A socio-critical approach to the discourse of the International Labor Organization (ILO), from the perspective of Althusser, Foucault and Cros

Abstract

This research presents a socio-cultural analysis of the discourse in documents of the International Labor Organization (ILO), considering a great number of its foundational texts and manifestos belonging to public domain. A selection of texts from these writings has permitted placing the analysis within the socio-critical perspective. The socio-critical perspective rests firmly on Michel Foucault’s (2005) concepts of discourse and the dilemma of representation, which have been so important in influencing the socio-critical method of Edmond Cros (1986), as a strategy for approaching the aforementioned texts of that institution, a question that permits decoding the signals present in their original codes. The fundamental objective of this research is to make a structured reading of those documents, based on the interaction of Foucault (2005), Althusser (2008) and Cros (1986), to answer the hypothesis that their discursive practices respond more to a logic encoded in ideological apparatuses, power devices at the service of the State, than to regulation, mediation, protection and democratization in the world of work.