Ideas about work: contexts and meanings

This article presents various readings of the meaning of work in Western civilization, investigating the contexts of these constructions. The mythical meanings of Hellenism, Judaism, Rousseau and even the mythical appropriation of communism are illustrated here, as well as the rapprochement between liberalism and Protestantism to forge a specific concept of work. Modern concepts committed to revolutionary philosophy or progressivism are also analyzed by comparing them with the current meanings assigned to work. In addition to reviewing more general conceptions of work in different times, addressing different contexts in which its meaning is produced, this article illustrates how ideas contained in works of dystopian literature, such as George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Hukley's Brave New World, were the basis for a more forceful critique of the modern conception of work. Research by Zygmunt Bauman (2001), who comments on the limits of the modern conception of work, and Cecília Bergamini (2003) and Marie-France Hirigoyen (2002), who propose a renewed meaning of work that can embrace attending to diversity as an operational advantage in corporations, were used as some of the theoretical contributions.