Ciclo de seminarios: "Tóxicos en el trabajo"
Seminario impartido por Arthur McIvor (Scottish Oral History Centre, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Escocia)
Fecha: Miércoles, 20 de febrero de 2019, a las 16:00 horas
Lugar: Salón de actos del Instituto Interuniversitario López Piñero. Palacio Cerveró.
Breathless miners: Coal mining and occupational health in Britain
Historically, pneumoconiosis – the clogging and scarring of the lungs caused by inhaling dust at work – decimated working class communities in the twentieth century across Europe and was undoubtedly the worst occupational hazard of the industrial era. Mining communities in Britain today are scarred with a legacy of respiratory disease and other disabilities. This situation is replicated across all coal mining countries – and incomparably worse in industrialising places like India and China, currently experiencing a pneumoconiosis epidemic of massive proportions. The WHO estimates around 250,000 deaths annually worldwide from pneumoconiosis today (and this is a gross underestimate of actual mortality and disability).
Focusing on Britain, this presentation discusses the causes of this epidemic, the efforts to control it, and explores the impact and legacy of the scourge of pneumoconiosis and other occupation-related respiratory diseases (bronchitis and emphysema). The health and well-being of those in coal mining communities was undermined by a complex series of processes, but at the core of this is the profound economic violence meted out by a productionist work culture which prevailed across privatized and state-owned production systems.
Along the way I also want to comment on research methodology as I believe it is important to get beyond the documents, the medical discourses, trade union records and the statistics – the body counts – to examine the lived experience of this disease; what it meant and how it affected individuals, families and communities. In my research (e.g. McIvor and Johnston, Miners’ Lung, 2007) I’ve deployed an oral history approach, interviewing workers, victims and patients, including more than 50 interviews undertaken across three British coalfields. Oral ‘eye-witness’ testimonies take us on to the shoulder of the hewer at the coalface struggling to breathe in the dust cloud thrown up by the coal cutters and conveyors and behind the closed doors in families whose main breadwinner was afflicted by chronic pneumoconiosis, bronchitis or emphysema. We are brought closer to everyday lived experience and to workers’ agency in this as they attempted to mitigate, adapt to and cope with the effects of respiratory disability. I argue that this kind of approach – looking at disease and disability through the lens of those directly affected – enables a deeper understanding of the prevailing work-health cultures that contributed to this epidemic and well as the devastating impact it had.
Plataforma online: http://reunion.uv.es/hcc2
Presentación: Ximo Guillem (IILP-UV)
Coordinador ciclo "Tóxicos en el trabajo": Josep Ramón Bertomeu (IILP-UV) y Ximo Guillem (IILP-UV), con la colaboración de la SCHCT.
Coordinación seminarios: Enric Novella (IILP-UV)
