Public discourses about work: narrative sources with a high pedagogical-social value

Is there a work and organizations’ethnography and anthropology that has passed and passes through words and discourses? Is it possible to extract from the analysis of public discourse about work the narration to outline an idea of work not only set up and carried out but also told, imagined, desired and above all educating? Printed paper, educational, scientific and political production can be considered very important sources to build a discourse about work and “popular pedagogy” and common sense connected to it in the sense of narration as historical and metabletic tool that contributes to individual and collective development. Words and speeches are epistemological frames and glances at the world have a connection with things. The word is not only a sign, it is also an image. The word brings, somewhat enigmatic, a connection with what it represents. Words therefore also have the power to produce transformations, to change the world, the way they see it and to represent it. Foucault had also written that words are fundamental codes behind a culture and influence experience and thought. Words and speeches about work, spoken and written, then, are a meta-narrative and can help to draw and dissect an unprecedented, alternative, parallel story. Also, a history of pedagogy of work is full of theories, models, methods but also of stories, of speeches of intellectuals, trade unionists, scholars, prominent figures, entrepreneurs who have dedicated their lives to the cause of a dignified and good work. For example, the speeches of Vittorio, Adriano Olivetti, the encyclicals of the different popes that have succeeded each other in history, the many aphorisms and speeches made by great entrepreneurs such as Cucinelli, Steve Jobs etc. that, in different ways, have helped to build an idea of work that - over the centuries - has profoundly changed. Starting from these reflections, the contribution aims to highlight the baggage of intangible assets and the implicit educational deposited in some exemplary narrative passages on the work that have helped to build collective stories and produce a shared sense, to give a specific identity to work and to propose its widespread representation with a high pedagogical-social value.