Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society

by Arwen P. Mohun

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421407906
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	02/26/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Arwen P. Mohun is a professor of history at the University of Delaware. She is author of Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880–1940 and coeditor of Gender and Technology: A Reader, both published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

Part I Risks From Nature

1 Fire Is Everybody's Problem 11

2 The Uncertainties of Disease 33

3 Doing Something about the Weather 52

4 Animal Risk for a Modern Age 69

Part II Industrializing Risk

5 Railroads, or Why Risk in a System Is Different 91

6 The Professionalization of Safety 116

7 The Safety-First Movement 141

Part III Risk in a Consumer Society

8 Negotiating Automobile Risk 163

9 What's a Gun Good For? 191

10 Risk as Entertainment: Amusement Parks 214

11 Consumer Product Safety 236

Conclusion 257

Notes 261

Essay on Sources 313

Index 321

Editorial Reviews

A thought-provoking study of danger and how people have managed it in American from preindustrial and industrial times up until today.
—Steven Goddard, History Wire - Where the Past Comes Alive

Risk is a fascinating exploration of culture, history, and mankind's tenuous grasp on saving itself from accidents.
—Midwest Book Review

Writing in a lucid style, Mohun gives an impressive overview of the American transition from vernacular to expert-centered or state-driven risk regimes.
—Claas Kirchhelle, British Journal for the History of Science

Mohun’s claims are persuasively argued, well documented, rooted in the everyday experiences of knowledgeable historical contemporaries, and animated by the broad political, social, and cultural changes that define modernization.
—David Blanke, American Historical Review

Mohun's comprehensive approach registers a major contribution that takes safety history a big step forward.
—Donald W. Rogers, Journal of American History

Arwen Mohun has written a fascinating account of the rise, growth, and decline of a little-noticed industry . . . This is a significant book that advances scholarship on the relationship of technology, gender, and culture.
—Technology and Culture

From the Publisher

Risk is a fascinating exploration of culture, history, and mankind's tenuous grasp on saving itself from accidents.

Midwest Book Review

Mohun's comprehensive approach registers a major contribution that takes safety history a big step forward.

Journal of American History - Donald W. Rogers

A thought-provoking study of danger and how people have managed it in American from preindustrial and industrial times up until today.

History Wire - Where the Past Comes Alive - Steven Goddard

Arwen Mohun has written a fascinating account of the rise, growth, and decline of a little-noticed industry . . . This is a significant book that advances scholarship on the relationship of technology, gender, and culture.

Technology and Culture

Writing in a lucid style, Mohun gives an impressive overview of the American transition from vernacular to expert-centered or state-driven risk regimes.

British Journal for the History of Science - Claas Kirchhelle

Mohun’s claims are persuasively argued, well documented, rooted in the everyday experiences of knowledgeable historical contemporaries, and animated by the broad political, social, and cultural changes that define modernization.

American Historical Review - David Blanke