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All lectures Challenges in Work, Health and Wellbeing 2025
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Work: paid and unpaid work/labour- Productive vs. reproductive/subsistence labour (c.f. Marx)
- Whether work is paid or unpaid may differ across time and place
(childcare, elderly care)
*When we talk about people’s work, we tend to talk about their jobs.
Job: situated descriptions of employment, that take into account where and how
work is actually performed
Elements of jobs
- Employment relationship
- Occupation
- Working conditions
- Job characteristics
Pro-work/anti-work
- Commodification of labour
- Work-centered societies
- Anti-work: born to live, forced to work?
The complex relations between work, health and wellbeing
- Work affects health and wellbeing in complex, reciprocal, heterogeneous
ways
- Work is an important boost for people’s wellbeing and health
- Work is a major cause of illness and injury
Health and wellbeing
- Health and wellbeing are adjacent (aangrenzend) concepts
Wellbeing: the combination of feeling good and functioning well; the experience
of positive emotions such as happiness and contentment as well as the
development of one’s potential, having some control over one’s life, having a
sense of purpose, and experiencing positive relationships
Health: Not merely the absence of disease or infirmity but a state of complete
physical, mental and social wellbeing
Job rewards/resources
- Positive impacts of jobs on wellbeing and health: job rewards and job
resources
- Wellbeing rewards of employment include
o Income, social status
o Identity
o Social networks
- Health rewards of employment include
o Better self-reported physical and mental health
o Psycho-social resources
o Health insurances and benefits
Job demands or risks: negative effects of jobs on health and wellbeing
- Work related health problems are common
Unequal exposure to wellbeing benefits and risks
- Work effects health and wellbeing in complex, reciprocal, heterogeneous
ways
,Labour markets are unequal institutions
- Social occupational class theory
- Labour market segmentation; insider/outsider theories (c.f. Kalleberg’s
good jobs, bad jobs)
Paid work or workers is often subdivided into segments:
- Blue vs. white collar; manual vs. non-manual
- Self-employment vs. dependent employment (employee)
- Occupation/occupational class
Inequalities in wellbeing and rewards
Labour market inequalities are related to, e.g. earnings, contract status & job
security, entitlement to paid leave, autonomy and authority. But also, exposure to
health risks and benefits.
Unequal exposure to physical health risks
Employment exposes workers to physical health and mental health demands or
risks in heterogeneous or unequal ways
Occupational health disparities
- Different jobs poses different physical and mental health demands/risks
(e.g. exposure to hazards, repetitive overuse, working conditions, stress)
- Some jobs expose workers to more risks than others
, Shades of bad health
Medical sociology/anthropology
- Illness (first person perspective)
- Disease, disorder (professional/medical perspective)
- Sickness (societal perspective; role that you play; telling your work)
examples:
2: adhd
6: something happens which puts you in a bad mood
7: you just cannot go to work; systematic reasons
Costs of illness, disease and sickness
Why should we care about adverse health impacts of work
- Individual (impacts your quality of life)
- Employer (absenteeism, low productivity)
- Society/welfare state (we’ve built society on the assumption that everyone
works/everyone is motivated)
Illness at work
- Work, health wellbeing: reciprocal relation
o Not all sickness at work is caused by work
o Not all sickness is caused by disease (e.g. grieving)
- Managing disease and illness at work
Activities, behaviors and sickness
- Expected activities and behaviours at work
o Physical
o Mental
o Emotional (Wharton)
- Relation with health and wellbeing
o Physical demands and resources
o Psycho-social demands and resources
Emotional labor: the process by which workers are expected to manage their
feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines
- Activities and behaviors at work
o Regulation of own emotions (smiling)
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