Living it on the skin: Italian states, working illness

Abstract

In this article, I examine the codification of an Italian work‐related illness caused by mobbing, a type of psychological harassment that emerged at the moment neoliberal policies transformed Italy's historically protectionist labor market. I trace how the medicalization of mobbing has expanded workers’ access to compensation, resources, and discursive tools for criticizing neoliberal labor conditions, even as it has produced new structures of surveillance. I unravel the neoliberal politics of a state that protects workers’ health yet governs worker–citizens through an apparatus of medical experts. I find that workers’ labor problems are experienced and managed as bodily problems in ways important to remaking Italian citizenship. [neoliberalism, state, labor, biopolitics, citizenship, bodies, Italy]

An Imperfect Contraceptive Society: Fertility and Contraception in Italy

“…More broadly, this ties into a larger category of forces that Italians view as potentially harmful to the body (e.g. genetically altered foods, and social illnesses such as “mobbing,” see Molé 2008). Women informants created a discourse of “naturalism” around non-technological methods as opposed to technological methods or “pharmaceutical” methods, viewed as potentially unhealthy for the body (see similar findings in the US by Bledsoe, 1996).…”

Discourse, Organization, and the Welfare State in the Former East Berlin

“…In this sense, using the term “neoliberal governmentality” is problematic precisely insofar as it glosses over the moment of suture as the key moment in which power is enacted. Noelle J. Molé, describing Italian labor market policies similar to those which are present in my fieldsite, comes closer to marking this disjuncture between liberal ideologies and governmental rationality when she describes the existence of “governmentality under neoliberal conditions” (:191).…”

Economy in practice: Islamic finance and the problem of market reason

“…The anthropology of finance has revealed the practices inside some of the central sites that constitute the contemporary economy, including central banks (Holmes ; Riles ), brokerage firms (Miyazaki ), exchanges (Hertz ; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger ; Zaloom ), and investment houses (Abolafia ; Fisher ; Ho ). This work has affinities with ethnography that has focused on the way economic rationality shapes organizational action in a diverse array of institutional sites, including various branches of state administrations (Karpiak ; Silvey ), religious networks (Froystad ; Muehlebach ; O'Neill ; Soares ), NGOs (Elyachar ; Molé ; Richard ), development projects (Li ; Osella and Osella ), and international bodies tasked with managing the global economy (Deeb and Marcus ).…”