An ethnography of factory accidents and their attendant reconstructive plastic surgeries in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, Connective Tissue explores notions of risk, work and labor practices, and the way meaning is made from experiences of trauma, care, and recovery. The book charts a rough chronology of the accident—from the workspace that preceded it, the transformation of the workspace by the accident, through journeys to and treatment in the hospital, and then the various and complex ways in which the accident reverberates into the future during recovery.
 
Connective Tissue revisits scholarship on factory labor by analyzing the accident as constitutive of the experience of work itself, and it refines existing conversations about the body, trauma, and care by introducing an analysis informed by theories of labor and production. Author Lily N. Shapiro argues that care does not happen in spite of or on the margins of capitalism, but rather that capitalism happens in and through care and caring relations. These experiences are intersected by identities of caste, class, and gender, and entangled in state discourse about labor rights, welfare, and industrial law.
 

LILY N. SHAPIRO is a qualitative health researcher at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. 

Foreword by Lenore Manderson
Note on transliteration
Introduction    
1. “Are these machines dangerous?”: Factory Accidents, Risk, and Labor
2. Paḻakkam: Habit, Care, and Recovery
3. Form, function, and productivity at the hospital
4. Futures, care, and capitalism    
5. Labor law and responsibility    
Conclusion: What is a hand?
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Foreword by Lenore Manderson ix
Note on Transliteration xiii
Introduction 1
1 “Are These
Machines Dangerous?”: Factory
Accidents, Risk, and Labor
27
2 Paḻakkam: Habit, Care, and Recovery 57
3 Form, Function, and Productivity at the Hospital 83
4 Futures,
Care, and Capitalism 109
5 Labor
Law and Responsibility 125
Conclusion: What Is a Hand? 147
Acknowledgments
155
Notes 159
References 167
Index 000