Blayney, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-9138-4008 (2019) Industrial fatigue and the productive body : the science of work in Britain, c. 1900–1918. Social History of Medicine, 32 (2). pp. 310-328. ISSN 0951-631X
Abstract
This article examines the emergence of ‘industrial fatigue’ as an object of medico-scientific enquiry and social anxiety in early-twentieth-century Britain. Between 1900 and 1918, industrial fatigue research became the basis of a new science of work, which I term ‘industrial physiology’. Drawing on François Guéry and Didier Deleule, I argue that industrial physiology is best understood as a science of ‘the productive body’. The worker was an object for medico-scientific intervention only insofar as they represented a constituent part of the machinery of industrial labour, while the individual body was, in turn, reimagined as a productive system in microcosm. In this context, industrial fatigue—defined as diminished capacity for productive work—emerged as the emblematic pathology of industrial civilisation. By 1918, it had become the central category in the scientific articulation of a conception of the body in which health was equated squarely with productive capacity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | industrial fatigue; industrial physiology; productive body; François Guéry; Didier Deleule |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of History (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Nov 2019 13:43 |
Last Modified: | 12 Nov 2019 14:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/shm/hkx077 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:151924 |