A indústria de cerâmica vermelha : relações de trabalho e a retórica da sustentabilidade

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the spatial distribution of red ceramic industrial activity in the local towns of Areia Branca, Campo do Brito and Itabaiana (Sergipe), focusing on labor relations, the role of the State and the sustainability discourse that feeds the development proposals. The expansion of the housing and the civil construction market has driven the establishment of new potteries that demand the hiring of labor, subjected to high workload and low wages. The answers given by the State, as a way of inhibit the exploitation of plant and mineral resources for the ceramic production, based in a sustainability discourse, reveal its class character, to the extent that its performance toward the environmental crimes is weak and favors the ceramic production to meet the civil construction market demands. In order to develop this study, the research was based on an analysis of the reality from the standpoint of historical and dialectical materialism that led the analytical procedures, such as the theoretical basis and the field research, to compare the interpretations of the interviewees and establish a relation between theory and empiricism. Therefore, it is recognized that the elements involved in this activity are fundamental to give their responses to the current situation of structural crisis of capitalism. From a critical analysis it was possible to reveal the contradictions that pervade those who are involved in the ceramic production as well introduced into the conflict between capital versus work and nature, enabling an understanding of reality as a product of multiple determinations.