O4C.6 ‘Healthy on the outside, sick on the inside’ -forestry workers, embodiment and biosociality

Health outcomes for workers in forestry are shaped by a complex range of exposures, including exposures related to the work environment generated by the industry itself and within a natural environment. We understand how the worker experiences these exposures is shaped by a range of contextual factors including external factors such as market prices and legislation; employer specific factors (e.g. pace of work, provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)); to task specific factors (e.g. repetition, worker control). And, health outcomes from these exposures can range from immediate to delayed, and in duration from acute to chronic. This paper draws on a qualitative research project conducted with forestry workers, their contractors and the CEOs of corporate forests in New Zealand and argues that we need to know more if we are to intervene effectively. Face to face interviews and focus groups were conducted with 100 participants at multiple sites throughout New Zealand (Northland, Gisborne, Central North Island, Hawkes Bay, Wanganui and Otago). This paper focuses specifically on the experiential aspects of being a forestry worker and contractor and how the concept of embodiment and bio-sociality is a useful means by which to understand how bodies are produced and reproduced through labour, how labour converts bodies into social entities and that the body is not exclusively in either the biological or social world, rather bodies are made, have social value and the sociality of bodies shapes altered biologies. These concepts allow us to understand why it is that workers self-describe and are described as being ‘healthy on the outside, sick on the inside’ or ‘fit on the outside, sick on the inside’ and to unpack how social groups form around biological identities marked by ill health or illness susceptibility.