Cognitive capitalism and work stress

health in Hidalgo universities

Abstract

We live daily a series of automated economic practices that a certain social thought has wanted to interpret as a fourth industrial revolution.  In this revolution, intangible and symbolic knowledge-based goods are circulated;  at the same time, new working cultures and reconfigurations of markets and mechanisms for raising financial profits are emerging. It has also been called cognitive capitalism, and at the core of it are universities and research and development centers. They are thought of as institutions where what deprives is creativity, intellectual development and as spaces that have overcome alienating work, stress and exploitation. The work we present suggests that this is not the case: in these entities of accelerated technification, job insecurity and alienation continue to occur. We analyzed a sample of university teachers from universities in Hidalgo, Mexico, and we find through a mixed methodology that there are a series of institutional conditions (supported by a conjoint of social conditions) that not only show the experience of stress in their workers but also accuse constant damage to health.