Sick from Work: The Body in Employment

Citation

(2000), "Sick from Work: The Body in Employment", Work Study, Vol. 49 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2000.07949bae.002

Sick from Work: The Body in Employment

Paul BellabyAshgateISBN 0 7546 1041 1£37.50

Keywords Health, Sickness, Work

This book attempts to shift the emphasis from current concerns about individual behaviour and its health effects to an understanding of the social factors that shape both circumstances and behaviours conducive to health. Its focus is that organised 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 or ill) beyond working age itself.

The book brings together usually disparate work in the sociologies of health, illness and the body, and the sociologies of work organisations. Importantly, for a book looking at areas of potential new knowledge and understanding, the book is research-based. The arguments made are supported with primary data that the author has collected in varied workplaces in the UK - 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 coverage.