AP/SOSC 3169 3.00

Work & Health

This course explores the relationship between work, labour, global markets and health. It draws on political economy, feminist theory and other critical theoretical perspectives to consider how ideas about value, productive, and reproductive work interface with power, economy, society, and health in people’s everyday working lives. The course examines how work environments create conditions that result in particular patterns of disease and injury; analyses the effects of power relationships and technoscience on the health of workers; and considers the growing informal markets and casualized labour in the context of neoliberal capitalism. The course will draw on empirical and historical studies that speak to the gendered, racial and classed characteristics of occupational health including migrant labour, invisible labour, unpaid work, and disabled workers. The history of the occupational health movement as well as organized labour’s response to work-related health and disability issues will also be examined.