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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on research on the construction industry in the North East of England, in this paper I explore how health and safety on site was understood through an ethics of labour which both extended beyond the boundaries of the conventionally economic and helped to ensure project success and profit.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the construction industry in the North East of England, in this paper I explore how the health of workers was understood by those with the responsibility to protect it. As I will discuss, those working for the main contractor understood the work they were doing in relation to a history of construction site accidents and illnesses, where two people died a week in accidents and the health impacts of the dangerous working conditions were numerous. Health and safety on site was shaped by numerous laws, regulations, programmes, policies, and codes but as I will argue, these formal expectations were interwoven with, and animated by, an ethics emerging from labour. These ethics extended beyond the boundaries of the conventionally economic to include kinship and considerations of the whole person beyond their labour, including their ‘mental health’. At the same time, these ethics were not separate from the hierarchy that organised this labour and were shaped by the complex and contentious dynamics of sub-contracting and the industry’s regimes of capital accumulation. Protecting health formed part of the managers attempts to reconcile the contradictory demands of the construction site which required both speed and safety and helped to secure the success of projects and their associated profits in the context of an industry where capital accumulation is uncertain and fragile.