Abstract

SENORANS, Dolores  and  PACIFICO, Florencia Daniela. Los trabajos que valen. Diálogos a partir de dos etnografías junto a organizaciones de trabajadores de la economía popular. Astrolabio [online]. 2023, n.30, pp.61-92. ISSN 1668-7515.  http://dx.doi.org/10.55441/1668.7515.n30.33889.

This article analyses how work is defined, experienced and valued in experiences of collective organization in the popular economy. It establishes a dialogue between the results of two ethnographic studies with two organizations that form a part of the Popular Economy Workers Union/Confederation. While academic inquiries on these experiences have pointed out that the appeal to an identity as workers lay the foundations of their claims for rights to the State, here we will seek to show how the construction of an expanded definition of work permeates the daily practices of those who belong to these organizations. Drawing on anthropological perspectives on labor that moved beyond the limited definitions of hegemonic economic models and contributions of feminist economics, we seek to show that the practices developed in these productive units and their interactions with the State evidence the overlap of what is usually conceptualized as productive and reproductive, related to labor and the community, giving rise to a reinvention of what is understood as “work” and in particular as worthwhile or “productive” work. We contend that these ways of valuing, ranking and disputing what work is and what jobs are socially relevant assert the value of those who perform them in their struggle for the recognition of their rights.

Keywords : Popular Economy; Work; Reproduction of Life; Collective Organization; Ethnography.

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