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Wed 30 March
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Wednesday 30 March 2016 8.30 - 10.30
X-1 ORA01 Narratives, Experiences and Understandings of Work, Job Loss and Health in the Twentieth Century
Seminario F, Nivel 1E
Network: Oral History Chair: Sean O'Connell
Organizer: Matthew Smith Discussants: -
Roberta Garruccio : Occupational Psychology and Plant Closure: Oral Narratives from the Falck Steelworks in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan)
This paper explores the case of Sesto San Giovanni. Located on the Northern outskirts of Milan, Sesto San Giovanni was one of the largest industrial centers in the 1900s, dependent upon heavy industries and characterized by a deep-rooted working-class culture (after 1945 it was called “the Italian Stalingrad” reaching more ... (Show more)
This paper explores the case of Sesto San Giovanni. Located on the Northern outskirts of Milan, Sesto San Giovanni was one of the largest industrial centers in the 1900s, dependent upon heavy industries and characterized by a deep-rooted working-class culture (after 1945 it was called “the Italian Stalingrad” reaching more than 90% union density). For this reason, Sesto San Giovanni is a case of great interest in the study of the effects of industrial divestments from the 1980s. Unemployment in Sesto San Giovanni doubled between 1990 and 1993 and quadrupled between 1990 and 1996, reaching levels much higher than the regional average.

The paper focuses on the case of the Falck shut-down: establishing itself in Sesto San Giovanni in 1906, Falck, until the 1980s, was the largest private steel producer in Italy; in that decade it entered a deep crisis and in 1995 it abandoned the production of steel.

The paper therefore concentrates on the 1990s highlighting the program of re-training and outplacement that was designed after an agreement between the company, the unions, the regional government and the Municipality of Sesto San Giovanni. The program, funded by the European Community and the Italian Government, involved at that stage almost 2000 redundancies. About a thousand were relocated in alternative employments and the other thousand were pre-retirees.

The intent of the paper is to explain the significance of this case study in order to investigate particular aspects of workers’ health. For this, it makes reference to the results of an inquiry that was conducted in the period 1993-1998 by the Department of Occupational Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan on behalf of Falck. That research work had among its objectives to better understand the pain and discomfort of the redundant workers, to analyze the scope of resources that workers used to deal with their situation (social resources, psychological, material) and to identify active strategies that workers put in place to cope with the change, often traumatic on a personal level.

In respect to the research carried out by the occupational psychologist in the ‘90s, the paper reconstructs: the qualitative methodology (unstructured interviews), the reference models (theory of social representations of Serge Moscovici), plus insights achieved (conjectures about the meaning of ambiguities, splits, contradictions in the workers narratives) comparing them with the results of an oral history study currently underway in a broad campaign of interviews with former Falck workers. (Show less)

Kirsi-Maria Hytönen : “We Never Complained”: Tiredness and Strength in the Memories of Working Women during the Second World War in Finland
Memories of work during the war include among others emotions, interpretations and meanings of the war and expectations of the narrator. This paper studies women’s narratives about work on the home front, and seeks to analyse tiredness and coping in the difficult circumstances during the Second World War in Finland. ... (Show more)
Memories of work during the war include among others emotions, interpretations and meanings of the war and expectations of the narrator. This paper studies women’s narratives about work on the home front, and seeks to analyse tiredness and coping in the difficult circumstances during the Second World War in Finland. Discussions about arduous work during the war are an important way of constructing one’s life narrative in connection to the national history, and thus women’s memories of work which construct both public and private memories. The so called neo-patriotic turn in public history since 1990s emphasizes hard work and heroic sacrifice of all ‘patriotic’ citizens during the war in Finland.
The paper is based on my PhD thesis of ethnology, which I finished in 2014. The memory material of my PhD thesis was collected before the neo-patriotic turn, but as I show in my paper, hard work has been an important part of the grand narrative of women’s work during the war already in post-war years. The present neo-patriotic turn, however, seems to underline the consistent grand narrative of hard-working people and push aside the vivid memories and divergent life narratives of individuals. (Show less)

Stephen Mawdsley : Ghosts of the Jake Walk: Oral History and Jamaica Ginger Paralysis
During America’s Great Depression, an estimated 50,000 white and black Americans became ill and suffered physical disability after consuming an adulterated patent medicine, known as Jamaica Ginger – or colloquially as Jake. Although it was marketed as a cure-all and routinely prescribed by doctors, Jamaica Ginger was also favoured by ... (Show more)
During America’s Great Depression, an estimated 50,000 white and black Americans became ill and suffered physical disability after consuming an adulterated patent medicine, known as Jamaica Ginger – or colloquially as Jake. Although it was marketed as a cure-all and routinely prescribed by doctors, Jamaica Ginger was also favoured by poor agricultural and mill workers due to its very high alcohol content and low cost. When Prohibition was in force between 1920 and 1933, some manufacturers adulterated Jamaica Ginger with the colourless and flavourless chemical, Tricresyl phosphate, to enable it to pass increasingly stringent government alcohol testing. However, the additive was soon discovered to be a neurotoxin, causing paralysis of the limbs and resulting in a distinctive gait, known as the Jake Walk.
For survivors of Jamaica Ginger paralysis, the social stigma, loss of mobility and livelihood at a time of limited economic opportunity posed significant challenges. Since there was no cure for paralysis and money for medical care was scarce, many survivors
sought home care and experimented with a range of interventions. Although most of these therapies were unsuccessful, some resourceful individuals organized citizen action groups to seek compensation and government intervention. How were interviews with survivors undertaken? In what ways did the interviewer-interviewee relationship shape these recollections? What challenges do
historians face when attempting to resurrect ‘subaltern’ voices? By drawing on archival records and oral histories collected during the 1930s and 1970s, this paper will explore the problems of locating, analysing, and incorporating oral histories concerned with the
experiences of marginalized populations. (Show less)

Arthur McIvor : ‘Scrap Heap’ Stories: Oral Narratives of Work Loss, Health and the Body in Deindustrializing Scotland
This paper takes up the challenge laid down by Heathcott and Cowie (2003) to move beyond the ‘body counts’ to explore further the meanings of deindustrialization. Building on the seminal work of deindustrialization scholars such as High and Lewis (2007) and Strangleman (2004), Phillips (2013) and Perchard (2013), my argument ... (Show more)
This paper takes up the challenge laid down by Heathcott and Cowie (2003) to move beyond the ‘body counts’ to explore further the meanings of deindustrialization. Building on the seminal work of deindustrialization scholars such as High and Lewis (2007) and Strangleman (2004), Phillips (2013) and Perchard (2013), my argument is that utilising an oral history methodology facilitates understanding of the wide-ranging impacts and legacies of job losses, including how workers reacted to the breach in the ‘moral economy’ (see Phillips 2013) that losing the right to work constituted. My focus and particular interest is in reconstructing what work meant for Scots in the heavy industries in the Glasgow and Clydeside industrial conurbation, how they narrated their working lives and how plant closures and their impacts (including on health and well-being) were reconstructed in their oral testimonies (see, for a wider example of the meaning of job loss, McIvor 2013, ch 7).
Debates around deindustrialization and ‘smokestack nostalgia’ have identified a tendency to uncritically romanticise and sentimentalise the industrial workplace (Strangleman, 2013). In this selective remembering, the lived and embodied experience of the people who worked in these spaces and were directly affected by deindustrialization is being airbrushed out whilst the industrial workplace sometimes appears benign, shorn of the class and power relations in which it is embedded. This paper argues that there is scope within deindustrialization studies for a sharper focus more upon the body, and encourages a conversation along these lines. There are at least four dimensions to this that I want to comment on in this paper: which I’ll label loss, legacy and survival, escape, and agency. Plant shutdowns and loss of work, as many studies have revealed, was deeply inimical to both physical and mental health. In deindustrializing communities the legacy of the work previously undertaken remains evident, in, for example, high levels of disability whilst deindustrialization was a long drawn out process and the bodies of those survivors who clung on to diminishing manual work during the run-down felt the pinch. Escape from some forms of highly dangerous, toxic and polluting work could reduce levels of trauma and raise standards of health, both at an individual and a community level. Workers were also not just victims of this assault upon their bodies in deindustrializing communities, but also exercised agency and advocacy, seen, for example in strikes, plant closure protests and occupational and environmental health victims’ groups (Clark, 2013). (Show less)

Matthew Smith : A Measure of Sanity? Work and the Prevention of Mental Illness in North America, 1945-1980
In 1961, the Canadian psychoanalyst and organisational psychologist Elliot Jacques (1917-2003) contended that:
working for a living is one of the basic activities in a man’s life. … It gives him a continuous account of the correspondence between outside reality and the inner perception of that reality, as well as an ... (Show more)
In 1961, the Canadian psychoanalyst and organisational psychologist Elliot Jacques (1917-2003) contended that:
working for a living is one of the basic activities in a man’s life. … It gives him a continuous account of the correspondence between outside reality and the inner perception of that reality, as well as an account of the accuracy of his appraisal of himself … In short, a man’s work does not satisfy his material needs alone. In a very deep sense, it gives him a measure of his sanity.
During the post-war period, most of Jacques’ colleagues in the field of mental health would have agreed. Work was not only an economic necessity for most people; it could also prevent mental illness. Being unemployed, in contrast, put people at risk of a range of mental health problems. As such, achieving full employment was both a sensible economic strategy and good mental health policy.
Linking mental illness and socioeconomic problems was a popular and influential trend following the end of the Second World War, especially in North America. Although poverty, discrimination, violence, lack of education and overcrowding were all cited as potential causes of mental illness, unemployment, and the economic turmoil, discouragement and social exclusion that came with it, was consistently cited by psychiatrists and social scientists as being particularly detrimental to mental health.
This paper will explore how the link between work and mental health was articulated during this period, largely through the use of oral history interviews of mental health professionals and researchers (psychiatrists, social scientists, social workers, psychiatric nurses). These interviews consist of those recorded in 2015 as part of an AHRC-funded project (‘An Ounce of Prevention: A History of Social Psychiatry, 1939-Present’), as well as pre-recorded interviews available from the National Library of Medicine and the American Psychiatric Association Archives. The goal of the paper will be to determine how researchers and mental health professionals developed the link between mental health and work. How did these professionals conceptualise the working lives of the working classes? Were their depictions realistic or based on romantic notions of work? How did changes in the workplace, such as automation, affect their beliefs about work and mental health? Finally, did interviewees change or entrench their views about work and mental health as North America went from a period of high employment during the 1950s and 1960s to high unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s. (Show less)



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