José Sergio Leite Lopes and the formation of Anthropology of work in Brazil

Abstract

This essay interprets a fragment of the work of José Sergio Leite Lopes, highlighting its central role in the constitution of an Anthropology of work, in Brazil. The analysis focuses on the innovative work of this anthropologist, whose implications are considered on two scales, articulated with each other. At a first level, he adopts ethnographic field research methods among industrial workers. Adapting to the context of the factory the resources systematized by Anthropology, in the study of non-industrial peoples, the researcher opens an unprecedented field of empirical research. It brings a renewed breath to social research on labor relations, especially by subjecting the academic categories to scrutiny of empirical data recorded firsthand. In a second level, the formation of Anthropology of work is located on the wider scale of Social Sciences, and particularly in the case of Leite Lopes, of Brazilian Social Thought. By extrapolating the sphere of production, also investigating the time of the reproduction of the workforce, its cultural aspects and its leisure practices, Leite Lopes' research has a strong repercussion in the field of Brazilian studies and Brazilian culture; especially with regard to one of its core elements – namely, soccer. The argument that the article proposes suggests that by opening space for research on the factory floor, this pioneering intellectual contributed at the same time for the constitution of an ethnographic research line and for the empirically more rigorous treatment of what some of the thinkers of the national formation call the "Brazilian dilemma".