Health and Efficiency

Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62534-650-6
Verlag: University of Massachusetts Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Activist Studies of Science & Technology

A new model of health emerged in Britain between 1870 and 1939. Centered on the working body, organized around the concept of efficiency, and grounded in scientific understandings of human labor, scientists, politicians, and capitalists of the era believed that national economic productivity could be maximized by transforming the body of the worker into a machine. At the core of this approach was the conviction that worker productivity was intimately connected to worker health.Under this new "science of work," fatigue was seen as the ultimate pathology of the working-class body, reducing workers' capacity to perform continued physical or mental labor. As Steffan Blayney shows, the equation between health and efficiency did not go unchallenged. While biomedical and psychological experts sought to render the body measurable, governable, and intelligible, ordinary men and women found ways to resist the logics of productivity and efficiency imposed on them, and to articulate alternative perspectives on work, health, and the body.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wirtschaftssoziologie, Arbeitssoziologie, Organisationssoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Wirtschafts-, Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Industrielle Organisation

Über Autor(innen)

STEFFAN BLAYNEY is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.