Negociando identidades: uma etnografia entre trabalhadores com o lixo em Santa Maria, RS

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze how the identity negotiation of garbage workers in Santa Maria, RS, Brazil, was produced. In order to do this, we sought to present the meanings that garbage workers elaborated about themselves and their work, as well as their relationship with society in general. Also, we sought to understand how the garbage problem has been treated in the city and describe the work routine, negotiations and sociability among the garbage workers grouped in association. The research data were collected through documentary analysis on local newspapers (Diário de Santa Maria and A Razão) and by ethnography of members from three garbage worker unions of Santa Maria. Some of the ethnographic contacts with this population go back as far as 2004. The research discovered that there were a diversity of agents involved in garbage worker, such as unions, the city hall, the universities, the media, the commerce and the people in general who donate or simply produce the garbage. It was also possible to perceive that identify yourself as a garbage worker is part of a process in which individuals negotiate this identification in each context in which they are. Besides that, the research highlighted how the ideas widely spread by the solidarity economy and environmental protection agencies are present among garbage workers and how they helped the workers to be seen and projected as a positive image by themselves and the society.