Dismembering the male: men's bodies, Britain and the Great War

becoming a focus for nationalist and radical protest. Thirdly, there is the Costa Rican state. The book examines labour recruitment and controls, union organization and radicalization, the persistence of Jamaican cultural and religious traditions and the impact of racism and early Communist proselytization. Readers of this journal, however, are most likely to be interested in the section addressing company paternalism in health care and worker resistance to it. Anxious both to protect white managers and technicians who were difficult to replace and to raise labour productivity and minimize turnover of black workers, the United Fruit Company invested in hospital provision and field dispensaries and then deducted 2 per cent of the salaries and wages of its employees to cover costs. By 1926 these measures were complemented by malaria controls. Whereas in the 1910s piecemeal efforts had been made to reduce malaria incidence, now a full programme of controls was maintained, including short-range sanitation near housing, mandatory treatment for ill workers and the use of insecticides. From the viewpoint of the enterprise this strategy had some success: welfare policies did help to entice workers to remain, and levels of output and productivity did rise. However, the annual reports of the company indicate considerable worker resistance, which took the forms, in particular, of refusing to take prescribed doses of plasmochin (introduced from Germany in the mid-1920s), and of not making the "right use" of screens around living quarters. West Indian workers wanted screens, but were hostile to regulations which forbade travel between plantations and unscreened villages. At times too physicians trained in the United States misinterpreted the preferences of black workers, partly because, in line with company policy, white doctors focused their attention on the disease rather than the patient. Many workers preferred tonic pills to quinine, for example, as treatment for leg ulcers, because, debilitated by an inadequate diet, hookworm or/and malaria, they found tonic pills valuable in building up their general condition. The health strategy of the company failed in another important respect. Black workers often opted for treatment by approachable black healers in company field dispensaries rather than attention in the alien company hospital. Accustomed to racism but not to the formal segregationism of the colour bar, Jamaican workers were antagonized by a hospital pervaded by segregationist ideology and practices. In spite of the limitations imposed by the persistent denial of United Fruit of access to its archives there …