Workplace Injury and the Failing Academic Body: A Testimony of Pain
Helena Liu ()
Additional contact information
Helena Liu: University of Technology Sydney
Journal of Business Ethics, 2022, vol. 179, issue 2, No 2, 339-352
Abstract:
Abstract This article explores how meanings around risk, health/safety, and workers’ bodies are constructed in an academic context. I do so through the study of a single academic in Australia who sustained a back injury at work. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews and documents, I attempt to show the embodied experience of an injured worker’s struggle for care, recovery, and survival in the neoliberal academy. Writing from the nexus of workplace health and safety and critical management literatures, the raw testimony of this injured academic lays bare the violences that are enabled within a wider culture of self-discipline, individualism, and performativity in the university. The story presented in this article exposes how physiological and psychological injuries can be exacerbated through the very health and safety procedures that are designed to prevent and alleviate harm. Please note that this article contains references to suicide and suicidal ideation.
Keywords: Workplace injury; Occupational health and safety; Human resource management; Academia; Neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-021-04838-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:179:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-021-04838-9
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04838-9
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman
More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().