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Risk negotiations in the mines of Potosí: implications for rethinking current Health and Safety approaches

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posted on 2023-06-09, 06:17 authored by Mei TruebaMei Trueba
It is generally agreed that knowledge of the causes and consequences of a particular risk influences how people prepare for and respond to it. Ethnographic research in Potosí (Bolivia) shows however a more complex scenario, in which miners simultaneously face a number of physical and socio-economic risks and uncertainties that must be carefully weighed against each other. Miners often have little or no control over most of these risks that affect them, and health and safety risks are only a small group of concerns. Prone to take health risks at work as a strategy to manage other risks that simultaneously affect them, the Potosí’s miners are well aware of the potential losses of taking these risks, but also of the potential gains of their decisions.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Page range

63-90

Pages

336.0

Book title

Extraordinary risks, ordinary lives: logics of precariousness in everyday contexts

Place of publication

London

ISBN

9783030839611

Series

Critical studies in risk and uncertainty

Department affiliated with

  • Global Health and Infection Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Wellcome Trust Brighton and Sussex Centre for Global Health Research Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Beata Switek, Allen Abramson, Hannah Swee

Legacy Posted Date

2017-05-16

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