Abstract
In the introduction to the volume, Crook and Esbester critically explore how risk and its governance are characterized and periodized, both by historians and by social scientists such as Giddens, Beck, Luhmann and Ewald. By considering what is meant by concepts such as risk, danger and accident, they also demonstrate the significance of this area for historians of modern Britain and argue that it should be foregrounded as a subject of analysis. Central to this is the importance of governance extending beyond the ‘state’ as often defined. The chapter ends by outlining the volume structure and some of the bigger themes highlighted by the contributors.
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Notes
- 1.
A. Giddens, ‘Risk and Responsibility’, Modern Law Review 62 (1999), p. 1.
- 2.
See, for instance, J. Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA, 2012); N.H. Dimsdale and A. Hotson (eds), British Financial Crises since 1825 (Oxford, 2014); and C. Bilginsoy, A History of Financial Crises: Dreams and Follies of Expectations (London, 2015).
- 3.
Recent accounts include D. Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge, 2006); M. Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War (Oxford, 2010); and J. Bourke, Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Invade Our Lives (London, 2014).
- 4.
See footnotes 43–45 below.
- 5.
The phrase is taken from Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, first published in 1880 and translated into English in 1892. The passage is as follows: ‘State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.’
- 6.
Among other accounts, see P.W.J. Bartrip, ‘British Government Inspection, 1832–75: Some Observations’, Historical Journal 25 (1982), pp. 605–26; and Robert Gray, The Factory Question and Industrial England, 1830–1860 (Cambridge, 1996).
- 7.
See especially P.W.J. Bartrip and S. Burman, The Wounded Soldiers of Industry: Industrial Compensation Policy, 1833–1897 (Oxford, 1983); P.W.J. Bartrip, Workmen’s Compensation in Twentieth Century Britain: Law, History and Social Policy (Aldershot, 1987); and R. Fitzgerald, British Labour Management and Industrial Welfare, 1846–1939 (London, 1988).
- 8.
The literature on the history of the welfare state is enormous. See the bibliography in the most recent synthesis, D. Fraser, The Evolution of the British Welfare State: A History of Social Policy since the Industrial Revolution, 4th edn (Basingstoke, 2009). On the history of ‘the social’ see J. Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History (Cambridge, MA, 2007); and K. Brückweh, D. Schumann, R.F. Wetzell and B. Ziemann (eds), Engineering Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880–1980 (Basingstoke, 2012).
- 9.
This is especially true of occupational health: P. Weindling (ed.), The Social History of Occupational Health (London, 1985); P.W.J. Bartrip, The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades: Regulating Occupational Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (Amsterdam, 2002); A. McIvor and R. Johnston, Miners’ Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining (Aldershot, 2007); and C. Mills, Regulating Health and Safety in the British Mining Industries, 1800–1914 (Farnham, 2010).
- 10.
See especially C. Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge, 1998); and J. Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1997).
- 11.
O. MacDonagh, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal’, Historical Journal 1 (1958), pp. 52–67. A useful overview of the historiography is P. Mandler, ‘Introduction: State and Society in Victorian Britain’, in P. Mandler (ed.), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2006), pp. 1–21.
- 12.
This is especially so in relation to the history of welfare and ‘mixed economies’ of provision. See A. Kidd, State, Society and the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England (Basingstoke, 1999); and M.A. Powell, Understanding the Mixed Economy of Welfare (Bristol, 2007).
- 13.
See, for instance, R.J. Morris and R.H. Trainor (eds), Urban Governance: Britain and Beyond since 1750 (Aldershot, 2000); and L.M.E. Goodlad, Victorian Literature and the Victorian State: Character and Governance in a Liberal Society (Baltimore, MD, 2003).
- 14.
See, among other accounts, P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003); S. Gunn and J. Vernon (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, CA, 2011); J. Callaghan and I. Favretto (eds), Transitions in Social Democracy: Cultural and Ideological Problems of the Golden Age (Manchester, 2006); J. Hinnfors, Reinterpreting Social Democracy: A History of Stability in the British Labour Party and Swedish Social Democratic Party (Manchester, 2006); D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2007); and D. Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton, NJ, 2012).
- 15.
R. Cooter and B. Luckin, ‘Accidents in History: An Introduction’, in R. Cooter and B. Luckin (eds), Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (Amsterdam, 1997), p. 1.
- 16.
K. Figlio, ‘What is an Accident?’, in Weindling (ed.), The Social History of Occupational Health, pp. 180–206.
- 17.
Cooter and Luckin, ‘Accidents in History’, p. 12.
- 18.
See especially R. Harrington, ‘Railway Safety and Railway Slaughter: Railway Accidents, Government and Public in Victorian Britain’, Journal of Victorian Culture 8 (2003), pp. 187–207; B. Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge, 2005); M. Aldrich, Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828–1965 (Baltimore, MD, 2006); J. Burnham, Accident Prone: A History of Technology, Psychology and Misfits of the Machine Age (Chicago, 2009); J. Moses, ‘Contesting Risk: Specialist Knowledge and Workplace Accidents in Britain, Germany and Italy, 1870–1920’, in Brückweh, Schumann, Wetzell and Ziemann (eds), Engineering Society, pp. 59–78; S. Ewen, ‘Socio-technological Disasters and Engineering Expertise in Victorian Britain: The Holmfirth and Sheffield Floods of 1852 and 1864’, Journal of Historical Geography 46 (2014), pp. 13–25; and M. Esbester and J. Wetmore (eds), ‘(Auto)Mobility, Accidents, and Danger’, special issue of Technology and Culture 52 (2015).
- 19.
R.A. Vieira, ‘The Epistemology and Politics of the Accidental: Connecting the Accident’s Intellectual and Cultural Historiography’, History Compass 11 (2013), pp. 227–34.
- 20.
A.P. Mohun, Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society (Baltimore, MA, 2013).
- 21.
Ibid., pp. 6–7.
- 22.
E. Freedgood, Victorian Writing about Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World (Cambridge, 2000). See also P. Fyfe, By Accident or Design: Writing the Victorian Metropolis (Oxford, 2015).
- 23.
W.G. Rothstein, Public Health and the Risk Factor: A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution (Rochester, NY, 2003). See also T.L. Alborn, Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1840–1920 (Toronto, 2009); and V. Berridge, Marketing Health: Smoking and the Discourse of Public Health in Britain, 1945–2000 (Oxford, 2007).
- 24.
J.O. Zinn, ‘Introduction: The Contribution of Sociology to the Discourse on Risk and Uncertainty’, in J.O. Zinn (ed.), Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction (Oxford, 2008), pp. 15–16. The other strand is ‘edgework’ theory, which looks at voluntary risk taking. Further summative accounts include D. Lupton (ed.), Risk and Sociocultural Theory: New Directions and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1999); and P. O’Malley, Risk, Uncertainty and Government (London, 2004).
- 25.
J.O. Zinn, ‘A Comparison of Sociological Theorizing on Risk and Uncertainty’, in Zinn (ed.), Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty, pp. 168–209.
- 26.
See especially U. Beck, Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (Cambridge, 1995); A. Petersen and D. Lupton, The New Public Health: Health and Self in the Age of Risk (London, 1996); and C. Coker, War in an Age of Risk (Cambridge, 2009).
- 27.
It is an approach that builds on her seminal Purity and Danger published in 1966. See especially M. Douglas and A.B. Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley, CA, 1982).
- 28.
Luhmann’s major statement here is Risk: A Sociological Theory, trans. R. Barrett (Berlin, 1993).
- 29.
See also, and respectively, N. Luhmann, Social Systems, trans. J. Bednarz (Stanford, CA, 1995); and M. Douglas, Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (London, 1992).
- 30.
For a summary, see P. O’Malley, ‘Governmentality and Risk’, in Zinn (ed.), Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty, pp. 52–75.
- 31.
See especially F. Ewald, ‘Insurance and Risk’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, 1991), pp. 197–210; and F. Ewald, L’État providence (Paris, 1986).
- 32.
R. Castel, ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’, in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, pp. 281–98; P. O’Malley, ‘Risk, Power and Crime Prevention’, Economy and Society 21 (1992), pp. 252–75; N. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, 1999).
- 33.
P. Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State, 1875–1975 (Cambridge, 1990); G. Steinmetz, Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1993); and G.W. Clark, Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England, 1695–1775 (Manchester, 1999).
- 34.
F. Ewald, ‘Risk in Contemporary Society’, trans. J.-M. Dautrey and C.F. Stifler Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 6 (1999), p. 366.
- 35.
U. Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. M. Ritter (London, 1992).
- 36.
On the reception of Beck’s theory, see M.P. Sørensen and A. Christiansen, Ulrich Beck: An Introduction to the Theory of Second Modernity and the Risk Society (London, 2013), Chapter 8.
- 37.
See especially S. Boudia and N. Jas, ‘Risk and “Risk Society” in Historical Perspective’, History and Technology 23 (2007), pp. 317–31; J.-B. Fressoz, ‘Beck Back in the 19th Century: Towards a Genealogy of Risk Society’, History and Technology 23 (2007), pp. 333–50; F. Locher and J.-B. Fressoz, ‘Modernity’s Frail Climate: A Climate History of Environmental Reflexivity’, Critical Inquiry 38 (2012), pp. 579–98; T. Cooper and S. Bulmer, ‘Refuse and the “Risk Society”: The Political Ecology of Risk in Inter-war Britain’, Social History of Medicine 26 (2013), pp. 246–66; and Mohun, Risk.
- 38.
An excellent summary is B. Heyman, M. Shaw, A. Alaszewski and M. Titterton, Risk, Safety and Clinical Practice: Health Care through the Lens of Risk (Oxford, 2010), Chapter 1.
- 39.
www.hse.gov.uk/risk/controlling-risks.htm (date accessed 10 November 2015).
- 40.
S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), pp. ‘Dan’ and ‘Ris’.
- 41.
The Great Western Railway Company, The ‘Safety’ Movement (London, 1914), pp. 4–5.
- 42.
An excellent summary of this transition is S. Szreter and A. Hardy, ‘Urban Fertility and Mortality Patterns’, in M. Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: Volume III, 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 629–72.
- 43.
G. Gigerenzer et al., The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life (Cambridge, 1989). See also T.M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1830–1900 (Princeton, NJ, 1986); I. Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge, 1990); and P.L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York, 1996).
- 44.
L. Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1988), Chapter3; R. Pearson, ‘Moral Hazard and the Assessment of Insurance Risk in Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Business History Review 76 (2002), pp. 1–35.
- 45.
T.L. Alborn, ‘A Calculating Profession: Victorian Actuaries among the Statisticians’, in M. Power (ed.), Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 81–119.
- 46.
C. Walford, The Insurance Guide and Hand Book (London, 1867).
- 47.
Ewald, ‘Insurance and Risk’, p. 199.
- 48.
P.W.J. Bartrip and P.T. Fenn, ‘The Measurement of Safety: Factory Accident Statistics in Victorian and Edwardian Britain’, Historical Research 63 (1990), pp. 58–72; G. Mooney ‘Public Health versus Private Practice: The Contested Development of Compulsory Infectious Disease Notification in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (1999), pp. 238–67.
- 49.
Health and Safety Executive, Reporting Accidents and Incidents at Work: A Brief Guide to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (London, 2013).
- 50.
M. Esbester, The Birth of Modern Safety: Preventing Worker Accidents on Britain’s Railways, 1871–1948 (Aldershot, forthcoming).
- 51.
P.W.J. Bartrip, ‘The State and the Steam-Boiler in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, International Review of Social History 25 (1980), pp. 77–105.
- 52.
Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, p. ‘Acc’.
- 53.
Cooter and Luckin, ‘Accidents in History’, p. 5.
- 54.
D. Lardner, Railway Economy: A Treatise on the New Art of Transport, its Management, Prospects and Relations, Commercial, Financial and Social (London, 1850), Chapter 14.
- 55.
Useful discussions include Figlio, ‘What is an Accident?’ and Ewald, ‘Insurance and Risk’.
- 56.
See especially R. Hamilton, Accident: A Philosophical and Literary History (Chicago, 2007).
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Crook, T., Esbester, M. (2016). Risk and the History of Governing Modern Britain, c. 1800–2000. In: Crook, T., Esbester, M. (eds) Governing Risks in Modern Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46745-4_1
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