A crise da modernidade pela lente do trabalho: As percepções locais dos processos globais.

Abstract

This investigation examines the salaried labor crisis indirectly approaching modernity in its promises and achievements sphere. It seeks to point out and criticize the objective and subjective social implications relating with the human labor issue. If modernity, in the beginning, has disclosed new and auspicious possibilities to human labor, the deviations and maneuvers that have characterized its course yielded pernicious results. Following the tempo of capitalism progress, a growing asymmetry between capital and labor is observed, with a clear advantage of the first one. The labor relations are being successively redefined during the course of modernity, from Taylorism and Fordism to flexible production. In the Brazilian case, this picture is also framed by economic stagnation and revenue concentration. Beyond the economic point of view, however, the so guided modernity leaves a deep impression upon the system of ideas of social groups. If the mental configuration of labor and of its relating circumstance is a constructive element of behaviors and actions, this research aims at investigating the event of this phenomenon in Caçapava, a city of the state of São Paulo. With a background of industrialization, the small community faces today the crisis of the labor market and its undesirable sub-products, such as poverty and violence. Between the wide modernity trends and the local experience, between general and specific, far and near, the investigation seeks to emphasize the contrast and formulate criticism. If the focused town intends to find a way out of its condition, the research upholds the idea that the actors concerned shall imperatively understand what is interwoven with the local crisis.