Banca de DEFESA: CAROLINE SANTOS

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : CAROLINE SANTOS
DATE: 27/05/2021
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: CPDA/UFRRJ (online)
TITLE:

 

 

Technological transformations of sugar and alcohol agribusiness in the Center-South Region and labor market reconfigurations for specialized professionals of medium and superior level: new relations with the service sector? 

KEY WORDS:

Key-words: labor market; agribusiness; sugar and alcohol agro-industrial complex; medium and higher-level professionals; technological innovations

PAGES: 357
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUBÁREA: Outras Sociologias Específicas
SUMMARY:

 

 

 

Over the past few decades, the labor market in the sugar-alcohol complex in the Center-South Region has been undergoing a series of reconfigurations. Among the main changes, we highlight, on the one hand, a dramatic reduction in the number of workers with lower levels of formal education and, on the other hand, the increase in the number of formal workers, in which specialized professionals with a high level of education predominate. Many authors attribute these changes to an accelerated process of incorporation og technological innovations by the agro-industrial complexes, which changed the profile of the workforce, involving new professionals from different areas of knowledge, with an increase in the participation of the service sector in the different links of the production chain. Using an analytical framework anchored in political economy and in different approaches that seek to reflect on the transformations of the contemporary labor market from a sociological perspective, this thesis seeks to problematize the changes that have occurred in the sugar and alcohol sector in its relations with the labor market(s) starting in the 1990s, rescuing the political, social and institutional dimensions inherent to this process, which cannot be explained, solely, as a mere effect of the technological transformations that occurred in the period. Special attention was paid to a segment that has been scarcely studied and that includes professionals of medium and higher level. The selected methodological approach, taking as an empirical reference the sugar-alcohol agroindustrial complex located in the Central-South Region of the country, involved the use of the PNAD Continuous and RAIS / CAGED as data sources to analyze the labor market indicators in the activities developed at the core of the productive chain, including the cultivation of sugar cane and the processing of sugar and alcohol, as well as the services provided by different enterprises to the agro-industrial complex for sugar and alcohol. Regarding the analysis of the labor market within the productive organization model of the sugar-alcohol agro-industrial complex, it was found that it is increasingly difficult to understand the dynamics of agro-industrial complexes from the traditionally established sectoral boundaries, since with the mounting participation of the service sector, the intersectorality of economic activities increased, and the definition “inside the farm” and “outside the farm” no longer fits. Another important conclusion was that this reconfiguration of the sugar-ethanol labor market in the Center-South region is not the result, solely, of the economic and technological transformations that occurred in this period, but is due, in large part, to changes in the political, regulatory and economic institutional arrangements that structure the sector. In the analyzed period, the State, with its regulatory mechanisms, repositioned itself, according to external and internal pressures, assuming new roles, regarding technological policy. It can also be concluded that there was in fact an increase in the absorption of specialized professionals by the sector, following, among other things, the phenomenon of global productive restructuring, which imposes new structures of production organization and changes the pattern of accumulation, reconfiguring the labor force, with the massive reduction of low qualified professionals who are unable to get back into the sugar and alcohol sector. Finally, it was concluded that, still as part of the productive restructuring process, there is an increase in the concentration of capital from the sugar-alcohol sector in the Center-South Region from the harvest to the processing of sugar and alcohol and, in parallel to this, a shift in investments in R&D and new technologies to the private sector. This process may result in an even more drastic reduction in the staff employed in this agro-industrial complex in the future, which may even impact this already reduced segment of specialized professionals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BANKING MEMBERS:
Interna - 1432841 - CLAUDIA JOB SCHMITT
Interno - 387237 - JOHN WILKINSON
Interno - 1063179 - SERGIO PEREIRA LEITE
Externo à Instituição - OTÁVIO VALENTIM BALSADI - EMBRAPA
Externo à Instituição - ANTÔNIO CARLOS ALCKMIN - IBGE