Abstract

BARROS, Sabrina Cavalcanti; ALVARO, José Luis  and  BORGES, Livia de Oliveira. The meanings of work and money: what are their social functions?. Rev. Psicol., Organ. Trab. [online]. 2018, vol.18, n.1, pp. 282-290. ISSN 1984-6657.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17652/rpot/2018.1.13395.

Studies on work and money have emphasized the institutional dimension behind these phenomena, highlighting functions like the ability to interconnect the satisfaction of individual needs and the maintenance of the social order. Individuals construct them socially. We explore the functions that the meanings of work and of money have fulfilled in the lives of construction workers. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 44 workers, and later developed thematic content analysis. We identified two main guiding axes: social inclusion and incorporation versus social exclusion, and achievement and sense of usefulness versus degradation. The results indicated that the precarious working conditions and the scarcity of money experienced daily by the workers structured their ways of coping with these realities, in valuing the benefits achieved, and in acclimation and acceptance, resulting from the hardship and limitation of opportunities experienced by these workers.

Keywords : Meanings of money; Meanings of work; Construction workers.

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