Industrial Work at the Anthropological Crossroads

Abstract

This paper, written by following a methodological approach of a critical-historiographical kind, faces, on a pedagogical basis, the post-Taylor-Fordist evolution of the organizational, productive, and training modalities of the waged industrial work, paying close attention to those dynamics (not only the ones within the companies) that could outline, both in a positive or negative way, the representation of the person who works and the conditions of his/her educability. The argumentations below firstly give prominence to the educational potentialities connected with the new configuration of the working activity, then highlight their main criticalities and, in closing, leave room for an educational proposal that tends to promote a person-centered culture of the economic action and the work.