Introduction

First published in 1999, this aims to shift the balance from current concerns about individual behaviour and its health effects to an understanding of the social factors that shape both circumstances and behaviour conducive to health.

Its focus is the fact that organized work in paid employment is the common experience of most adults before their sixties, and that individuals have widely varied employment security, working conditions and job control that are likely to affect health (for good and ill) beyond working age itself.

It brings together usually disparate work in the sociologies of health and illness and the body; and the sociologies of work and organizations. Importantly, the book is research-based.

The argument is supported with primary data that the author has collected in varied workplaces in Britain - a pottery manufacturer, a food-processing firm and the NHS among them and analysis of official statistics and large data sets, as well as secondary literature which is international in scope.

The audience includes first and higher degree students in sociology, health and environmental sciences and management studies.