Orientadores: Ângela Maria Carneiro Araújo, Paulo Eduardo Arantes / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T03:51:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Abilio_LudmilaCosthek_D.pdf: 1782395 bytes, checksum: 6b10b0b28d112671ba07ac5324dd40c8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Analisa-se o trabalho de revendedoras de cosméticos de uma empresa brasileira. Discute-se a ausência de formas-trabalho dessa ocupação. A centralidade do trabalho para a acumulação capitalista na atualidade estrutura toda a análise. No primeiro capítulo, são apresentados resultados da pesquisa de campo, por meio da caracterização de tipos sociais, associando-se o perfil socioeconômico e a trajetória ocupacional de algumas revendedoras à sua relação com as vendas. Também são examinados aspectos da produção e distribuição da empresa. No segundo capítulo, atualiza-se a discussão do trabalho informal no contexto das políticas neoliberais e das reconfigurações das relações de trabalho nas últimas décadas, assim como do regime de dominância da valorização financeira (Chesnais, 2005). São abordados o Sistema de Vendas Diretas e o trabalho feminino nesse contexto. O terceiro capítulo trata da relação entre a marca e o trabalho das revendedoras. Parte-se da marca como o que hoje torna reconhecível o movimento do capital portador de juros (Marx, 1988) e sua relação com as formas contemporâneas de exploração do trabalho. É aprofundada a análise da relação entre dominância da valorização financeira e precarização do trabalho. No quarto capítulo, essas formas são estudadas mais profundamente; aborda-se a relação entre inovações tecnológicas, trabalho informal e trabalho precarizado. Discute-se também a extensão de uma perda de formas do trabalho que é transferida para a esfera do consumo, examinando-se a imbricação entre trabalho e consumo na atividade das revendedoras, dentre outras atividades. O último capítulo enfoca a subsunção contemporânea do trabalho. São elementos centrais da análise: as indistinções contemporâneas entre tempo de trabalho e de não-trabalho; as formas atuais de envolvimento subjetivo do trabalhador; uma crítica a teorias do trabalho imaterial, especialmente à de André Gorz (2005); a permanência da teoria do valor para a compreensão da exploração do trabalho. Chega-se então à discussão final sobre a centralidade do trabalho no contemporâneo, esmiuçando-se a relação entre o trabalho das revendedoras e a acumulação da empresa / Abstract: This thesis presents an investigation of the relations between the work of resellers and a Brazilian cosmetic company. The current centrality of labour to capitalist accumulation guides the analysis. On the first chapter, the results of fieldwork are presented. The economic and social profile of the saleswomen and their professional path is seen alongside of their relationship with the selling activity based on a definition of different social types. Some aspects of both the production and the distribution of the company are also examined. On chapter two, the debate of informality is updated according to the context of neoliberal policies, and the transformation of labour relations that happened over the past thirty years. The finance-led regime of accumulation is also taken into account. Direct Selling System and female work are analyzed based on this historical context. On chapter three, the work of the saleswomen is analyzed in light of the strength of the company's brand. The brand is understood here as an immaterial form that enables the recognition of the movement of the interest-bearing capital (Marx, 1988) in its relation to contemporary forms of labour exploitation. The analysis of the relation between the finance-led regime of accumulation and labour casualisation is then deepened. On chapter four, the contemporary forms of labour exploitation are examined, and the relation between technological innovations, informal labour and labour casualization are more profoundly investigated. The loss of labour forms to the sphere of consumption is also analyzed here, based on the imbrications between labour and consumption in the activity of the resellers. On the last chapter, the contemporary subordination of labour is discussed. The main aspects of this chapter are the current lack of distinction between labour time and leisure; the contemporary forms of workers subjective involvement; a critique of immaterial theories, especially that of Gorz (2003); the endurance of the value theory (Marx, 1985) in labour exploitation unveiling and comprehension. Finally, the centrality of labour is discussed in a broader perspective; the relation between the resellers' work and the company accumulation is also scrutinized / Doutorado / Sociologia / Doutor em Ciências Sociais

The rise of on-demand platform work typified by Uber has intensified a decades-long trend away from standard work relationships and toward contingent work structures, characterized by the unbounding of work in space and time. Yet many workers have always toiled outside of a traditional workplace and “standard” schedule. My dissertation examines how contingent workers in four different industries navigate unstable work schedules across unsettled work geographies, drawing on 120 interviews with agricultural and oil and gas workers in Texas and on-demand delivery workers and university adjuncts in New York City. Across these “old” and “new” cases of contingent work performed across rural and urban landscapes, work processes restructure space and time in such a way that workers do not know when, for how long, or where they will have work. I call this temporal and spatial instability positional uncertainty – repurposing an oilfield term for the inability to pinpoint precisely where one is at any given moment in the drilling process. The experience of positional uncertainty forces workers to subordinate the rhythms and geographies of their own lives to the temporal and spatial imperatives of their respective labor processes, leading to time struggle (unpaid periods of waiting or “zombie time” and overwork) and challenges in space (related to the bifurcation or unbounding, respectively, of the spaces of work and home). Workers respond, first, by doing boundary work, and second, by telling both critical and anchoring stories in attempts to bring coherence and meaning to the day-to-day and the long-term. The dissertation highlights the integral role of time and space in structuring social life, the active maneuvers by which workers struggle to re-configure time and space to produce coherence and make a life for themselves, and the short- and long-term costs of the transfer of risk onto workers through positional uncertainty. The strategic comparison reveals parallel strategies across disparate cases in response to the warping of time and space and illuminates how positional uncertainty exacerbates deep-set structural inequalities.