http://hdl.handle.net/10071/566 2026-04-16T09:10:31Z http://hdl.handle.net/10071/36386 Título próprio: “Work without future”: Neoliberal precarity, horizons of worthy living and generational dispossession in the Portuguese call center sector Autoria: Matos, P. A. de Editor: Sánchez Madrid, Nuria; López Álvarez. Pablo Resumo: Since the mid-2000s, call center employment has gradually gained prominence in the public sphere in Portugal. While little was known about what the work actually entailed or how it was performed, there seemed to be little doubt regarding who was employed by these new factories of communication characteristic of late capitalist societies (Fernie and Metcalf 1998; Buscatto 2002). The media began characterizing the call center workforce as the “500-euro generation” (“geração 500 euros”)—a publicly sanctioned label used to designate highly qualified young adults engaged in low-paid, precarious, unprotected and socially marginalized forms of service work. Snapshots of call center work began emerging regularly in the media, with the call center environment frequently portrayed as endless rows of tiny cubicles in which workers endured the drudgery of repetitive and monotonous telephone conversations with angry and abusive clients, all while subject to invasive technological surveillance, discipline, and control. In 2011, the “500/euro generation” was renamed the “troubled generation” (geração á rasca), an expression coined during a massive collective mobilization called by a group of young activists protesting the intensification of neoliberal labor precarity resulting from austerity measures. In their manifesto, activists called for participation from a coalition of the precarious population: the unemployed, “500-Eurists” and other underpaid workers, temporary workers, fraudulently self-employed workers, trainees, scholarship holders, and working students, among others. These groups aired collective grievances regarding their subjection to precarity, while identifying the irony in their position as “the highest qualified generation in the history of our country.” Even today, for ordinary people, academics, politicians, and social activists, call center work remains a striking symbol of labor precarity, a condition particularly associated with the generational disenchantment in the neoliberal idea that “each generation does better than its predecessor” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001, 17).... 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10071/34865 Título próprio: Introduction: Timescapes of extraction Autoria: Pusceddu, A. M.; Zerilli, F. Editor: Antonio Maria Pusceddu; Filippo M. Zerilli Resumo: In 1982, Eric R. Wolf published his magnum opus Europe and the People Without History. This long-length book included ‘cartographic illustrations’ selected by Noël L. Diaz. Two copper engravings by the sixteenth-century Dutch engraver and publisher Theodore de Bry open the first two parts of the book (‘Connections’ and ‘In Search of Wealth’). The second of these two engravings is titled ‘Washing gold’ (Wolf 1997 [1982]: 126–27). To the right, half-naked men dig the gallery of a gold mine with picks, while other men – we glimpse them in the darkness – are timbering the galleries. Still others run with buckets of gold on their heads, and some tip gold at the foot of a finely-dressed European lord, who is sat in a chair. He holds a rod and is surrounded by men with spears and swords. Far distant, other armed men oversee the mining activities. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10071/34721 Título próprio: «Basta con questa finta guerra»: Ecologie del valore e nesso lavoro-ambiente a Brindisi Autoria: Pusceddu, A. M. Editor: Filippo M. Zerilli; Antonio Maria Pusceddu Resumo: 20 maggio 2020, un’ordinanza sindacale del comune di Brindisi decretava «l’immediata sospensione dell’esercizio dell’impianto di cracking», ovvero la sospensione del cuore produttivo dello stabilimento petrolchimico a sud della città. L’ordinanza, spiegava il sindaco, era dovuta al dovere di tutelare la salute pubblica a seguito delle proteste di numerosi cittadini per i forti odori di miscela di gas, che rendevano l’aria irrespirabile. L’ordinanza era stata firmata contestualmente alla segnalazione all’ARPA Puglia (Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione e la Protezione Ambientale), che iniziava così i rilievi all’interno dello stabilimento, appena riavviato dopo la prevista fermata per la manutenzione degli impianti. L’ordinanza del sindaco ha subito scatenato le reazioni ufficiali del mondo sindacale, quasi interamente schierato a difesa del petrolchimico e della principale azienda, Versalis, una controllata dell’Eni. L’ordinanza del 20 maggio non è stato che l’inizio di una vicenda durata alcune settimane e infine approdata a Roma, dove governo e ministeri hanno assunto una funzione mediatrice tra comune e azienda. L’ordinanza, tuttavia, si inseriva in uno storico di proteste contro le sfiammate delle torce del petrolchimico e i suoi effetti sull’ambiente e la salute. Lo stesso sindaco, Riccardo Rossi, era in qualche misura esito di una stagione importante di mobilitazioni ambientaliste, che dava voce a preoccupazioni diffuse sugli effetti complessivi della grande industria a Brindisi. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10071/33020 Título próprio: Patrimoni dell’antropocene?: Nota introduttiva Autoria: Zerilli, M.; Pusceddu, A. M. Editor: Filippo M. Zerilli; Antonio M. Pusceddu Resumo: Unfortunately, ethnography tends to have very little to contribute to public debate on global processes of climate change, environmental degradation and rising inequalities. The logic of such processes is rarely grasped at the local level. Ethnography is inevitably confined to a given space, but the processes of the Anthropocene are not (Hornborg 2020). 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z