Abstract

BRETAL, Eleonora. The Golden Age in the representations of ex workers from the Swift meat plant of Berisso. Trab. soc. [online]. 2016, n.27, pp.291-304. ISSN 1514-6871.

During my research about the ex workers´s modes of remembering their labour past in the Swift meat plant of Berisso and of representing the history of the meat industry workers, I distinguished the construction of the following native periodization: the english period, the military period and the closed Swift period. I interviewed thirty (30) ex workers between the years 2010 and 2013. In this text I analyze their representations about the first of the three periods. I explain who the english were to the ex workers and I show their appreciations of them. I enquire which aspects organize the idealization of the english period as a Golden Age and I explore the cracks and contradictions undercovered by the nostalgia for the desired past. I identify how the golden past is configured not only in relation to the present (with the utopias projected to a near future) but also in connection with a critical past to the ex workers. I hold the idea that the english period is part of a selective tradition, which set aside another pasts, characteristics and experiencies.

Keywords : Working class; Social representations; Golden age.

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