spaces where living together proved efficient.In accordance with these points, the basis for a treatment of the second paradox seem yet to be given: if human activity is a permanent crucible for « renormalisations », it constantly reproduces social configurations so that concepts and categories of the human sciences are always partly unprepared in regard to them. Then the question is: how this concept of activity which runs across them all is refracted or taken into account by these sciences? To conclude: if this paper entirely assumes the first paradox, it cannot accept the second one.

This paper is repositioning anthropotechnology in the history of work sciences. It defines this disciplinary field, through the singularities of its theoretical and practical postures. Between anthropology and ergonomics, anthropotechnology was carved over its various field work experiences, a particular space in the scientific and pragmatic horizon.

The processes of technological innovation involve big challenges for the different disciplines interested in work issues, taking into account the impacts that the above mentioned processes carry, among others: on a cultural level, in terms of the diversity of the socio-cultural contexts where these technologies are transferred. From a cognitive point of view, such innovations involve changes in the content of the tasks, in the mechanisms of appropriation of technical objects, and in the modification of schemes of utilization of the appliances.This study specifically addresses the impact produced by the introduction of electronics in the components of the car, on the work of operators trained in "traditional mechanics ", focusing on the processes of appropriation of new techniques for diagnosing faults in vehicles. In particular, this paper focuses on the activity of maintenance operators and independent car repair workshops, organizations that are outside the official circuit of car dealerships and therefore not dependent on the manufacturers for the provision of technical devices (scanners, oscilloscopes and manuals).The information collected shows that the previous systemic reasoning, of the operators, turns out to be an invariant that allows them to appropriate the changes introduced by technological innovations in fault diagnosis tasks, in the task of diagnosis of faults allowing to compensate the deficits that reveal "a technological poorly adjusted transfer”.

This paper contextualizes the anthropotechnological program within cognitive anthropology, and particularly explicit principles of anthropology that gave rise to the research program on "course of action" which, as anthropotechnology gradually detached from the French speaking ergonomics. Since the late '80s until now, Jacques Theureau shows how the wisnerien program fits, met and still shares the concerns raised by an «activity analysis» deeply influenced by cognitive anthropology.