The four texts presented below, on capitalist division of labour, skilled work, sexual division of labour and labour psychopathology, were first written as seminar papers for a course on "Technology, labour processes and employement policies", delivered in the second semester of 1987 at the Sociology Department of the University of São Paulo, as part of its Graduate Studies Program.
Their authors have all published books on the subjects synthetically presented in these papers. Michel Freyssenet, the author of the first, also wrote La division capitaliste du travail, published by Ed. Savelli, 1977. He is a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie Urbaine of the CNRS in Paris. Pierre Rolle, the author of the second text, also wrote an Introduction à la Sociologie du Travail (Ed. Larousse, 1971) and has just published a new treatise on the Sociology of Labour (Travail et Salariat, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1988). He is a professor at the University of Paris X (Nanterre). Danielle Kergoat, the author of the third paper, coordinates a research group in the CNRS (GEDISST — Groupe d’Etude sur la Division Sociale et Sexuelle du Travail), supervising research on women’s work and the sexual division of labour. She is the author of Les Ouvrières (published by Ed. Sycomore,1982) and works at the Sociology Graduate Studies Program of the University of Paris VII (Jussieu). Finally, Christophe Dejours, the author of the last text, is a medical doctor, a psychiatrist and a psychoanalist, and he works at the Orsay Hospital. His book L’usure du travail (Ed. Centurion, 1980) was translated into Portuguese as A loucura do trabalho, published by Ed. Oboré-Cortez in 1987.
The translation we did of these texts was revised by the students who participated in the seminars that were part of the above mentioned course.
Labour: capitalistic division; qualification; dequalification; sexual division; psychopathology