Taming Prometheus: Talk about Safety and Culture

Silbey · Safety & Error, Culture & Context · Annual Review of Sociology · 2009 · Open access

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A sociological critique of safety culture discourse, identifying three conceptions — culture as attitude, as engineered organisation, and as emergent and indeterminate. Argues that mainstream safety culture thinking deploys individualist, reductionist epistemologies that locate responsibility with lowest-status workers while ignoring power inequalities and competing interests. Sociological analysis of safety must address what the safety culture literature systematically elides.

Silbey, S.S. (2009) 'Taming Prometheus: Talk about safety and culture', Annual Review of Sociology, 35(1), pp. 341–369.

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