Developmental foundations of Activity-Centered Ergonomics: knowledge encounters to construct both a critical analysis of work and developmental set-ups.

This paper presents the developmental foundation of Activity-Centered Ergonomics (ACE) that has been shaped by both: (1) a critique of conceptions of work and of its organisation in relation to economic and political models of development, and (2) developmental approaches to understand and to act on activity and work situations at different levels (individual, collective, organisational, and territorial). To do so, we examine some key reference works for ACE over 75 years with regards to these two dimensions and the methods and developmental set ups proposed. We argue that ACE analytical and transformative goals give a considerable space to knowledge encounters and workers' activity.

How can the work activity point of view inform territorial development projects?

Background: The heuristic potential of work activity-focused territory analyses has yet to be explored in depth. Instead of viewing territories as a product of their actors, the prevailing approaches rely on statistical indicators to view them "from above".

Objective: To understand how work activity acts upon a territory and transforms it, and to discuss what the main indicators used to characterize territories reveal and conceal.

'My whole body is at work': the silence of gendered body techniques in cork industry in an era of automation.

Discourses about technological transformation tend to focus on technology, as if its introduction was neutral regarding local variabilities, and the men and women that make it effective. This paper focuses on the technical act. The body is where the technical acts are inscribed and it is through the body that they are exteriorised.

Beyond a man's world: contributions from considering gender in the study of bus drivers' work activity.

Background: Bus driving is a typically male occupation undergoing a process of feminization. Although men remain a majority, women's integration has raised some questions, namely, related to work organization or its impact on health.

Objective: This paper focuses on the contributions of assuming a gender perspective in the analysis of the bus driving occupation and the conditions under which it is performed.

From the "terrain" to "territory": which contributions from mobility and bus drivers' activity towards local development?

The focus of the present analysis is on the work of drivers in the public road passenger transportation sector in Portugal and on its specific contribution to local development. This approach dissociates itself from the one that places mobility as a "paradigm" of the contemporary societies and considers that the increase in mobility registered in the latter years is, in itself, revealing of development. For field work, a public transportation line, in an urban context, and a network of lines, in a rural context were chosen.

The entry of women in predominantly male professions: when training supports the search of alternative ways of organizing work time.

Following a research carried out on the integration of women in professional areas predominantly for men, this paper intends to present and debate the project of a training course which aims the transformation of the organization of work schedules in order to improve the well-being of the workers involved. The conception of training courses with this type of objective involves the confrontation and debate between the "invested skills" of the trainers and the "constituted skills" of the trainees. But will this paradigm remain intact when applied to training courses permeated by the gender dimension? That is what one will try to realize with the effective implementation of a training course, whose reflection will allow, ultimately, to enrich our understanding on gender, work, health and training.

Police training course for agents--entry into the profession and also into the distinction between men and women.

An exploratory study was conducted about the initial training of the Public Security Police with the aim to understand the role of this initial training in the distinction between the work of men and women in the police force. This study is part of a broader study about the entry of women into typically male professions. After documental analysis and interviews to students, trainers and school board members, it was concluded that women face greater difficulties in the access to the profession.

Thinking about gender, thinking about a common space of observation and discussion of the work activity of the other: the case of bus drivers.

The work activity of urban bus drivers is held in the public space and characterized by a constant vigilance, but the moments of observation the colleagues' work are scarce. This fact results in a paradox--it is a work activity that is more visible to "outsiders" than to "insiders"--which has an important impact on the debate of the work activity from a perspective of gender and the women's work in a predominantly male context. Ergonomic analysis of work and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 urban public transport drivers, 16 women and 16 men.

When gender bumps into health and safety training: working conditions, readings and challenges drawn from a case study in an industrial chemicals company.

Health, safety and environmental issues are at present a social concern and an increasingly referred topic in the so called gender studies. This paper focuses on the relations between training, gender and risk perception in an industrial chemicals company, in Portugal, characterized by a mainly male population and by the presence of high occupational and environmental hazards. After characterizing the company and the training project that started up this reflection, the paper presents the reasons for its focus on gender followed by the essential methodological explanations: 14 interviews were made with male and female workers from the company; their content was transcribed from the audio recordings and it was systematically analyzed.