Por entre telas, travessias e territórios: condições de trabalho extensionista e as mediações digitais na extensão rural pública

Abstract

This thesis analyzes working conditions in Brazilian Public Rural Extension through the lens of digital mediations, selecting the category of work in its Marxist basis as the central analytical axis. The general objective consists of investigating how the incorporation of Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DICTs) reconfigures the material, organizational, and ontological dimensions of extension practice. The research starts from the hypothesis that the digitalization of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (Ater) is driven by an institutional technological fetishism that, by presenting tools as neutral and self-sufficient solutions, can mask processes of precarization and labor intensification. The theoretical framework sought to establish a dialogue between the critique of political economy (alienation and precarization) and the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), mobilizing concepts such as surveillance capitalism and social technology. Methodologically, a mixed-methods approach was adopted based on a national quantitative survey conducted via a Google Forms questionnaire, with 475 valid responses from extension workers across 23 institutions, alongside a qualitative content analysis (Bardin) of the open-ended reports. The results indicate a scenario of contradiction, in which digitalization expands the territorial reach of actions, streamlines communication, and enables new forms of technical monitoring and guidance, but also intensifies work, extends working hours beyond formal schedules, reinforces control mechanisms through targets and system records, and contributes to processes of overload and loss of autonomy. In this context, digital technologies fulfill a dual role: they enhance communication and service provision while also dissolving the boundaries between work time and personal life, imposing permanent connectivity and subordinating practice to monitoring and registration systems. This process is interpreted as a contemporary expression of precarization and alienation in extension work. The analysis identifies, however, the emergence of the "Ethics of Commitment" as active resistance, in which extension workers appropriate DICTs as Social Technology for the guarantee of rights and rural citizenship. As a propositional contribution, the thesis advocates for the regulation of the right to disconnect, the material valorization of professionals, and the subordination of technique to social and territorial objectives. It is concluded that strengthening public Rural Extension requires overcoming the technological and managerialist fetish, reaffirming the extension worker as an agent of transformation and an active presence in the territories.