Understanding the world of labor in contemporary: revisiting Robert Castel.

Abstract

This paper discusses some recent theoretical achievements about the world of contemporary work and seeks over all to answer two questions proposed by José Ricardo Ramalho e Marco Aurélio Santana, in their paper entitled Trabalhadores, sindicatos e a nova questão social (Workers, syndicate and new social issue), which approaches the news meanings of work. For this purpose making reference to the analytic approach of Robert Castel, especially his work entitled Metamorfoses da questão social: uma crônica do salário (Metamorphoses of the social question: a chronicle of the wage), in dialogue with researches on the same subject. The very meaning of work is brought into discussion on account of some
features that reflect the recent dynamics of flexible capitalism.