Bodies on the line: risk, health and manliness

This chapter investigates how reserved workers bodies were affected by the pressures of war and prevailing work-health cultures in wartime. Occupational medicine, welfare and rehabilitation expanded during hostilities. Concurrently, the pressures of war production led directly to a rise in occupational injuries, disabilities and disease. In this context, there were threats to embodied masculinity as well as opportunities to rebuild it. Reserved men’s bodies were subject to an unprecedented level of control in the workplace as well as medical surveillance which posed a threat to male identities constructed around notions of independence, discretion, skill and autonomy in the labour process. At the same time, however, full employment and the pace of work enabled labouring bodies to be reconstructed after the ravages of the Depression. Moreover, an alternative site of masculinity could be drawn upon in narratives about the heightened hazards and exhausting nature of wartime work regimes and air raids. The exposure of bodies to increased risks in wartime enabled reserved men to rebuild their sense of manliness and enact patriotic masculinity.