New Professions in a Global World: Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Workers

Globalization has changed the world in many aspects which are relevant for all kind of ‘knowledge workers’, which is the case of most of professional jobs. The increasing necessity of symbolic analysts and other ‘knowledge workers’, are part from a scene where knowledge and professionalization processes becomes essential for production and social reproduction. These global processes are dramatically increasing the needing of ‘knowledge workers’ all over the world, but specially in emerging economies like Latin American, BRICS, Southern and Eastern European countries. In all those cases, new and traditional activities need new professionals to face new challenges in the global economy.  The soy production activity in South America -specially in MERCOSUR countries- is a very well known case of commodity production growing up since 1990's with a lot of added value. This paper will focus on the production value chain of this activity as well as professions involved.