This article examines the persistence of the handshake in business circles despite its implication in the spread of communicable disease in contemporary pandemic culture. An examination of business etiquette discourse suggests that even during disease outbreaks or flu season, the business handshake remains an important visual and haptic legal gesture. While it may no longer produce a binding legal contract, it stages the parties as contractable subjects, as claiming the status of autonomous individuals committed to defining their intersubjective relationship through the norms of contract. The business handshake thus operates as a cultural site for the complex interaction of bodies and law, and the production of masculine, haptic-legal subjectivity.

The impact of exposure to cold on individuals’ motor skills demands a deeper understanding of the ways in which cold weather influences psychomotor and haptic performance. In this study, various facets of psychomotor performance were evaluated in order to determine the impacts of ambient cold exposure on older persons. Healthy younger and older persons performed a battery of haptic psychomotor tests at room (23° C) and cold (1° C) ambient temperatures. The results indicate that older individuals do not perform as well as younger persons across the battery of tests, with cold temperature further degrading their performance in dexterity tasks (in, for example, Minnesota Manual Dexterity test placing: F [1, 16] = 10.23, p < .01) and peak precision grip force generation (F [1, 16] = 18.97, p < .01). The results suggest that cold weather may have an impact on the occupations older persons are able to perform during the winter months.