Society of Scholars Cohort Archive

(Re)Constructing the Body: Factory Accidents and Reconstructive Surgery in South India

My project explores reconstructive plastic surgeries that occur as the result of factory accidents in South India. Occupational injuries have been explored in headlines news as well as the academy mainly with an emphasis on catastrophic industrial accidents, eliding the fact that these incidents, far from being extraordinary, are built into the normal conditions of factory labor. How is the laboring body both constructed and reconstructed through hand and arm injuries and their attendant surgeries? Using ethnographic techniques, I examine the relations between the body, work, and care, revealing how capitalism depends not only on the consumption of bodies in labor, but also on their rehabilitation. Invigorating the accident itself as an important analytic lens, I rethink existing understandings of the laboring body, the stakes of occupational injury, and daily practices of labor and care.