A participação política das enfermeiras no contexto da modernidade líquida

Abstract

The object of this study is the political and labor participation of nurses in the context of liquid modernity. In view of this, the general objective was defined: to analyze the determining and conditioning factors of nurses' participation in political, social and labor struggles, in the context of liquid modernity. And, as specific objectives: i) Describe the perceptions of nurses about political participation in contemporary times; ii) Discuss the origin of nurses' political apathy; iii) Describe the nurses' perceptions about their participation in political and labor struggles; and iv) Discuss the influence of the context of liquid modernity on the participation of nurses in political and labor struggles. In this study, liquid modernity is understood as the social arrangement, in which there are superficialities in the various dimensions of human relationships. By making an analogy to the liquid form of matter that molds itself and adapts to the container in which it is placed, Zygmunt Bauman discusses the influences of neoliberal capitalism on people, revealing the incentive for non-lasting interpersonal relationships, consumption as a way of constructing identity , widespread individualism and the exhaustion of the senses of belonging to collective groups, precariousness at work, among others. The methodological design is a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory research. The study setting was the Faculty of Nursing of the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The participants were 46 nurses enrolled in the self-managed lato sensu and stricto sensu postgraduate courses at the aforementioned institution. Data collection took place through individual semi-structured interviews. Data processing was carried out based on lexical analysis, with the aid of the IRAMUTEQ® software. The results found show that the nurses' political participation was incipient, due to a set of sociodemographic and gender factors, added to the alienating political and economic model of liquid modernity. Conditioning and determining factors for nurses' political participation are situations that involve the configuration of the world of work, neoliberal capitalism and liquid modernity, as well as aspects inherent to workers that involve the subjective and objective dimension of the materiality of the world of work. Furthermore, gender, socioeconomic issues and the origin of the profession were also highlighted as contributors to maintaining the category's apathetic posture. It is concluded that a collective pathology is experienced, which imposes an apathetic and alienated behavior, driven by the incorporation of neoliberal precepts and liquid modernity. Thus, workers are kept submissive due to fear of unemployment, they are concerned with individual problems, weakening the sense of class, assume multiple bonds, due to their fragility, and low wages, associating them with other activities of daily life, thus, they are overloaded and without time for collective struggle activities, perpetuating this configuration. This tangle of manipulation strategies, subtle and effective, causes a collective dulling effect in this group of workers.