Roselaine Navarro Barrinha

The purpose of this study is to contribute for the discussion ocurring in the academy concerning the existence or not of work centrality in the contemporary capitalism. The work centrality is understood here as: as work as a concrete one, a creator of values-of-use,  and therefore, essential for the individual, providing him with dignity and social insertion. To initiate this discussion, it is essential to rescue the particular concept that each historical period has attribuited to work making evident, through this historical retaking during the two periods previous to the capitalism, that work used to be recognized as na element characterizer of the lower classes. Concerning the capitalism, such element assumes an inverse concept to the previous ones, revealing, this way, that in each period the concept of work is more pertinent to the dominant classes. In the sequence, we tried to make a connection between the concept assumed by the element work in the mentioned societies, and the role of schools in the referred conceptual formation, observing that the mechanisms of ideological formation are in each period, assumed by the class that is in the power. Then, we go straight to the capitalist contemporaneity, as well as to the analysis of the facts that corroborate directly for the discussion concerning the existence or not of work centrality in the contemporary capitalism.