The article seeks to investigate the semantic inflections of the hegemonically attributed meaning of the term "participation" in the Brazilian organizational and labor context over the last three decades, based on its expressions in the press, particularly that related to business and labor issues, but also, to a lesser extent, on trade union bulletins and on business consulting material. Based on the collected data, the article identifies the existence of an intense symbolic struggle for a definition of the concept, which would reflect, albeit not unequivocally, the different phases and vicissitudes that the workers' movement and the adversities within the Brazilian business community underwent during this period, constituting an excellent start for an analysis of the so-called "field of power" in the Brazilian society. The text seeks inspiration from the cognitive sciences for a sociological analysis as well as a history of the process, attempting to divide the phases of the symbolic struggle into periods and to map the changes that the meaning of the word has undergone, consistently emphasizing the social dynamics that could explain its transformations and polysemy.
Participation; Trade Unionism; Polysemy; Quality; Cultural Conflict
