ACCUMULATION OF FUNCTIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE CLINIC of ACTIVITY: DISSATISFIED, AMBIGUOUS AND AGREED POSITIONS
Accumulation of working function, precariousness of work, clinic of activity, real activity, professional gender outsider
The present study originated from a research from a clinical-qualitative perspective developed with
necropsy technicians working in a Death Verification Service (SVO). The theoretical basis adopted
was the Activity Clinic and the data construction process was mediated by the following
methodological resources: field diary; semi-structured interviews, conducted individually; Instructional
interviews to the Lookalike, conducted in pairs. One of the results found was to realize that the
technicians in necropsy were submitted to several accumulations of functions/ attributions and that
they were related in different ways with the different attributions unrelated to the craft to which they
were called to perform. This finding mobilized us to develop the three (3) studies presented here,
aiming to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon in question. In this sense, the general objective
of this thesis was to develop and expand analyses of situations that characterize the accumulation of
functions in the professional-doing of technicians in necropsy, in the light of the theoretical-conceptual
framework of the Activity Clinic. Study 01 is a theoretical discussion about the accumulation of
functions, based on the contributions of the aforementioned approach, allied to studies that deal with
work management models that emerged from the demands of the neoliberal system, especially
toyotism, which expanded the process of precarious work. The objective was to establish the
relationship of the phenomenon accumulation of functions with the process of precariousness of work
relationships, tracing connections with the theoretical operators: activity and real activity. The analysis
of the historical-social context performed made it possible to perceive the relationship of the process of
overexploitation of work with expansion and naturalization of the accumulation of functions/
attributions. Study 02 addressed this phenomenon from theoretical operators such as: instances of the
craft, style, professional gender, power to act and well-done work. The analyses resulting from this
study pointed us to the understanding that the submission of workers to the attributions of others to the
office caused them to appropriate the professional gender of other positions, originating what we call
an outsider professional gender. In this sense, our objective was to dialogue on aspects related to the
foreign professional gender, resulting from the accumulation of functions, and their possible impacts
on workers' health. Regarding study 03, our objective was to characterize and discuss the different
positions of workers in relation to the different accumulations of functions/attributions. As mentioned,
we identified three (3) categories of coping with the attributions unrelated to the profession: the
nonconforming positioning, when the worker demonstrates clear discomfort; the ambiguous
positioning, when it expresses both the feeling of discomfort and the feeling of recognition; and the
conformed positioning, when they appropriate these attributions in such a way that they perceive them
as belonging to the office itself. We noticed through these studies that the accumulation of
functions/attributions is increasingly frequent in work contexts and that it has harmful potential to
workers' health, which signals the need to develop effective actions to combat overexploitation of
work.