First published in 1999, this aims to shift the balance from current concerns about individual behaviour and its health effects to an understanding of the social factors that shape both circumstances and behaviour conducive to health. Its focus is the fact that organized work in paid employment is the common experience of most adults before their sixties, and that individuals have widely varied employment security, working conditions and job control that are likely to affect health (for good and ill) beyond working age itself. It brings together usually disparate work in the sociologies of health and illness and the body; and the sociologies of work and organizations. Importantly, the book is research-based. The argument is supported with primary data that the author has collected in varied workplaces in Britain - a pottery manufacturer, a food-processing firm and the NHS among them and analysis of official statistics and large data sets, as well as secondary literature which is international in scope. The audience includes first and higher degree students in sociology, health and environmental sciences and management studies.
1. The Body and the Relation of Employment. Part 1. Making the Body Fit for Employment. 2. Fit Bodies: Selected by Nature or Social Process? 3. Docile Bodies: The Making of the Worker. Part 2. Ill at Work and Off Sick. 4. Vulnerable Bodies: Illness in the Workplace. 5. Bodies Off Sick: Moral Ambiguities and how they are Resolved. 6. Bodies Off Sick: The Control of Time. Part 3. Bodies at Risk of Disease and Injury. 7. Bodies at Risk: Explaining Workers’ Risk Behaviour. 8. Bodies at Risk: Can Jobs Still Kill? 9. Bodies at Risk: Weak Labour Markets may Damage your Health.
’This is a highly original and important book. Its distinctive approach...offers fascinating insights into the relationship of employment, work and health. It is a definitive volume which will be invaluable to employer and policy interests, occupational health specialists and sociologists, and indeed to all who are interested in the world of work - in effect, all of us.’ Professor Mildred Blaxter, University of East Anglia, UK ’A fascinating book...Some of the book’s issues should certainly make OH nurses re-examine their attitudes and policies towards sickness absence management.’ Occupational Health
