COMMERCIAL, INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL CONGRESS: Representations about work and the worker (1928-1930)
Commercial Congress; Producing Classes; Work; Worker; Professional education; Commercial Association
This dissertation has as its object of study the speeches of the Minas Gerais elites or producing classes at the Commercial, Industrial, and Agricultural Congress of Belo Horizonte, held in 1928. At the Congress, the theses about the increase the involvement of the State were discussed, in which Professional Education figured as a debated thesis. To identify and analyze the representations about work and the worker, in these speeches, the documentary research methodology was used. As such. It took as sources the newspapers of trade associations, newspapers of the time, as well as the minutes of the directors and records of the trade associations from Belo Horizonte and Juiz de Fora, organizers of the Class Congresses in the period in question. To analyze the discourses of the producing classes, the theoretical-methodological intersection of Cultural History with the History of Education was proposed. Thus, an analysis of the sources was developed, associating the notions of representations, by Roger Chartier, and strategy and tactics, by Michel de Certeau, to capture such notions present in the discourses of economic and political elites. Therefore, it is documental and bibliographic research. As a result, it was found that in the 28th Congress, professional education was used as a strategy, employed by the producing classes, to radiate a new representation of work, linked to Taylorism and Americanism. It was also verified the tactics of the producing classes and their versatility to aggregate the discourse of the engineer and sanitarian to infiltrate the state bureaucratic and political apparatus and thus minimize the direct conflict with workers to make their interests prevail through the State.