Abstract

TENORIO LIMA, José Rodolfo. Agricultural mechanization, work and subjectivity: The Theory of Social Representations as a resource for understanding the changes occurred in Brazilian sugarcane fields. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.44, n.1, pp.73-96.  Epub Nov 21, 2021. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v44n1.87673.

Throughout its history, the Brazilian sugarcane sector has been marked by innumerable movements of production restructuration that materialized in an increase of the productivity and capital expansion. Over time, the sector was continuously transformed due to the incorporation of technologies in the various stages of agricultural production. The technologies, particularly those of a mechanical nature, are carried out by agricultural machines and replace the "living labour" existing in the cane fields. Harvest mechanization has expanded in recent years and this has had direct implications on the work process. This new context, marked by a greater number of machines occupying the sugarcane fields, causes "strangeness" for the working subjects who experience these changes, and their subjectivities also change. Many of the investigations carried out on the matter conclude that the new technologies incorporated are generating productivity, reducing costs, and mainly, saving labour force. However, little is known about the meaning of mechanization for subjects who are directly impacted by such actions. In other words, there are no answers to the following question: how do workers interpret and understand the process of agricultural mechanization that occurred in the sugarcane sector and that ends up directly interfering in their work processes? This text aims to present the Theory of Social Representations as a resource to investigate the subjectivity of sugar cane workers and, thus, be another way to understand the modernizing phenomenon that the sector's work processes have been going through in recent years. With the proposal of the text it is expected to oxygenate the debate on work processes in the sugarcane sector and, thus, to contribute to the discussion that involves a sector so present in Brazilian economic history and that has undergone technological changes in recent years.

Descriptors: agriculture, sugar cane, mechanization, agricultural workers.

Keywords : agricultural mechanization; mechanized harvest; rural worker; subjecti-vity; Theory of Social Representations; world of sugarcane work.

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