Risques Industriels: Savoirs, régulations, politique d’assistance fin XVIIe – début XXe siècle [Industrial risks: Knowledge, regulations and assistance policies, late 17th-early 20th century] ed. by Thomas Le Roux (review)

The collective book edited by Thomas Leroux starts with a very stimulating statement. He questions the periodization of risks raised by industry and their effects on society. Indeed, for many authors, following the fundamental book Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (Sage, 1992), the so-called "risk society" emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, with a succession of disasters (Seveso, Bhopal, etc.). It's seen as contributing to the end of the Marxist society of classes. Yet the authors in this collection show with a very strong empirical basis that even the political issue of risk was raised earlier, starting in the late seventeenth century. This collection shows the long temporality of changes as well. The book is divided in four parts. First, it analyzes the type of knowledge produced and mobilized by industrialists to govern the risk. Second, it covers the treatment of risks for workers in the early twentieth century. Third, it makes an interesting comparison between the various health systems across time and space. Finally, it specifically analyzes the major risks in big cities. The volume describes in a very elegant language how both states and industrial firms recomposed themselves to respond to criticisms with innovative tools to address both pollution and social contestation, such as statistics and insurance. The introduction of statistics to quantify risk and the resulting new tools, such as insurance, has a substantial part in the volume. The economic valuation of human bodies, used for compensation in case of accident and injury, is also a major turn in the treatment of risk and health at work. The collection shows how these tools have been designed and introduced, under the pressure of states, law courts, and sometimes health systems that refused to take responsibility for the costs generated by accidents. Various chapters also clarify the role played by a number of international organizations such as Safety First and the International Labour Organisation to design and promote regulatory tools. The international comparison questions the idea that there is only one system implemented with capitalism. It shows instead that several tools circulated across borders and were used differently in various contexts, suggesting a form of "transnationalization" of risks (Boudia and Henry, La Mondialisation des risques, 2015). The central question of who pays for the accidents is fascinating and the variety of national studies shows the discrepancies between countries. Should the industry itself, the state, the insurance companies, or even the workers' organizations pay for the care of injured workers? The responses to this question enlighten the transformations and different conceptions of states. The invention of regulatory tools shows not only that risk regulation was an important issue for states, but also that the development of risk industries depended on a compromise between the profits that industrialists expected and protection of population and environment.

The editors have chosen to analyze not only different periods, but also different countries. By providing a history of "longue durée" to recontextualize the risk society, they clarify the treatment of risks in industrialization. However, dealing with the concept of "industrial risks" requires defining what "industrialization" is. The authors mention this difficulty, reflected in the large discrepancies between the case studies they analyzed. The distinction between what comes from industrialization and what comes from other social transformations remains blurred. Covering such a long period reveals the role of industrialization in the treatment of risk is questionable. There is not only a transformation of "production tools" but also a major transformation of society that changed the way risks are dealt with. The settlement of a modern (welfare) state and of capitalism is central to comprehend the transformations of the perceptions and regulation of risk. The valuation of human bodies, such...