Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article analyzes a few aspects and problems of the conservative modernization of capitalism in Brazil, focusing on the post-war and military dictatorship period in Brazil, which started in 1964 and became more radical in 1968. The relationship between culture, education, and politics are analyzed using Roberto Schwarz's "Cultura e política, 1964-69" (Culture and politics, 1964-69) essay as a reference.

An exploratory and descriptive study, conducted with 38 nursing assistants and 17 nursing technicians who worked in the Family Health Strategy (ESF), in the municipalities of Acaraú, Chaval, Coreaú, Granja, Marco and Santana do Acaraú, in the state of Ceará, from March to April of 2005. The objective was to trace the profile and qualification needs of these professionals. The profile showed that most were married women, between 31 and 40 years of age, having completed high school, receiving a minimum income, and working in the rural area. The main qualification needs they pointed out include biosafety, home care, methods and techniques of treating wounds and probes, sterilization, educational activities and receiving the patient. Most of the needs mentioned are techniques, suggesting deficiencies in professional training. The authors emphasize the importance of a permanent policy of education, to improve the qualification of this professional segment and its work in the ESF.

This is a discussion about Brazilian higher education, using as a parameter specialization courses in the postgraduate program based on the analysis of the Programa da Residência Multiprofissional em Saúde [Multidisciplinary Residency Program in Health-care], known as a postgraduate program. We used historical and documental research as a tool for analysis of the problems faced in the training model proposed in the Program and presented by the ministries of Education and Health as the basis for the consolidation of the national policy of health education. Our results show the importance of the postgraduate program in healthcare education. However, it's irregular offering and, in most cases, not academic, has characterized a limited model from a commercial perspective, highlighting the lack of public policies that ensure proper qualification. A Multidisciplinary Residency in Health-care aims to be a new strategy for policies of permanent education that by focusing on non-medical professional groups from the area, promotes the production of the necessary conditions for changes in the still hegemonic restrictive medical care model, of attention in healthcare. The question is whether the interference in the educational model will contribute to better professionals in the area or if it limits the structure of the network of public services by offering a field of precarious work.

This article discusses, in a comparative way, the objective reality and representations of men and women concerning their work in medicine and the interfaces with the domestic sphere. Discrimination, incentives, and obstacles in careers are analyzed from the perspective of gender and generations. Data was collected at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), integrating quantitative and qualitative techniques. The results indicate that in order to explain career incentive factors, women seem to give more importance to private life elements while men put more emphasis on external factors. Both stress the importance of having a 'model' professional as ideal for professional practice and a positive academic environment with institutional support and good relationships with coworkers. Among the obstacles are overwork, lack of time, and financial difficulties, observing that there are differences of gender in regards to family life and personal problems. Women's 'comparative advantages' were highlighted in carrying out their activities. This study may contribute to the implementation of positive actions to improve the conditions of work life and gender equity, in both the public and private spheres.

Studies in the last decades have shown that teachers' illnesses originate in the paradox between their mission and the invisibility of teaching in the eyes of the school organization. The objective of this study is to identify possible intersections between the excess and strictness of the demands, made without providing the conditions needed for the required teaching work, and the reports of frustration among those professionals. To assess the work of nine teachers in the classroom, the authors adopted the methodology of work activity ergonomics. It was found that the teachers, after intervening countless times to separate students fighting in class, at other times do not turn their attention to the fact. In such moments they ignore the lack of discipline, seemingly expressing a strategy to deal with the disturbance. The results indicate the preparation of a planning model with time estimates for the numerous activities established by the school's new mission, aiming to reduce crowding in the classroom and avoid the overlapping of tasks, which contribute markedly to the students' disruptions.

The present work analyzes the effects of the 2001-3 crisis in Argentina - considered as a result of a set "accumulated insufficiencies" that got entangled in between economy and politics - in the country's sanitation policy. Differently from what was occurring in other sectors, the expression of the crisis in the health sector was more linked to the demands of people responsible for health services management than to collective actions. Both the peculiarity of being an agenda "mediatized" by distinct governmental actors and the health sector management demand focusing on the intergovernmental relations plot resulting from Argentina's institutional organization. The present work aims at understanding how the challenge of rebuilding State legitimacy during the crisis affected the governmental actors position within the institutional framework where Argentina's sanitation issues are dealt with, beginning with the reconstruction of dynamic and logical processes that coexisted in one intergovernmental coordination area: the Federal Health Council (Cofesa, in Spanish). From such perspective and focusing the analysis on a paradigmatic example such as financing of drugs, Cofesa became a touchstone of such processes, where distinct logics of the health sector, some general and some particular, coexist.

In this paper we aim to draw attention to the historicity and the polysemy of the concept of Quality of Life at (of) work (QWL), or rather, Quality of Work (QW) and its political nature, as it involves contradictory class interests, with the idea of placing it at a level of discussion that questions the 'clinical' approach commonly adopted by capital and that designates individuals´ change of' habits as the main strategy. Thus, the discussion shifts to the category 'control' over the work processes in the point of view of workers' collectives allowing a relation between the concept and the notion that achieving QWL involves a political struggle that is originates from the correlation of the capital-labor strengths in concrete societies. In this sense, even if it is deemed incompatible to think of QWL as a reality of precarious work (and rights), this article advocates that the introduction of another 'vision' concerning this issue, which also has a strong political and counter-hegemonic character, can contribute to addressing the 'speech' and the skills that come along with it, the ones which are defended as being 'the' model approach of QWL by businesses and the intellectuals from the academy that advise them.

This article presents a conceptual discussion on technology, as it relates to an educational project centered on liberty. It is a partial result of the Line of Research on Education, Culture and Technology/Critical Theory and Education Research Group, at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro/National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (UFRRJ/CNPq). The objective of this research group is to develop research projects on the relationship between education, culture and technology, with a view to discussing the changes in the epistemological status of education in the 20th and 21st centuries. The theoretical reference centers on the work of Herbert Marcuse, particularly his concepts of critical rationality and technological rationality. In the light of these concepts, we will present the challenges of Brazilian contemporary education, faced with a reality of immense territories that are spatially and socially segregated, and of the appeal of a society of spectacle that desensitizes the person and intensifies the commercial object as fetish. In this context we will present the possibilities of education to prepare young people for an active participation in the world of culture through the exploration of historical and aesthetic imagination, with a reference in audiovisual production.

This paper analyzes the factors of the precariousness of work in relation to the quality of life of the worker. It develops a critical line of reasoning that begins by understanding the contours of precarious work in capital order, and then the understanding of what Quality of Work Life (QWL) is and finally, an analysis of the challenges faced by workers today in relation to the possibilities of finding meaning in both life and work, which leads towards a project of human emancipation. The main idea put forward is that the QWL policies adopted by companies can temporarily relieve some symptoms, but do not reach the structural causes of the problems. The humanization of the management of the workforce may be a necessary scene within organizations, but should not be seen as a solution for work troubles.