Immaterial precarious work? A survey of working conditions in technology companies

• Grant number: 15/02070-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2015
• End date: April 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Henrique José Domiciano Amorim
• Grantee: Bruna Thaís Banzzi Fávaro
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 11/23506-1 - Social class and value in contemporary social theory, AP.JP

Abstract

The research project presented here evaluates the arguments arising from the 1990s discussing the changes in the capitalist production process and laying immaterial labor as the central activity of contemporary societies. These debates have arisen consider that such changes would have modified the logic of commodity production theory involving the concept of social classes and Karl Marx's political struggle. Nevertheless, the logic of immaterial production still seems to reproduce the dynamics of commodification and the division into classes. So, it is the objective of this project to identify what's new and what is preserved in immaterial labor relations and to analyze how these changes in the production process or not contributed to the intensification and casualization of the workforce. Thus, a literature review on the topic of immaterial labor is performed, and analysis of a telecommunications company, in order to understand the relation between the development and the precariousness of work.