Yogi Hendlin Assistant Professor - Erasmus University Rotterdam |
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04.07.2022-29.08.2022
Industrial Epidemics: Chronic Disease and the Corporate Determinants of Health
This monograph, Industrial Epidemics: Chronic Disease and the Corporate Determinants of Health, brings together the intertwined concerns of health and environment in the face of companies structured to treat people and nature as expendable. Rather than blaming companies wholly, I see this as an accidental result of the structural environment companies operate in, including insufficient regulatory conditions, that drive systematically irresponsible behavior. Taking a critical public health perspective, this book exposes the unwritten half of the corporate business manual, while also examining successful transformations such as B corporations where businesses again return to their historical roots of serving the common good, properly understood, by finding their rightful societal and ecological place. Industrial Epidemics pieces together the fragmented but rigorous research on the social determinants of health in its broadest context, examining the drivers of societal factors that contribute to chronic disease.
The objective of this study is to detail the process and consequences of overconsumption and overproduction wrought by perverse competitive incentives produced by businesses caught in frameworks where profit is the ultimate and often only criterion of competition. The monograph looks at the various ways current sociopolitical structures needlessly create industries that generating systematic sickness, especially for those who do not have knowledge of or cannot afford special preventative barriers from everyday exposures or superior premium treatments. It exposes the paradox that as commons increasingly degrade, people seek more expensive and resource-intensive solutions to compensate and insulate themselves. It tracks the public health effects of every step of the corporate process from commodity chains, resource extraction, production and worker health, to consumption, overconsumption, industry-funded science and conflicts of interest, industry suppression of science, lobbying, oligopolies, price-fixing, corporate social responsibility, the effects of advertising on happiness and the “hedonic treadmill,” medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, and responsibilization. Lastly, it aims to describe the ecological, biological, and human sicknesses resulting from concentrations of toxins and waste produced and displaced as a consequence of linear assembly-line manufacturing models predicated on instrumental thinking, while prescribing alternative models and best practices as ways out from this conundrum.