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Health and the Social Relations of Work: A Study of the Health‐related Experiences of Employees in Small Workplaces
Author(s) -
Eakin Joan M.,
MacEachen Ellen
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.00134
Subject(s) - distrust , blame , sociology of health and illness , legitimacy , sociology , context (archaeology) , industrial relations , resistance (ecology) , power (physics) , social relation , social psychology , public relations , perception , psychology , health care , political science , politics , paleontology , ecology , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience , law , psychotherapist , biology
On the basis of a qualitative study of health in small enterprises, this paper attempts to theorise the social production of illness and injury in the workplace. Particular features of working life in small workplaces, especially their personalised social relations and low polarisation of employer‐employee interests, shape workers’ perceptions of the employment relationship and of health in relation to work. Strained authority relations at work can form a key social context in which health and injury are constructed. In situations of conflictful supervisory relations, bodily experiences can become ‘problematised’. Meanings attributed to health conditions and the quality of the employment relationship are transformed and merged, prompting a questioning of the legitimacy of power asymmetries in the workplace and recognition of the conflicting interests of labour and capital. Bodily experiences and ill‐health offer possibilities for resistance and become mediators of broader social tensions. Unheeded illness claims deepen feelings of distrust and blame, further causing labour relations to deteriorate, and re‐producing the social conditions for illness.