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.