Factors of the Becoming of Engineers as Subjects of Labor (Sociological Portrait)

Abstract

The article presents the results of an ongoing theoretical, methodological and empirical study of engineers employed in Siberian industrial enterprises. The project is carried out in line with qualitative studies in sociology and involves the focused interview method. The interviews revealed a variety of attitudes towards different aspects of labor and industrial relations in enterprises, as well as their influence on subjectivity acquired by engineers in the course of their work. The discourse of engineers consists of their personal statements about the technical bases of enterprises, levels of their equipment. It includes assessment of the adequacy of monetary reward for industrial work that is relevant for the socio-economic domestic realities, as it highlights the problem and the request for public recognition. The author considers the process of labor subject formation as polyphonic (dialogical) – at the intersection of two types of attitudes to the profession of engineer: representatives of the reference group (engineer, his colleagues, family, friends) and the “outside” view (managers, the state, etc.), contributing to the value-normative regulation of the personality of engineers. It is shown that the key to the process of labor subject formation is the paradoxical experience that is realized in practices of conscious, intentional overcoming of structural limitations in the system of labor relations – the principle of “contrary to”.