New Books in Science, Technology, and Society Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)
Mar 23, 2026
Steffan Blayney, historian and former Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, studies how health was reframed around worker efficiency in Britain. He explores how bodies were modeled as machines, fatigue became a pathology, and efficiency logic spread into culture and labor practices. The conversation links these histories to modern tech, wellness culture, and moments of worker resistance.
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Body As Machine Became Medical Mandate
- The late 19th century shift to mechanical models reframed the human body as an improvable machine rather than a perfect divine creation.
- Steffan Blayney links thermodynamics and physiology to a new ethic: physicians as engineers optimizing the body to convert energy into productive work.
Efficiency Gains Usually Mean Greater Exploitation
- Technological or welfare interventions are rarely neutral; Blayney argues they primarily increase worker efficiency and thus exploitation under capitalism.
- He cautions that increases in efficiency historically translate into greater extraction of labor value, not worker emancipation.
Frame Demands In Justice Not Just Health
- Avoid framing workplace struggles solely as health issues; instead foreground exploitation, justice, and democratic control of work.
- Blayney advises unions and activists to resist outsourcing authority over workers' bodies to external experts aligned with capital.
