Search

Resumo O artigo propõe contribuir para a saúde mental dos trabalhadores. Para tanto, buscou-se, como pano de fundo, um breve contexto histórico do trabalho. A expansão do modelo capitalista, na segunda metade do século XX, acarretou um aumento progressivo do tempo e da dedicação ininterrupta ao emprego, o que repercutiu sobre a saúde do trabalhador. Este trabalho avaliou o perfil do trabalhador de sucesso, o sofrimento presente no contexto do trabalho e como Dejours e Nietzsche percebem tragicamente o sofrimento, como inerente à vida, inevitável. Além disso, buscou entender como ambos percebem a utilização de defesas contra o sofrimento nessas organizações de trabalho e as estratégias defensivas contra o sofrimento, que podem trazer o equilíbrio ou o desequilíbrio. E, por último, enfatizou a importância de profissionais críticos e de um espaço que facilite o processo de sofrimento como equilíbrio. A pesquisa adotou o método qualitativo, por meio de uma revisão de literatura, utilizando como referencial teórico a Psicodinâmica do Trabalho e a Filosofia. Identificou-se, com base nos autores estudados, que a dor e o sofrimento são inerentes ao trabalho e que ambos têm caráter constituinte na subjetividade dos trabalhadores.

In recent years, theorists have contended that we should move to a mode of social organisation where work and the values attached to it are no longer central, a 'post-work society'. For these theorists, the modern ideology of work is intrinsically unjust, even irrational and no longer suited to the challenges of our time. The article presents an alternative response to the problems of work and employment. Rather than moving to a 'post-work' society, the article argues that we should transform the world of work, precisely by keeping in view why working is important to individuals and the community. In fact, it is not realistic to believe that human societies could ever do without work. Because human societies are by necessity work societies, and work, if organised correctly, entails many goods, we cannot really, and we should not, wish work away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Pretexto is the property of Revista Pretexto and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

O artigo apresenta possíveis contribuições do psicanalista francês Christophe Dejours para a teoria do reconhecimento, de Axel Honneth. A partir da tese de Honneth sobre o fundamento normativo dos conflitos sociais, discute-se como a atual configuração do mundo do trabalho desenvolve impedimentos para reivindicações morais na terceira esfera do reconhecimento. Com base nos estudos da psicodinâmica do trabalho, pretende-se demonstrar que na luta contra o sofrimento no trabalho os sujeitos empregam defesas psicológicas que permitem afastar o risco de manifestações psicopatológicas ao mesmo tempo em que promovem um tipo de alienação que atenua a consciência moral.

Recent social theory has begun to reconsider how theactivityof work can contribute to well-being or autonomy under the right conditions. However, there is no consensus on what this contribution consists in, and so on precisely which normative principles should be marshalled to critique harmful or repressive forms of workplace organisation. This paper argues that Richard Sennett’s concept of work ascraftprovides a normative standard against which the organisation of work can be assessed, especially when explained within a broadly Aristotelian account of the conditions of human flourishing. More precisely, the paper argues that a craft norm can meet the standards of social critique within the Frankfurt School tradition of Critical Theory, as this tradition has been interpreted by Axel Honneth. Honneth himself now rejects craft norms as too utopian and parochial to inform Critical Theory under contemporary economic conditions. In reply, this paper uses sociological studies of call centre workers to illustrate how work motivated by craft ideals can be sustainable rather than utopian, and how craftsmanship can inform social critique across a wide variety of industries and management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalytic perspectives (such as the Kleinian/Bionian and Lacanian literature) have made significant contributions to the study of affect in organizations. While some have pointed out the affects involved in work tasks, most of this literature generally focuses on the affects linked to organizational life (such as learning, leadership, motivation, power, or change). The center of attention is not on affects associated with the work process itself. We draw from the French psychodynamic theory of Christophe Dejours—who is yet to be known in English language organization studies—to make the following contributions. First, we show the relationship between affect and working by discussing Dejours’ notions of affective suffering, the real of work, the significance of the body, and ‘ordinary sublimation’. Second, we advance critical research in organization studies by demonstrating the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject. Third, the article reinterprets Menzies’ well-known hospital case study to illustrate how Dejours’ theory extends existing psychoanalytical approaches, and especially to point to the significant role of the work collective in supporting workers to work well. We conclude by suggesting that if the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject is acknowledged, it follows that resistance strategies, and work collectives’ struggle for emancipation, should focus on reclaiming work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although sociologists and psychologists have documented various motivations for working, the concept of work as essentially disutility or undesirable retains broad resonance among influential economists and social theorists. These concepts imply that workers will tend to avoid or ‘shirk’ their work task unless subjected to management controls. Yet emerging counter-narratives have sought to retrieve and develop alternative concepts of work as craft, where workers are motivated to work well or be recognized for doing so. On these approaches, management controls can decrease the quality of the final outputs. This article uses a case study of cleaners in Australia to challenge influential representations of workers as prone to ‘shirking’ and the interpretation of management control to which these perspectives lead. The article argues that craft concepts of work derived from Richard Sennett and contemporary recognition theory provide alternative narratives of how workers can derive satisfaction from working well even in ‘menial’ tasks, and how craft motivations can drive workers to subvert management controls to uphold rather than diminish service quality. In this way, craft theories reveal limitations of overly instrumental concepts of work, and also help conceptualize how workers’ attachment to their tasks can drive resistance to management control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, following the social and subjective consequences of the neoliberal wave, there seems to be a renewed interest in work as occupying a central place in social and subjective life. For the first time in decades, both sociologists and critical theorists once more again regard work as a major constituent of the subject’s identity and thus as an appropriate object of analysis for those engaged in critique of the social pathologies. The aim of this article is to present a succinct analysis of Axel Honneth’s thoughts on the concept of work and to propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory. To this end, this article will embark upon a reappraisal of the importance of the material and psychological dimensions of the subject’s interactions in the world of work. It aims to demonstrate that the normative demands associated with these dimensions are, like the normative demands of recognition, immanent and universal. In other words, it will argue that the normative ideals related to individuals’ bodily and psychic life (in the workplace and beyond) are not necessarily utopian in the negative sense (abstract and unrealistic). If this is indeed the case, theorists could take these normative demands for emancipation as a guide to analyzing the sociological, political and moral implications of the transition from the ‘Fordist’ to the ‘post-Fordist’ organization of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the idea of a politics of misrecognition of working activity. We begin by introducing a distinction between the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one's identity, and the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one's activity. We then consider the political significance of the latter kind of recognition and misrecognition in the context of work. Drawing first on empirical research undertaken by sociologists at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, we argue for a differentiated concept of recognition that shows the politics of misrecognition at work to be as much a matter of conflict between modes of recognition as it is a struggle for recognition as opposed to non-recognition. The differentiated concept of recognition which allows for this empirical insight owes much to Axel Honneth's theory. But as we argue in the section that follows, this theory is ambiguous about the normative content of the expectations of recognition that are bound up with the activity of working. This in turn makes it unclear how we should understand the normative basis of the politics of the misrecognition of what one does at work. In the final sections of the article, we suggest that the psychodynamic model of work elaborated by Christophe Dejours and others at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris can shed light on this matter; that is to say, it can help to clarify the normative significance and political stakes of the misrecognition of working activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to extract the most significant social-theoretical and philosophical implications of four books published by Christophe Dejours. It examines the indissoluble continuity between the corporeal and cognitive capacities of the human subject and its importance for moral and political reflection. It also establishes the link between social violence and work within the perspective of a psychodynamic approach.

This article aims to present a new perspective on contemporary debates about the transformations of work and employment, and their impacts on individuals and communities, by focusing on the writings of Christophe Dejours. Basically, the article attempts to show that Dejours' writings make a significant contribution to contemporary social theory. This might seem like an odd claim to make, since Dejours' main training was in psychoanalysis and his main activity is the clinical, psychiatric study of pathologies linked to work. However, in the course of his career, Dejours has greatly extended this initial clinical interest, and by integrating insights from philosophy and other social sciences, has developed a highly sophisticated and consistent theoretical model of work. Starting from a narrow psychopathological focus, Dejours has gradually developed a full-blown theoretical defence of the centrality of work. The article outlines the main features of Dejours' metapsychological model, and the structuring role played by work in his theory of subjective identity. This allows us to outline the originality of his approach by comparison with some of the most significant current accounts of the impact of transformations of work and employment conditions upon individuals and societies, notably Honneth, Castel and Sennett. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author attempts to retrieve materialism in the theory of recognition of professor Axel Honneth. He cites that in an earlier project, the professor tried to reconstruct historical materialism for the purpose of reactualisation by returning to the anthropological materialism. The theory of recognition as a continuation of the emancipatory project of German philosopher Karl Marx is tackled. Also provided is an example aimed at illustrating what critical theory could look like with the paradigmatic case of work.

Intended as a contribution to the Waiting in Pandemic Times  project Collection in response to COVID-19, this short theoretical paper views the coronavirus crisis in terms of its unpredictable effects on the interior life of the National Health Service (NHS) workforce. Written immediately following the suspension (due to the pandemic) of an ethnographic investigation of waiting in a general practice in London, it tracks the first signs that working definitions of time would struggle to survive the onset of a temporality of acute crisis in the NHS. The paper considers what it might mean for healthcare practitioners at this particular moment in the NHS's history to be living through an experience of 'the ordinary' breaking down. It also follows hints of new temporal modes of care appearing during this same period when one kind of crisis in the NHS has been put on hold, and another (the crisis of coronavirus) is just getting underway., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2020 Davies S.)