Human Relations special issue call for papers
Socially constructing safety
**with apologies for cross posting**
The editors of Human Relations intend to publish a special issue of the journal on the subject of socially constructing safety
Guest Editors:
Nick Turner University of Manitoba, Canada
Garry C. Gray Institute for Work and Health, Canada
In social scientific research, workplace safety has been widely conceptualized as a disembodied, tangible, and easily quantifiable phenomenon. With a heritage of searching for the elusive "accident-prone" employee, more recent research efforts have focused on exploring organizational conditions that predict workplace safety outcomes, resulting in top-down, often decontextualized prescriptions (e.g., management should build a strong safety culture) about how to control safety in the workplace. With a legacy in critical sociology (with proponents such as Charles Perrow and Theo Nichols), there is growing interest in how social processes of organizing, wider socio-cultural considerations, and the situated social production of safety can contribute to the appreciation of the 'lived experience' of life and death at work. This perspective, we suggest, has not only sparked new areas of inquiry but also represents a distinctive shift in viewpoint.
This special issue aims to focus on this emerging perspective and seeks papers that focus on the socially constructed nature of safety and the various contested meanings of safety. Drawing on a socially constructed perspective of safety, what theoretical gaps exist in traditional safety-related theoretical frames? How does the study of emotions enhance our understanding of safety? How is safety created during the inspection process?
We wish to encourage studies that not only examine the everyday situated nature of workplace safety, but also add to our understanding of how safety is socially constructed. Papers that will be ideal for this special issue will not focus on safety alone, but show ways in which safety is helpful and relevant to understanding broader social and organizational processes.
In line with the interdisciplinary nature of Human Relations, we particularly invite contributions drawing from different disciplines, which may include (but not limited to) communication studies, cultural studies, critical history, folklore, social psychology, socio-legal studies, organizational psychology, sociology, and organizational theory.
Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2007
For the full call for papers, please visit the Human Relations website:
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/sociallyConstructingSafety.html
About Human Relations – Celebrating 60 years of research excellence!
Human Relations is a key forum for innovative ideas in the social sciences and is one of the world's leading journals for the analysis of work, organizations and management. It has stimulated advances in research and practice for over half a century, pioneering publication of multidisciplinary research in the fields of work and organizational relations. Human Relations has had a long tradition of bringing social science disciplines together in order to understand the character and complexity of human problems. We publish incisive investigations from an international network of leading scholars in management, psychology, sociology, politics, anthropology and economics. Further information is available at:
http://www.humanrelationsjournal.org