Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
145
Anthropology (CUA), a Board Member of the National Association of African American Studies
(NAAAS) and she serves as Proposals Evaluator for the Mid Southern Association of Educational
Research (MSERA). Dr. Campbell has worked in different academic settings, schools, colleges and
universities in Belarus and the United States. Currently she is working with gifted students at
Wadsworth Magnet School for High Achievers.
Name:
Fernando Firmo
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology of the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil
Awarded:
2013, Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil
Transformations of the Work and the Workers of Steel in the Acesita
This study analyses the transformations, during the time, in the work and labor’s profiles in a
specific place: the old Acesita steel mill, currently
Aperam South America.
The manufacturing
plant is located in the city of Timóteo, part of the Vale do Aço (Steel Valley) region in the
Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The objective is to compose a history about the construction
of a “factory-labor village” system, the formation of various generations of industrial workers
and the changes in the work process from fordism till toyotism. The documented ethnographic
history from the labor’s point of view materializes, partially, the universal history of
capitalism. Generations of Acesita workers originated a steel mill born from important
international agreements. They produced handmade steel in the past and entered the XXI
century driving this almost automatic factory, completely integrated to the productive and
organizational flexibility of contemporary capitalism. Counting approximately 8000
employees and 4000 residences in the peek of its existence, I reconstitute the grandiosity and
injustices of Acesita, contributing to the insertion of this labor’s history in the history of
Brazil’s industrial development.
Keywords:
Acesita, Labor, steel works, industrial anthropology
Dr Fernando Firmo
,
currently a researcher in the Department of Anthropology of the
Universidade Federal da Bahia, collaborates with Group ObservaBaía, He is conducting his rsearch
on the fishing populations in the Bay of All the Saints, focusing the conditions of risk and vulnerability
of these communities in a context marked by the pollution caused by great projects of industrial
development.
Name
:
Brigida Marovelli
Affiliation:
Social Anthropology, Brunel University, West London UK
Awarded:
February 2013, Brunel University, UK
Landscape, Practice, and Tradition in a Sicilian Market
This research explores the dynamic relationship between place, history and landscape in an
urban food market, Catania, Sicily. This market informs a mythological image of the island
