Event overview
Since at least the 19th century, the labour movement has made fair, predictable, and safe working conditions a central aim. In the many different settings where these are partially or wholly recognised as rights, the interrelationship of ‘health,’ ‘safety,’ and ‘work’ has generated two important but often unacknowledged effects on the everyday politics of labour. First, ‘work’ has been conventionally understood as formal-sector employment, where improved conditions are sought through contracts, collective bargaining, and welldefined roles. Second, ‘work’ is delimited in both time and space, and the worker as person (mobile, relational, and embodied) disappears from view. The purpose of this workshop is to challenge these biases by exploring the relations between work, health, and safety with an emphasis on the analytical and practical challenges of livelihoods that do not fit into the formal-sector model of employment. By interrogating received concepts and frameworks, our aim is to generate a critical reconceptualisation of ‘occupational health and safety’ as a field of research and a site of action.
Programme:
9.15-9.45 Participants arrive, coffee, registration
9.45-10.00 Opening remarks and introduction
Sophie Day and Rebecca Prentice
10.00-11.00 Panel 1. Embodied Economies
Laura Bear (LSE)
‘E Shorir, Amar Shorir’ (This Body is Our Body): The Productive Powers of Viswakarma and Ranna Puja in Corporated Shipyard Private Ltd
Rebecca Prentice (Sussex)
Injury, Consent, and Bodily Praxis in a Trinidadian Garment Factory
Discussant: James Staples (Brunel)
11.00-11.15 Short break
11.15-12.15 Panel 2. Risk, Aspiration, and Deregulation
Mark Lamont (Goldsmiths)
Speed Governors: (Re)deregulation, Road Safety, and Labour
Mobilities in Kenya
Deborah James (LSE)
Money-Go-Round: Personal Economies of Wealth, Aspiration and Indebtedness
Discussant: Andrew Sanchez (LSE)
12.15-13.45 Lunch (Education Building 220)
13.45-14.45 Panel 3. Injurious Regimes
Penny McCall Howard (Aberdeen and International Transport Workers’ Federation – personal capacity)
‘They Think You Get Used to it But You Don’t’: Violence and Well-Being in Seagoing Workplaces'
Sophie Day (Goldsmiths)
The Right to Have Rights
Discussant: Anna Cole (Goldsmiths)
14.45-15.00 Short break – coffee and tea
15.00-16.00 Panel 4. The Visible and the Invisible
Linda Waldman (IDS) and Heather Williams (IDS)
Calculations of Risk: Regulation and Responsibility for Asbestos in Social Housing?
Vito Laterza (Cambridge)
Danger, Skill and the Invisible in a Swazi Timber Sawmill: A
Phenomenological Approach to the Politics of Health at Work
Discussant: Olivia Swift (Goldsmiths)
16.00-17.00 Final discussion, final remarks
Organisers:
Rebecca Prentice, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, r.j.prentice@susssex.ac.uk
Sophie Day, Professor of Anthropology, s.day@gold.ac.uk
The organisers gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the ESRC to this workshop.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Jan 2011 | 9:45am - 5:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
