ROGÉRIO MIRANDA GOMES AS MUDANÇAS NO MUNDO DO ...

8ABSTRACTFrom the XVIIth century on, with the progressive consolidation of capitalistic socialrelations, new types of determination on labor arrangements in health start to arise.New needs set upon by the newborn sociability end up imposing transformations towork in health, in order to answer to the utmost role now to be played by the body asthe organic support of labor power. Thus, work in health assumes several aspectswhich are essential to social work in this society: collectivization of the productionprocess; progressive fragmentation in the technical division of labor; continuingspecialization of workers in partial realms of knowledge and of practices; sharptechnological development applied either to equipments or to knowledge and practice.These main features, when applied to work in health, present themselves in specificways, in order to correspond to the complexity of the labor process in health and itsobject. In this paper we present an analysis of the impact of all these elements on thehistorical process of qualification of labor power in health. In the last decades, alongwith the recent changes in the “laboring world“, this process shows a contradictoryform , for, at the same time as it adopts institutionalized labor relations, it allows theuprising of “challenging” forms of these relations.Key words: labor power qualification; work in health; changes in the “laboringworld”.