[HSTE Seminar] "Asbestos: a class disease, class sufferers".

The next session of the seminar "Asbestos: a class disease, class sufferers" will take place on Thursday 5 June from 3pm to 5pm, on the Hannah Arendt campus, room 1E09.

We will be welcoming the sociologist Bastien Guillermin (Grenoble Alpes University, PACTES-UMR 5194). On the basis of his dissertation work with retired workers from the chemical industry in the Roussillon region suffering from asbestos-related illnesses, he will show how these illnesses affect individuals differently depending on their social class. Although the vast majority of these illnesses affect blue-collar workers (almost 90%), members of the middle and upper classes can also be victims of this carcinogen. However, blue-collar workers, technicians and managers do not face this ordeal in the same way. By focusing on people suffering from fibrosis or cancers in remission, he will show that asbestos-related pathologies create situations of disability for managers, which manifest themselves in particular in the practice of certain leisure activities, while they affect the 'instrumental relationship with the body' of blue-collar workers and some technicians. The latter describe themselves not as "disabled", but as unproductive and "useless", thereby demonstrating a form of symbolic disqualification.

The link to follow the seminar remotely will be sent to those registered before the session.
✅ Registration required: https://digipad.app/p/992715/f2960f1567532
✉️ Contact: sylvain.bertschy@univ-avignon.fr