As contribuições da Sociologia de Bourdieu para o estudo da cultura organizacional da Universidade Federal do Tocantins – Campus de Araguaína

Abstract

Considered a relatively new theme, the organizational culture was born among the theorists of the area of Administration and expanded, becoming an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions from the most diverse fields, such as sociology, anthropology, psychology and others. However, these characteristics led to a complexity and theoretical-methodological diversity, which contributed to a chaos of approaches that helped to maintain dichotomies within this area of research. In this sense, this research aimed to understand the social practices of the Federal University of Tocantins - Campus de Araguaína, as cultural practices objectified. However, the aim was to overcome these dualisms that have been established around the usual perspectives on organizational culture. And for this, this work employed the central concepts of Bourdieusian theory - field, habitus, and capital. Bourdieu's theory made possible advances in this approach by relating these concepts. Thus, it was possible to understand the university inserted in the perspective of the university field, and how it is organized, with its symbolic struggles; the habitus, incorporation of this, extends the possibility of identifying the practices and how the agents act in that field; and capital, as a resource of dispute mobilized at the university as a field. As a qualitative research, and to reach the complexity of this study, it was materialized through a case study. As for the methodological resource, for the care and posture of the researcher in the interviews, oral history was used, due to the interdisciplinary bias it provides. For the delimitation of the object, we chose the location of the research in Campus de Araguaína, also from the study of the perceptions of administrative technicians and teachers; the former as a starting point, and these as a counterpoint. According to Bourdieu (2013), one must take as an object the agents' perception, since it sees the reality and has a point of view, from the position in the field, directing practices. Thus, UFT culture was understood as a set of representations and values that act in the composition of the groups. This culture is objectified through the practices, related to classification processes, that act in the establishment of positions. In addition, when viewing the field and the position of the agents, the inequitable distribution of capitals, among the categories of servants that compose the university, we can affirm that the culture instituted in UFT is the culture of distinction; and hierarchy is the result of the action of symbolic power. It was also discussed how the university field is cleaved by elements from other fields, such as economics, for example, just as such homologies provoke isomorphic processes, reflecting the institutional crisis that passes the public university. Through the objectification of the practices, it was possible to reveal the overlaps and social representations through the perception of its agents. Finally, it is understood that UFT's culture is the result of a structured system of relations, and practices are strictly linked to it.