Com o peito cheio de pó: uma etnografia sobre a negação do adoecimento de trabalhadores do amianto na cidade de Minaçu (GO)

• Ano de defesa: 2019
• Autor(a) principal: Amaral, Arthur Pires
• Orientador(a): Pechincha, Mônica Thereza Soares
• Banca de defesa: Pechincha, Mônica Thereza Soares, Víctora, Ceres Gomes, Collaço, Janine Helfst Leicht, Vieira, Suzane de Alencar, Nunes, Jordão Horta
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Goiás
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-graduação em Antropologia Social (FCS)
• Departamento: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais - FCS (RG)
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Doenças do amianto; Minaçu; Sofrimento social; Mineradora SAMA
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Asbestos-related diseases (ARDs); Social suffering; SAMA mining company
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS HUMANAS::ANTROPOLOGIA
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/9686

This doctoral thesis starts from the problematization of the risks involved in working with asbestos, in an international perspective, casting the comparison with the empirical case of Minaçu, a Brazilian city that was founded and consolidated due to the asbestos mining industry – represented here by S.A. Minerações Associadas (SAMA). The ethnography held in this city evidenced and built herself under the avoidance and embarrassment of the locals to a dialogue about asbestos-related illness of SAMA employees and former employees. This situation reflects the collusion between Science, Industry and State, as instances of power responsible for raising doubts about the dangers of toxic substances that, at Minaçu, become entangled in the mining company’s strategies of: (i) concealment of the risks involved in working with asbestos, and (ii) manipulation of the former employees’ medical reports. By means of the anthropological concept of social suffering, the ethnography brings to light narratives and experiences of illness and death of asbestos workers at Minaçu, in their (ineffective) searches by diagnosis, treatment and medical-legal recognition. Finally, it demonstrates how the illness process of SAMA workers, whose asbestos-related diseases were never recognized by the mining company, are subsumed and assimilated to the “normal”, “ordinary” routine of the everyday life in that city. This situation produces a deep sense of loneliness among the sick and their relatives that, added to socioeconomic and institutional power relations, prevent the local ethical, political and civil engagement that would lead to its effective public complaint.