Body, time, space, work: analysis of the meanings of food for female workers in a fish processing industry

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Nauterra fish processing company in Itajaí, SC, Brazil, established a professional guidance group called Viva+Leve with the goal of promoting weight loss among overweight and obese female workers, based on the assumption that this strategy could contribute to reducing absenteeism and workplace accidents. This article discusses the meanings of food inscribed in the body-territory of a collective of female workers participating in the project. Data collection instruments included workshops and interviews. The analysis was conducted using frameworks from the sociology of work and political philosophy, from a historical-dialectical perspective. Representative units of meaning related to food emerged from the process, converging on a body-territory oppressed by the knowledge society of the neoliberal project. We consider that the supremacy of competent discourse and the application of finalistic rationality, to the detriment of popular knowledge and value-oriented rationality, generate a mechanism for regulating eating behavior, instead of broadening the concrete horizon for overcoming overweight and obesity. The realization of health as a right requires the persistent effort of Occupational Health to effectively establish itself as a field of practice.