见证:口述史方法与英国煤矿业职业健康和伤残研究

Bearing Witness: Oral History Methodology in the Study of Occupational Health and Disability in British Coalmining

在英国所有的工人阶级社区中,煤炭开采社区是最不健康的社区之一。本文考察了口述史研究方法如何促进我们对采矿职业健康和安全史的理解,聚焦于煤炭开采工作及其对身心损害的影响,探讨20世纪英国采矿社区普遍存在的工作健康文化。本文采用一系列矿工口述证言,其中包括大约十年前为了一个关于煤炭工人呼吸性疾病项目而在三家英国煤田进行的50例访谈。据称,身体状况是矿工回忆中一再出现的主题,通过这些个人回忆能够让我们超越流行病学的'身体数量'的观点而更接近生活经验,并批判性地反思矿工建构其患病和伤残叙述的方式。那些在煤炭开采社区工作的人的健康和幸福受到一系列复杂过程的破坏,但其中的核心是遍布私有化和国有生产体系的生产工作文化所施加的严重经济暴力。煤矿关闭的漫长过程和随着20世纪70年代以来去工业化逐渐加深而带来的权力分配和劳资关系文化的变化只是加剧了健康问题,让已经受到过早死亡、受伤、慢性疾病和致残等历史遗留问题重创的社区进一步受到失业的社会和精神影响,以及工作高强度化和经济不确定性的压力。这些口述证据还确定和阐明了持续存在的'硬汉'工作健康文化,这种文化在采矿社区普遍存在,并像拖锚一样影响着健康和安全标准。

Coal mining communities are amongst the most unhealthy of all working class communities in Britain.This paper examines the ways that an oral history methodology can contribute to our understanding of the history of occupational health and safety in mining.It focuses upon the impact that coal mining work and its loss had upon the body and mind,investigating the prevailing work-health cultures in mining communities in Britain in the twentieth century.It draws upon an array of miner’s oral testimonies,including 50 interviews undertaken across three British coalfields for a project a decade or so ago on coal miners’respiratory diseases.It is argued that the body is a recurring motif in miners’memories and that drawing upon such personal reminiscence enables us to get beyond epidemiological‘body counts’to get closer to lived experience as well to critically reflect on the ways that miners construct their narratives.The health and well-being of those in coal mining communities was undermined by a complex series of processes,but at the core of this is the profound economic violence meted out by a productionist work culture which prevailed across privatized and state owned production systems.The long-drawn out process of pit closures and the changed power dynamics and industrialrelations cultures as deindustrialization deepened from the 1970 s only served to exacerbate health problems,adding the socio-psychic impacts of job loss and the stressors of work intensification and economic precarity to communities already decimated by historic legacies of premature death,injury,chronic disease and disability.The oral evidence also identifies and elucidates a persisting‘hard man’work-health culture which prevailed and which also acted as a contributory drag anchor on health and safety standards in mining communities.