Efficiency and the Productive Body

Based at Durham University, we are the UK's first Institute for Medical Humanities. Our research explores human experiences of health and ill-health using an interdisciplinary arts and humanities approach.

Institute for Medical Humanities

The Gilbreths’ Photographic Motion Studies of Work

Institute for Medical Humanities, Confluence Building

This presentation examines the images of working bodies seen in the photographic motion studies of work undertaken by the management consultants Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in the 1910s and 1920s as representative of new ideas about efficiency and productivity emergent at this time.It contextualises their studies, called chronocyclegraphs, as the product of two key cultural developments that took place at the start of the twentieth century: firstly, new practises of measuring and assessing productivity in the context of workplace management; and secondly, the use of new technologies for visualising the body, which brought with them new aesthetics and visual conventions for representing bodies in motion. Their chronocyclegraphs provide a striking new vision of the working body in industrial capitalism, not as a thing of flesh and blood, but as a luminous field of energy or line of force.This presentation examines the managerial imaginary visualised in the Gilbreths’ photographic motion studies, and how its productivity imperative is extended from the workplace into everyday life through the work of Lillian Gilbreth, which promised that the reward for increased productivity was a greater quantity of 'happiness minutes'. About the speaker:<a href="https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/1204" title="https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/1204" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Elizabeth Stephens</a> is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the <a href="https://www.uq.edu.au/" title="https://www.uq.edu.au/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">University of Queensland</a>, where she was previously an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2017-2022). Her publications include the books <a href="https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.landing.epl?ISBN=9780226484198" title="https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.landing.epl?ISBN=9780226484198" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Normality: A Critical Genealogy</a> (University of Chicago Press, 2017), co-authored with Peter Cryle, and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/shm/article/25/2/546/1739679" title="https://academic.oup.com/shm/article/25/2/546/1739679" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Anatomy as Spectacle: Public Exhibitions of the Body from 1700 to the Present</a>. Her Future Fellowship project examines the history of experimentation as a shared practice between the arts and sciences. This talk is hosted by the <a href="https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/medical-humanities/" title="https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/medical-humanities/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Institute for Medical Humanities</a> at <a href="https://www.durham.ac.uk/" title="https://www.durham.ac.uk/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Durham University</a>.This event is free to attend.

Our {communityGuidelinesLink} describe the sort of content we prohibit on Eventbrite. If you suspect an event may be in violation, you can report it to us so we can investigate.

To report other categories of prohibited or illegal content, submit {link}