Book Review

摘要

To the editors’ credit, this book is an example of an edited collection with a single voice. Taking risks in their multiple contexts, it convincingly argues that risk and its management are a useful means for rethinking how Britain has been governed over the past two hundred years and more. Individual chapters examine an eclectic variety of risks, dangers and accidents, including drowning, gas leaks, poisoning, traffic accidents and environmental pollution. Each contributor is subsequently drawn to the ways that such risks challenge and normalise everyday social interactions, and are even, in some cases, resisted by those who feel disenfranchised by state bureaucracy. There is much here of relevance to historians of medicine, not least in the emergence of the state’s legislative responsibility for public safety, the professionalisation and specialisation of safety as a field of concern, and the regulation of dangers in specific sites, notably the home, the workplace and on the street. Whilst chapters can certainly be read individually, this book is more than the sum of its parts and worth reading in its entirety.