A critical approach to the discursive construction of work and the self as an employee in present-day greece

• Autores: Aikaterini Nikolopoulou
• Directores de la Tesis: Leonor M. Cantera Espinosa (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2016
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Pilar Albertín Carbó (presid.), Ana Gálvez Mozo (secret.), Vicente Peñarroja Cabañero (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Persona y Sociedad en el Mundo Contemporáneo por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
• Materias:
  • Psicología
    • Psicología social
  • Sociología
    • Sociología del trabajo
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en:  TESEO  TDX 
• Resumen

  • The current discussion across various social science disciplines has drawn attention to the ongoing, strategic depoliticisation of paid work, the constitution of subjects as self-reliant business agents, and the reengineering of the social world according to the enterprise form.

    Adopting a critical perspective, the present doctoral dissertation focuses on the point of junction between the discursive configuration of the meaning of work and the construction of identity, in present-day Greece. More specifically, it explores the ways in which paid labour is constructed by Greek employees, the webs of meaning upon which each of their constructions draws, as well as their possible implications on a micro- and macrosocial level. In the same vein, it illuminates the subject positions that individuals adopt in colloquial speech when talking about work, as well as the discursive formulations that have managed to establish their definitions of the working relationship as self-evident.

    For the purposes of this study, a qualitative research design was developed. We conducted 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 11 women and 11 men, aged 23-43; the interview sessions were enriched with respondent-generated visual material, as the participants were asked to take pictures, prior to the interview, that would answer to the question: “What does being an employee mean to you?”. The interviews were recorded and discourse analysis was conducted for selected fragments, drawing upon social-constructionist approaches to discourse, informed by post-structuralist assumptions about language use, the subject and the social world.

    Focusing on the discursive configuration of the working selfhood, we identified three contextually performed, flexible discursive patterns: the “entrepreneur of the self”, the “socioeconomically determined”, and the “occupation-oriented” self, as we named them, which were repeatedly mobilized when the participants authored versions of themselves as employees. As regards the discursive pores drawn upon by individuals when talking about wage labour, we identified three interpretative repertoires – the “school”, the “journey” and the “slavery” motif – grounded in different presuppositions about the social.

    By identifying patterns of talk on the local level, our study also draws attention to the broader networks of knowledge and power that render these argumentative practices intelligible; it could be argued that although neoliberal and capitalocentric discursive formulations seem to have established their significations as natural, counter-hegemonic discourses do exist, carving out spaces for the enactment of alternative subject worlds.