**5. Conclusions: reflections on occupational health**

It is visible that the discussions on occupational health and also on health and safety at work have advanced a lot in recent years. Everything that has been done to minimize the negative impacts of the industrial system on society is commendable. Much remains to be done, as the rates of accidents, deaths and illnesses related to work remain high. Here, the contradiction between investments in occupational health and the number of accidents, deaths and illnesses at work is already evident, which makes it evident that something is not correct.

Again, it is necessary to repeat that this chapter is not against actions of health and safety at work, but the reflections instituted here aim to shed light on the problem, with the hope that all human life is treated as Bíos (qualified life) and as Zoé (naked life), so that you have respect and responsibility for all lives. The reflections developed here aim to make it clear that in addition to being naked, it is hierarchical and generates uneven living conditions. Only by shedding light on these findings can we fight the processes that maintain these conditions of hierarchy and inequality.

Life starts to be managed, controlled, and normalized, but not for the sole and exclusive good of the subject, but for the good of the capitalist system. Perhaps if accidents, deaths, and illnesses at work did not generate costs for the capitalist system, the right to health and safety at work would follow social inequalities. As these accidents, deaths and illnesses cause costs for the capitalist system and for the States, then investment becomes necessary. Here the standardization processes come in to safeguard the lives of workers, but what results is the negligence of the system in cases of accident and death.

*Contemporary Developments and Perspectives in International Health Security - Volume 1*

at the State level move quickly away from normalization processes on health conditions, birth and mortality rates, infection and contamination flows for body discipline. This discipline of the glass was important to generate the strength of the industrial system, since the entire production system depended on the labor of the workers [27]. The transformation of docile and useful bodies also involved caring for life. In its eagerness to care for, protect and manage the population's living conditions, the State ends up intensifying the processes of violence. This is because the recognition of what could be called the good life is directly linked to the bad life. It is this inequality that projects the existence of the best living conditions, as the worst

It is this inequality, this social hierarchy, that will function in government over life. The basis for this inequality will be established, during the nineteenth century, on the theory of biology, particularly on Darwinism. It is from the hierarchy of species, from the struggle for life between species, from the selection that eliminates the least able that a hierarchy over the population is also constituted. That same base that, within the State, was able to institute racism and war [29].

Hierarchical relations within the population and the justifications for genocide in war are at the basis of social Darwinism. It is this inequality that will produce the "making a living," the one considered most apt and who are at the top of the social hierarchy, and the "letting die" for the least able and who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy [30]. The concern with those at the bottom of the social hierarchy occurs only when the costs of "letting it die" are higher and have a direct impact on the industrial system [31]. When the profit is diminished by accidents, deaths and illnesses generated in the work environment, then the actions of "letting live" and

That is why the normalization process is important in health and safety at work, because despite generating docile bodies and adapted to the production system, they still generate a way of "letting live." For this reason, too, the prescribed work is distant from real work, as the central concern is not to "make life" for those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but to establish guidelines that minimize the negative impacts on the industrial system. Accidents, deaths and diseases generate costs for the industrial system and also for the State [32]. Production interruptions, the departure of specialized individuals, sick leave and the hiring of other workers generate large expenses for the industrial system. As well as generating expenses for the State with public health, with disability pensions and with the expansion of hospital systems. All these expenses and costs that burden the capitalist system induce the condition of the prescribed work, in an attempt to establish the disci-

In the midst of this discussion there are differences in life. The Greek term for life as a "naked life" is Zoé, which expresses the condition of being alive. The Greek term for "qualified life" is Bíos, which expresses the political condition of life. Modernity is based on "Zoé" life. It is this politically conceived life that populations are limited [33]. It is on this political conception that it is allowed to kill, maim and fall ill without being guilty of murder, crime or torture. It is this biopolitics that allows us to look at the number of accidents, mutilations or illnesses in the world without blaming the capitalist system or entrepreneurs for this daily genocide. The normalization and standardization processes except the responsibilities for those events considered to be exceptional or pathological [10]. The prescribed work generates a level of non-responsibility and an attempt to adapt human beings to work processes and not the other way around. In other words, work processes and

pline of the body, but it remains averse to the human condition [31].

work organization are not altered to better adapt to human factors [34].

The intensification of the processes of biopolitics and biopower, which are exercised over the population, made Zoé and Bíos take a different form from that

living conditions must also be recognized [28].

not "making it live" are exercised.

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There is a risk of killing and maiming, without legal and social penalties for these deaths and mutilations. The work environments also follow this logic, as the level of unhealthy and dangerous on the factory floor is much higher than in the office. Control over ergonomic, chemical, physical, and biological aspects is much greater in the office than on the factory floor. Although the actions in health and safety at work are, for the most part, focused on the factory floor, perhaps due to the greatest risks, they are still exercised from top to bottom, without the knowledge of the real work performed. This creates a gap between the norm and real work, which sets the precedent for accidents, deaths, and illnesses to continue happening and existing.

For this reason, reflect on biopolitics or this qualified life or the processes of social inequality that one can have health and safety at work actions really concerned with human lives. This will generate more effective contributions to International Health Security. Life needs to stop being politically appropriate. Life needs to return to being just a condition of the subject's existence. It is necessary to have respect and responsibility toward individuals in a society. Only in this way can one think about how to adapt work processes and work organization to the human conditions of the worker. As long as these inequalities and hierarchies are not recognized, the prescribed work will have a central role, since it excepts responsibilities, leaving real work at the mercy of its conditions of production and the fate of destiny.
