Abstract
Knowing how is organized the working process in any productive activity is essential to understand the impact on health workers. This knowledge is associated with the form how society is organized, which may result in the full development of the being, but also contribute to estrangement/alienation. The study that originated this article aims to understand how is organized the peasantry working process in two settlements, influenced by distinct factors: the Agribusiness and the Agroecology and, from this relationship, the labor’s estrangement/alienation and its impacts on the settlers’ health. It’s a multiple cases study, based on a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The study was made between January and May 2016, in two sets of the Metropolitan Region of the Recife, Pernambuco, Brasil. Data processing and analysis followed a perspective that considers the totality and historicity of social relations and their articulation with particular social processes guided the data processing and analysis. The results show that the condition of estrangement (and the struggle against it) occurs in different ways in the two settlements, but, in both cases, it’s related to the settler’s health. When influenced by agribusiness, presented in a specialized production, almost exclusively of goods and intensive use of pesticides. Regarding the influence of agroecology, has a diversified production, abolishing the use of pesticides and with less intensity at work.
agribusiness; agrochemicals; occupational health; public health; sustainable agriculture