Human/naturerelations and the associated work knowledge: political-epistemological premises

Abstract

Our starting pointis the marxian premise of the educational principle of work, which means that in the relationships we establish with nature, mediated by work, we transform ourselves as an integral part of nature. We produce culture and therefore knowledge. In this article, we revisit and discuss theoretical-methodological procedures used in our researches about knowledge that emerges from economic and cultural practices of women and men who live and work in an associated way in rural areas. These are researches that had as their object of study traditional communities and a national solidarity economy network that articulates rural and urban workers. As a result, we systematized political-epistemological premises for the apprehension and analysis of knowledge of associated work, understood as the knowledge characterized by a strong human/nature relationship and produced by workers in the work processes marked by the collective appropriation of the means of production, equal appropriation of the fruits of work and democratic management of decisions regarding the use of surpluses and the orientations of the production.