Showing papers in "Health Risk & Society in 2015"
TL;DR: The current study of risk is dominated by the risk minimisation approach that frames risk and risk-taking as something undesirable that should be avoided as much as possible as discussed by the authors. However, this approach often fails to consider the broader conditions and motivations of risk taking and to examine why people expose themselves to danger.
Abstract: The current study of risk is dominated by the risk minimisation approach that frames risk and risk-taking as something undesirable that should be avoided as much as possible. However, this approach to risk often fails to consider the broader conditions and motivations of risk-taking and to examine why people expose themselves to danger. In this editorial, I explore two key concepts – voluntary risk-taking and risk behaviour – considering the ways in which they represent opposing views in risk studies. I make the case for a broader approach to ‘risk-taking’ that addresses the complex tensions between risk-taking and risk aversion in the social, natural and material contexts of everyday life. I examine how risk-taking is characterised by varying degrees of control over decision-making, different mixes of motives, the impact of socio-structural factors, forms of routinisation and habitual risk-taking, how power is involved in risk-taking and how identity is used to challenge experts’ views. I discuss the rol...
68 citations
TL;DR: A thematic discourse analysis of interviews conducted with 27 women across Australia who have had breast cancer identified a cultural discourse of ‘individual responsibility and empowerment’ that provided women one way to explain and make sense of their illness, potentially enabling them to cope with the fear and uncertainty of breast cancer.
Abstract: Western understandings of breast cancer are primarily shaped both by neo-liberal, individual-oriented approaches to health and illness and by ‘consumer-led’ health movements. In this ‘healthist’ context, diagnosis of breast cancer typically marks a crisis in women’s lives, which may prompt them to account for the development of the illness and reposition themselves as self-governing individuals who have control over their health and who can manage future ‘risks’. We present a thematic discourse analysis of interviews conducted in 2012 with 27 women across Australia who have had breast cancer. Using the lenses of ‘healthism’ and ‘risk management’ in this analysis, we identified a cultural discourse of ‘individual responsibility and empowerment’. Women utilised this discourse while ‘accounting’ for their illness by engaging in ‘health talk’ and ‘risk talk’. While many women emphasised the shock of the diagnosis in light of having been ‘always healthy’, others expressed the inevitability of ‘risk’ on the bas...
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define social anthropology as the study of "other cultures" and note that such studies have a long history, for example the Greeks and Romans were interested in exploring and understanding "barbarians" and using such studies to reflect on their own society.
Abstract: In this review, I examine the contribution of social anthropology to the study of risk. I define social anthropology as the study of ‘other cultures’ and note that such studies have a long history, for example the Greeks and Romans were interested in exploring and understanding ‘barbarians’ and using such studies to reflect on their own society. However, in the early twentieth century, with the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits and Malinowski’s fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, the study of other cultures shifted from an assumption of western cultural superiority to respect for other cultures with anthropologists seeking to understand and explain the unique logic and rationality of different cultures. This new approach to other cultures tended to stress the universality of the challenges which societies face while documenting their unique responses. Thus, all societies have to cope with uncertainty, the essential unpredictability of the future and account for past misfortunes. In western societ...
33 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that complex and contradictory representations of human milk are grounded in concerns in high income countries such as the USA with the control and surveillance of the female body through discourses of risk and are based on cultural constructions of individualism and intensive mothering.
Abstract: The exchange of human breast milk, a common and well-established practice, has become a site of public controversy in the US. There is controversy over the use of the internet to facilitate milk exchange and public interest in the practice has been stimulated by a research article published in the journal Pediatrics that identified high levels of potentially harmful bacteria in breast milk sold online. In this article we use feminist critical discourse analysis to critically examine how breast milk sharing is represented in a sample of 30 articles from US print newspapers published in 2010–2013. We found complex and contradictory images of human milk, with medically supervised milk banks represented as a life-saving entity, nature’s ‘liquid gold’, whereas peer sharing of breast milk was represented as dangerous, and in this context breast milk was represented as a potentially life-threatening substance. Women who donated milk to milk banks were represented as altruistic and those who obtained their babies...
29 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors conducted a qualitative research study in which they interviewed 12 Canadian community practitioners in 2012 and explored how they defined, perceived, assessed and managed risk and how they balanced their client's safety and autonomy.
Abstract: Older adults are increasingly choosing to stay and age in their home or other place where they normally live, even when a change in their health reduces their ability to live independently creating concerns about their safety. In this context, community practitioners need to be aware of risk assessment and management strategies as they support their clients’ choices when safety is a concern. This requires an understanding of living at risk and an ability to evaluate the client’s risk status. This article is based on a qualitative research study in which we interviewed 12 Canadian community practitioners in 2012 and explored how they defined, perceived, assessed and managed risk and how they balanced their client’s safety and autonomy. We used a grounded theory methodology to collect and analyse the data. We found that participants tended to define living at risk as a judgement about a client’s impairment within an environment that can cause an event that has an increased potential for a negative consequen...
26 citations
TL;DR: This article found that consumers attributed causal responsibility and allocated blame for the adulteration to three factors: the deliberately deceitful practices of the food industry, the complexity of food supply chain and demand from (other) consumers for cheap food.
Abstract: Understanding how consumers react to what is happening as a crisis evolves is crucial for those charged with risk management and risk communication. Responsibility, blame and accountability are important concepts in any crisis, particularly when consumer confidence has been damaged. In this article, we examine to what extent, and to what effect, responsibility, blame and accountability figure in consumer reactions in the immediate aftermath of a food crisis. The data we draw on in this article is derived from an online engagement study that took place in ‘real time’ as the crisis unfolded. Through this study, we were able to explore how consumers responded to the adulteration of processed beef products with horsemeat in early 2013 in Ireland and the UK. We found that consumers attributed causal responsibility and allocated blame for the adulteration to three factors: the deliberately deceitful practices of the food industry, the complexity of the food supply chain and demand from (other) consumers for cheap food. We found that consumers were willing to begin the process of rebuilding their confidence in the food system and accountability was viewed as the primary means for restoring confidence.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a qualitative comparative case study of three critical incidents in Dutch hospitals in the last decade was conducted to examine the ways in which critical incidents are investigated, and they identified four key elements in the inquiry process: how risks were framed and perceived, the type of methods the inquiries used to examine critical incidents, the way in which inquiries allocated blame and the ways they sought to maintain transparency.
Abstract: In healthcare systems in high-income countries, critical incidents are increasingly seen as an important indicator of the quality of care. Based on the rationale that there are important lessons to be learnt from mistakes and that insights into critical incidents will help to prevent them from happening again, there is a widespread assumption that conducting inquiries will contribute to improvements in patient safety. In this article, we draw on data from a qualitative comparative case study of three critical incidents in Dutch hospitals in the last decade to examine the ways in which critical incidents are investigated. Through a detailed analysis of the inquiry documentation, we identified four key elements in the inquiry process: how risks were framed and perceived, the type of methods the inquiries used to examine critical incidents, the ways in which inquiries allocated blame and the ways in which they sought to maintain transparency. Drawing on Schon and Rein’s work on framing theory, in this articl...
24 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue for the need to resituate an understanding of risk perception within linguistic and methodological frameworks across different cultural settings and argue that the influence of language and method is intrinsic to the ways we conceptualise and subjectivise risk.
Abstract: In this guest editorial I argue for the need to resituate an understanding of risk perception within linguistic and methodological frameworks across different cultural settings. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in north-western Tanzania, I briefly explore the concept of risk as it has evolved in Western settings from post-Enlightenment scientific tradition. I question the underlying assumptions of Western scientific notions of risk and consider the concepts of risk and uncertainty as they relate to broader social discourses of modernity, tradition, development and social change within a postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa setting. Acknowledging but moving beyond the social framing of risk put forward by Mary Douglas and others including Deborah Lupton and Pat Caplan, and following Jens Zinn in proposing the need for a refined notion of risk, I argue that the influence of language and method is intrinsic to the ways we conceptualise and subjectivise risk. Drawing on research exploring the risk perce...
23 citations
TL;DR: Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 20 physicians and 43 members of the general public in Japan during the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009 is analyzed to examine how risk and responsibility were imagined, managed, and reorganised through preventative behaviours.
Abstract: One distinguishing feature of modernity is a shift from fate to risk as a central explanatory principle for uncertainty and danger. Framing the future in terms of risk creates the possibility – and, increasingly, responsibility – for prevention. This study analyses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 20 physicians and 43 members of the general public in Japan during the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009 to examine how risk and responsibility were imagined, managed, and reorganised through preventative behaviours. I examined respondents’ discussions of a specific preventative recommendation issued in Japan during the 2009 pandemic: prophylactic gargling. I found that Japanese doctors had mixed, often conflicting, opinions about the efficacy of gargling to prevent infection; most felt its usefulness as a recommendation lay in its capacity to give patients the belief that they could mitigate the risk of infection. Doctors who were openly dubious about the effectiveness of gargling in reducing...
22 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that a specific deterministic understanding of the developing brain that only has a loose relationship with current scientific evidence is an important component in these changes to wider understandings of the ‘at risk’ child and intensified surveillance over family life.
Abstract: In recent years, English welfare and health policy has started to include pregnancy within the foundation stage of child development. The foetus is also increasingly designated as ‘at risk’ from pregnant women. In this article, we draw on an analysis of a purposive sample of English social and welfare policies and closely related advocacy documents to trace the emergence of neuroscientific claims-making in relation to the family. In this article, we show that a specific deterministic understanding of the developing brain that only has a loose relationship with current scientific evidence is an important component in these changes. We examine the ways in which pregnancy is situated in these debates. In these debates, maternal stress is identified as a risk to the foetus; however, the selective concern with women living in disadvantage undermines biological claims. The policy claim of neurological ‘critical windows’ also seems to be influenced by social concerns. Hence, these emerging concerns over the foetus’ developing brain seem to be situated within the gendered history of policing women’s pregnant bodies rather than acting on new insights from scientific discoveries. By situating these developments within the broader framework of risk consciousness, we can link these changes to wider understandings of the ‘at risk’ child and intensified surveillance over family life.
21 citations
TL;DR: During the first 12 weeks of gestation, participants’ accounts demonstrated multiple influences on their understanding of their pregnancy as at risk, which resonated with the management of uncertainty than risk per se, and thus offer new perspectives to the study of pregnancy within the social sciences.
Abstract: Withholding news of a pregnancy from wider family and friends for the first 12 weeks of gestation is a familiar aspect of the contemporary experience of pregnancy in Britain. In this article, I explore this convention, drawing on interviews conducted in Scotland between 2012 and 2013, with 15 women experiencing a full-term pregnancy for the first time. For the participants in this research, the maintenance of secrecy was a response to their understanding that the risk of a pregnancy loss was at its highest during this stage of gestation. Respondents often articulated their interpretation of this risk in terms of statistics, derived from medical sources. These were substantiated by knowledge of pregnancy losses amongst family and friends, but also by their own ambiguous embodied experiences at this time. Accounts of early gestation resonated with Rothman’s notion of the ‘tentative pregnancy’, a concept rarely invoked outside discussions of prenatal testing. In line with efforts not to get ‘too excited’, de...
TL;DR: The authors examined the relationship between Jakartan slum dwellers' experiences and perceptions of severe, recurrent flood risk and the central arguments of Beck's risk society thesis and argued that while some elements of this theoretical framework provide insights into a non-western, highly risk-prone context, other aspects of his thesis are less helpful and need to be reworked using alternative theories of risk.
Abstract: Scholars have called for further critical reflection on and hence advancement of popular theories of risk. Classic texts such as Beck’s risk society thesis have been criticised for their Eurocentricity, making them difficult to use in non-Western contexts. This limitation is especially problematic given that so many risks and natural hazards occur in precisely the Southern, developing regions of the world which Beck’s work largely neglects. In this article, I draw on data from a year of anthropological fieldwork (2010–2011) plus shorter follow up visits to the research area in 2014 and 2015. I use these data to examine the relationship between Jakartan slum dwellers’ experiences and perceptions of severe, recurrent flood risk and the central arguments of Beck’s thesis. I argue that while some elements of Beck’s theoretical framework provide insights into a non-Western, highly risk-prone context, other aspects of his thesis are less helpful and need to be reworked using alternative theories of risk.
TL;DR: The authors conducted an inductive study of 30 respondents from four main subcultures, including women living in outer rural communities with limited access to Western-trained health workers; women from inner urban communities with ease of access to medical clinics; traditional birth attendants whoare formally untrained but highly specialised and practised mainly in remote communities; and Western- trained medical clinicians (obstetricians and midwives).
Abstract: Western medical approaches to childbirth typically locate risk in women’s bodies,making it axiomatic that ‘good’ maternity care is associated with medically trainedattendants. This logic has been extrapolated to developing societies, like Vanuatu, anIsland state in the Pacific, struggling to provide good maternity care in line with theWorld Health Organization’s Millennium Development Goals. These goals include thereduction of maternal mortality by two-thirds by 2015, but Vanuatu must overcomechallenging hurdles – medical, social and environmental – to achieve this goal.Vanuatu is a hybridised society: one where the pre-modern and modern coincide inparallel institutions, processes and practices. In 2010, I undertook an inductive study of30 respondents from four main subcultures – women living in outer rural communitieswith limited access to Western-trained health workers; women from inner urbancommunities with ease of access to medical clinics; traditional birth attendants whoare formally untrained but highly specialised and practised mainly in remote communities;and Western-trained medical clinicians (obstetricians and midwives). I invitedall the participants to comment on what constituted a ‘good birth’. In this article, Ishow that participants interpreted this variously according to how they believed theuncertainties of childbirth could be managed. Objectivist approaches that define risk asan objective reality amenable to quantifiable measurement are thus rendered inadequate.Interpretivist approaches better explain the reality that social actors not only findrisk in different sites but gravitate towards different practices, discourses and individualsthey can trust especially those with whom they feel a strong sense of community.Strategies are, therefore, formed less through scientific rationality but according tofeelings and emotions and the lived experience. The concept of risk cultures conveysthis complexity; they are formed around values rather than calculable rationalities. Riskcultures form self-reflexively to manage contingent circumstances.
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of the French association of salt producers explores the ways in which the association with limited resources sought to counteract public health messages that salt posed a risk to health.
Abstract: In this article, I develop the social amplification of risk framework focusing on organisational strategies that seek to minimise or conceal certain risks rather than amplifying them. I link this analysis to theoretical work on the social production of ignorance. I draw on data from a case study of the French association of salt producers that explores the ways in which the association with limited resources sought to counteract public health messages that salt posed a risk to health. I show that the association used four main strategies in an attempt to manufacture ignorance in relation to the nutritional risks of salt: indirect communication and dissimulation, denial, diversion and undermining or intimidating opponents. I conclude that these strategies are part of a repertoire of action which is available to many industrial organisations that are trying to counteract public health claims that their products are a danger to health. I argue that it is important to integrate studies of the social amplifica...
TL;DR: In this article, a 20-month multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2009 in Java (Indonesia), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and Singapore, explores how, under these circumstances, migrant workers relate to this risky adventure.
Abstract: In Indonesia, transnational labour migrations have become a major source of foreign currency over the past 20 years. On migration routes and abroad, migrants are often subjected to abusive, sometimes violent or even deadly experiences. Yet, the ‘migration industry’ can count on increasing numbers of candidates. Drawing on 20-month multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2009 in Java (Indonesia), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and Singapore, I explore how, under these circumstances, migrant workers relate to this risky adventure. As it appears, local conceptions of ‘fate’ help to overcome fear: as future is perceived in terms of destiny, and since destiny lies ultimately in the hands of God, dealing with potential risks is a matter of religious faith: only by surrendering sincerely to Allah is the migrant able to secure his or her future in this dangerous milieu. In this cognitive framework, incidents are conceived of as cobaan Tuhan – godly trials – full of meanings, which are meant to test...
TL;DR: It is suggested that informing Americans about the small likelihood of post-21-days Ebola symptoms would not increase perceived risk and distrust, and might diminish negative reactions to the media reporting a case who developed symptoms of Ebola after 21 days.
Abstract: US quarantine announcements do not include information that there is a moderate likelihood that Ebola-exposed people might exhibit symptoms, signalling infectiousness, beyond 21 days. As a result it is possible that if and when there is media coverage in the US of a delayed-symptom case, it might create citizen distrust in public health authorities and information and cause citizens to overestimate the risk of Ebola infection. In this article we report a research study which examined whether openness about post-21-day symptoms would attenuate negative reactions. We ran two experiments with online opportunity (Amazon mTurk) samples of Americans in late October-early November 2014, between the two deaths from Ebola in the US. In these experiments we assessed the reactions of respondents who saw quantitative estimates of post-21-day-symptom likelihood (n = 1413), or were informed about post-21-day symptoms with a rationale for the 21-day period after all saw a mock news story about a US case of 30th-day symp...
TL;DR: This article examined the portrayal of the risk of children's mental health issues in articles published in the three highest circulating African American magazines (Jet, Ebony and Essence) from 1990 to 2012.
Abstract: Risks abound with the increasing diseasing of childhood in North America. However, the incidence and meanings and therefore the risk of children’s mental health issues differ in distinctly racialised groups. In this article, we examine the portrayal of the risk of children’s mental health issues in articles published in the three highest circulating African American magazines (Jet, Ebony and Essence) from 1990 to 2012. Based on a qualitative content analysis, we document how the representations of risks of children’s mental health issues are inextricably bound up with racism, inequity and oppression. It is these social conditions that are represented as constituting the chief risk factors for a range of behavioural and emotional difficulties in the lives of Black children. This representation contrasts sharply with that of children’s mental health issues in mainstream magazines during the same time period. It does not reflect their dominant neoliberal or individualising understanding of risk nor the possi...
TL;DR: Examination of how members of the general public understood the ‘fuzzy’ nature of the influenza virus and reconciled this with infection control measures found that participants valued prevention measures, not necessarily because they were seen to be effective, but because they supplied security in the face of influenza’s uncertainties and the wider proliferation of daily and biographical risks.
Abstract: Influenza viruses are radically uncertain, leading to scientific and procedural challenges for diagnosis and surveillance and lending influenza symptoms a high degree of indeterminacy. In time of pandemic influenza, however, members of the general public are asked to enact non-pharmaceutical infection control measures such as hygiene and social distancing. Drawing on the concepts of manufactured risk and ontological insecurity, we use data from interviews and focus groups we undertook in 2011 and 2012 in Melbourne, Sydney and Glasgow, to examine how members of the general public understood the ‘fuzzy’ nature of the influenza virus and reconciled this with infection control measures. We found that participants in our research acknowledged: the difficulty of avoiding infection from influenza; impediments to accurate diagnosis and that infection control measures proposed by public health messages were compromised by the ‘fuzzy’ nature of the virus. However, we found that participants valued prevention measur...
TL;DR: The second annual special issue of the Journal of Social Theory of Risk and Uncertainty as discussed by the authors focused on social theories of risk and uncertainty, and explored the underlying logic and theoretical location of the issue in terms of various tensions within the common association of risk with a specific process of post-Enlightenment modernisation.
Abstract: In this editorial I introduce a range of articles which constitute the second annual special issue of this journal focusing on social theories of risk and uncertainty. I explain and explore the underlying logic and theoretical location of the issue in terms of various tensions within the common association of risk with a very specific process of post-Enlightenment modernisation. I then explore a number of these concerns further in relation to and by way of introducing the guest editorial, a review article and five original research articles of the special issue. A few of the most pertinent and recurring themes across these articles – such as the combining of rational-technical approaches to uncertainty with traditional-magical ones, the salience of faith-based approaches and their agentic qualities, and the logic by which different strategies are combined, ‘bricolaged’ or syncretised – are denoted as especially salient for researching risk and uncertainty within northern European contexts, where the roles...
TL;DR: This article conducted an inductive study of 30 respondents from four main subcultures in Vanuatu and found that women living in outer rural communities with limited access to Western-trained health workers; women from inner urban communities with ease of access to medical clinics; traditional birth attendants who are formally untrusted.
Abstract: Western medical approaches to childbirth typically locate risk in women’s bodies, making it axiomatic that ‘good’ maternity care is associated with medically trained attendants. This logic has been extrapolated to developing societies, like Vanuatu, an Island state in the Pacific, struggling to provide good maternity care in line with the World Health Organization’s Millennium Development Goals. These goals include the reduction of maternal mortality by two-thirds by 2015, but Vanuatu must overcome challenging hurdles – medical, social and environmental – to achieve this goal. Vanuatu is a hybridised society: one where the pre-modern and modern coincide in parallel institutions, processes and practices. In 2010, I undertook an inductive study of 30 respondents from four main subcultures – women living in outer rural communities with limited access to Western-trained health workers; women from inner urban communities with ease of access to medical clinics; traditional birth attendants who are formally untr...
TL;DR: This paper used an anthropological perspective to investigate how uncertainty and risk related to health are understood and managed by members of the Buddhist population living in the central part of Rakhine State, in Western Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), in a context of therapeutic pluralism and of a highly lacking formal health system.
Abstract: In this article, I use an anthropological perspective to investigate how uncertainty and risk related to health are understood and managed by members of the Buddhist population living in the central part of Rakhine State, in Western Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), in a context of therapeutic pluralism and of a highly lacking formal health system. Drawing on data from six fieldwork trips, which I undertook between 2005 and 2014 in the Thandwe area (Rakhine), this article examines the ways in which the multiple and unstable factors shaping villagers’ health means that they lived in a permanent state of vulnerability and uncertainty. I explore how villagers responded to such uncertainty by engaging in preventive practices and when they fell sick, using more or less complex health-seeking processes to gain control of the threat at both the cognitive and practical levels. In my analysis, I note the ways in which the villagers tried different ways of dealing with the threat of illness, reflecting the plural ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors interviewed 17 people who lived on the rural fringe of Melbourne to gain insights into how people are able to feel secure whilst residing in bushfire risk environments, highlighting the deep attachment people have to place, the importance of learning from past experiences, recognition that any preparation has limitations, and the need to recognise one's own limitations when confronted with fire.
Abstract: Many Australians live in attractive urban-fringe and semi-rural environments which are said to be places that promote health and well-being. Yet, each summer, these residents are asked by authorities to prepare for episodic, intensely unpredictable bushfire emergency. In 2012/2013, we interviewed 17 people who lived on the rural fringe of Melbourne to gain insights into how people are able to feel secure whilst residing in bushfire risk environments. Our findings highlight the deep attachment that people have to place, the importance of learning from past experiences, recognition that any preparation has limitations, and the need to recognise one’s own limitations when confronted with fire. With reference to the bushfire preparedness narratives told in the interviews, we discuss the precariousness of living in a place that is seen as healthy and dangerous. The argument we develop furnishes insight into how individuals and families deal with the intensity and complexity of bushfire risk and more generally ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of shamans in identifying and managing danger and the ways in which surviving practices reflect the symbolism of premodern Japanese rituals was examined in Aogashima, a small isolated island 222 miles southeast of Tokyo.
Abstract: In this article, we draw on data from fieldwork on the Izu islands and from historical sources to examine the role of shamans in identifying and managing danger and the ways in which surviving practices reflect of the symbolism of premodern Japanese rituals. In most of contemporary Japan, misfortunes, such as illness or maritime accidents, are accounted for, predicted and managed and through modern science-based risk systems such as medicine. However, premodern systems have survived in Aogashima, a small isolated island 222 miles southeast of Tokyo, which forms part of the Izu group of islands. In this article, we use data from ethnomusicological fieldwork on the Izu islands (Hachijō and Aogashima) conducted in the period 2003–2005 and 2010 to examine premodern rituals that address misfortune and uncertainty. We found that on Aogashima, islanders group together a range of dangers such as illness, childbirth and maritime safety and use the skills of shamans to identify the source of the danger, cursing dem...
TL;DR: This article found that occupational identities are associated with unique understandings of risk which influence whether workers are likely to embrace or avoid risk, and they explored how occupational identities determine the types of risks embraced by workers.
Abstract: A central tenet in the sociology of risk is that risk-taking is inherently linked to masculinity. Recent research, however, demonstrates gender identity is only one of the many social contexts that influence professional risk-taking. The interaction between the various occupational social contexts – such as social class, occupational socialisation, institutions, and gender identity – contributes to the development of risk-taking occupational identities. These occupational identities are associated with unique understandings of risk which influence whether workers are likely to embrace or avoid risk. While there has been a plethora of research exploring how occupational identities encourage risk-taking, relatively little research has explored how occupational identities determine the types of risks embraced by workers. After all, there is substantial occupational variation in the types of risks workers take. In this paper I draw on data from a series of interviews conducted in 2010 and 2011 with US electri...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use micro-sociological interaction ritual theory to examine how health risk prevention technology shape interactions that generate collective identities, and demonstrate that this collective identity formation process was shaped by the institutional and technological network of the automatic external defibrillators.
Abstract: Sociological theories of health risks in late modernity emphasise the individualisation and increasing anxiety that results from prevention policies, while bio-sociality theories point to the creation of new, biologically or medically based social identities. In this article, we outline an alternative approach. We use micro-sociological interaction ritual theory to examine how health risk prevention technology shape interactions that generate collective identities. Drawing on fieldwork in two Dutch villages in 2008–2009 and again in 2014 that created interview, survey and observational data, we show that automatic external defibrillators turned into symbols of collective identity that elicited feelings of group membership, reflected moral values and filled community members with pride. We demonstrate that this collective identity formation process was shaped by the institutional and technological network of the automatic external defibrillators. In the concluding section of the article, we explore the con...
TL;DR: The power dynamics at play in the US Food and Drug Administration’s public hearings on the regulation of mesh are analyzed, finding that mesh manufacturers and physicians expanded perceptions of the locations of risk, thereby diffusing responsibility for mesh-associated claims of adverse effects.
Abstract: Urinary incontinence is a hidden, private issue that affects over 40% of women. Its experience has been medicalised, mainly through urogynaecological surgery, more recently using implanted synthetic vaginal mesh. In this article, we analyse the power dynamics at play in the US Food and Drug Administration’s public hearings on the regulation of mesh. We use grounded theory to analyse verbatim transcripts of two days’ hearings in 2011 of a Food and Drug Administration medical devices advisory panel regarding the risks and benefits of the mesh. Applying the concept of language games to the transcripts, we found that mesh manufacturers and physicians expanded perceptions of the locations of risk, thereby diffusing responsibility for mesh-associated claims of adverse effects. This resulted in ‘organised irresponsibility’ where accountability for the risks reported by patients was deflected away from the mesh to other issues such as inadequacies of surgeons’ training. Patients in turn questioned the Food and Dr...
TL;DR: The findings deepen the understanding of notions of mental health risk by pointing to the importance of localised knowledge of risk in decision-making, and the ways in which perceptions of, and hence responses to, risk differ between groups.
Abstract: In this article, we examine the choice to use a complementary and alternative medicine product (St John’s wort) for the management of mental health risk. We draw on data from a study in which we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 41 adults who self-reported depression, stress or anxiety, in Melbourne, Australia, in 2011. We identified three groups of users – regular St John’s wort users, whose use was continuous; irregular users, whose use was occasional; and non-users, who had stopped or were contemplating use. In each group, St John’s wort use centred around managing risk, taking control and self-management. Participants described a process of weighing up risks and benefits of different treatment options. They viewed St John’s wort as a less risky and/or safer option than antidepressants because they perceived it to be more natural, with fewer side effects. They saw their use of St John’s wort as a means of exercising personal control over mental health risks, for example, to alleviate or self-manage symptoms of depression. Their use of St John’s wort was also linked to perceptions of broader social risks including the stigma and shame of needing to use antidepressants. The findings deepen our understanding of notions of mental health risk by pointing to the importance of localised knowledge of risk in decision-making, and the ways in which perceptions of, and hence responses to, risk differ between groups.
TL;DR: It is argued that the priority which Korean mothers give to considerations of the risk/safety of infant formula reflects the impacts from a series of food-related incidents, including the 2008 scandal in China where the production of infant milk was contaminated with melamine.
Abstract: Given that the choice of breastfeeding is not available to every mother, in spite of its advantages, in this article we examine the factors influencing the use of infant formula in South Korea. We draw on data from a national survey of South Korean mothers conducted in 2009, to show that while maternal use of infant formula feeding was affected by socio-economic factors such as education, income and employment status, it was also influenced by mothers’ perception of risks of infant formula. We found that the way mothers perceived the safety of formula milk’s raw materials was a key factor influencing their decisions about formula feeding, while their perceptions of the safety of the manufacturing facilities and the distribution system was less influential. The mothers in the survey perceived that product safety was more important than considerations such as convenience and economic value of infant formula. We argue that the priority which Korean mothers give to considerations of the risk/safety of infant ...