In this Book
- Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
summary
How have Americans confronted, managed, and even enjoyed the risks of daily life?Winner of the Ralph Gomory Prize of the Business History Conference“Risk” is a capacious term used to describe the uncertainties that arise from physical, financial, political, and social activities. Practically everything we do carries some level of risk—threats to our bodies, property, and animals. How do we determine when the risk is too high? In considering this question, Arwen P. Mohun offers a thought-provoking study of danger and how people have managed it from pre-industrial and industrial America up until today. Mohun outlines a vernacular risk culture in early America, one based on ordinary experience and common sense. The rise of factories and machinery eventually led to shocking accidents, which, she explains, risk-management experts and the “gospel of safety” sought to counter. Finally, she examines the simultaneous blossoming of risk-taking as fun and the aggressive regulations that follow from the consumer-products-safety movement. Risk and society, a rapidly growing area of historical research, interests sociologists, psychologists, and other social scientists. Americans have learned to tame risk in both the workplace and the home. Yet many of us still like amusement park rides that scare the devil out of us; they dare us to take risks.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. 2-5
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- Introduction
- pp. 1-8
- Part I: Risks from Nature
- Part II: Industrializing Risk
- Chapter 6. The Professionalization of Safety
- pp. 116-140
- Chapter 7. The Safety-First Movement
- pp. 141-160
- Part III: Risk in a Consumer Society
- Chapter 8. Negotiating Automobile Risk
- pp. 163-190
- Chapter 9. What’s a Gun Good For?
- pp. 191-213
- Chapter 11. Consumer Product Safety
- pp. 236-256
- Conclusion
- pp. 257-260
- Essay on Sources
- pp. 313-320
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421408255
Related ISBN(s)
9781421407906
MARC Record
OCLC
824353595
Pages
344
Launched on MUSE
2013-05-20
Language
English
Open Access
No