Abstract

BEDOYA-DORADO, Cristian. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF FEAR IN THE WORKPLACE: ANALYSIS FROM THE NOTION OF AFFECTIVE ATMOSPHERE. Innovar [online]. 2019, vol.29, n.73, pp.25-37. ISSN 0121-5051.  https://doi.org/10.15446/innovar.v29n73.78009.

Life in the workplace constitutes a source of experiences that are signified and constructed by the subjects to organize and explain their social world. These experiences include emotions, which have implications for the work. In the last decades, the study of emotions has gone through different theoretical domains, which have included the Semiotics of Materiality, the Actor-Network theory, and Performativity to the idea of the language-focused social construction of reality. The purpose of this article is to analyze how is fear constructed in the workplace. For this, the research took a qualitative approach using discourse analysis as research method. The analysis is included within the affective atmosphere theoretical proposal, collective affectivity, and social psychology. The results revealed that fear is co-constructed in the context of work as a hybrid between a discourse of the body as materiality, and a discourse of thoughts and feelings as a social dimension. This affect is mobilized and set in the framework of the social relationships in the socio-material system on which the affective atmospheres of workers take place. Likewise, it identified that fear is a diverse phenomenon, narrated under aesthetics that recreate the experiences and life at the workplace.

Keywords : Fear; discourse; affective atmosphere; socio-materiality.

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