Notes on policies of research productivity in Brazil: Consequences for academic life, workplace ethics and workers´ health

Abstract

This article is part of a sequence of papers that are fruit of sociological research carried out over the course of a decade on the search for care and health practices and their possible relationship to the labor regimes in contemporary capitalism as well asreflections on the social consequences of educational and scientific and technological policies at the higher education and particularly at the post-graduate level in Brazil. Our reflections have evolved from an initial perception that there is a growing search for ways to care for one’s health in our society to the realization that for a large part of the population, work, which has become merely a job (difficult and precarious) has undergone considerable loss of meaning as far as the very act of working is concerned. Furthermore, we perceive the suffering generated by the loss of collective values and meanings around work and being a worker that belonged to a past moment in culture and social life, as well as the loss of the importance and prestige of human labor within the contemporary productive structure, linked to the technological transformations that are currently underway, generating malaise and collective illness. Keywords: public health, productivity, workplace health, work ethics, sociology of health.