Awards
- Winner of Ralph Gomory Prize 2014 (United States)
Overview
""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.
Full Product Details
Author: Arwen P. Mohun (University of Delaware)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.70cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.612kg
ISBN: 9781421407906
ISBN 10: 1421407906
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 23 April 2013
Recommended Age: From 17
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
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 2013 Risk is a fascinating exploration of culture, history, and mankind's tenuous grasp on saving itself from accidents. Midwest Book Review 2013 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 2013
<p>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
A thought-provoking study of danger and how people have managed it in American from preindustiral and industrial times up until today. -- Steven Goddard History Wire - Where the Past Comes Alive 2013 Risk is a fascinating exploration of culture, history, and mankind's tenuous grasp on saving itself from accidents. Midwest Book Review 2013
Author Information
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.
