Social Negotiation Processes Research Articles

Safety culture: Key theoretical issues

The organizational preconditions to major systems failures are seen as increasingly important for risk management. However, existing empirical attempts to study safety culture and its relationship to organizational outcomes have remained fragmented and underspecified in theoretical terms. This is despite the existence of a number of well-developed theories of organizationally induced accidents and disasters. Reasons for this disfunction of theory and practice are first considered. The paper then outlines four key theoretical questions for safety culture researchers: the fact that culture acts simultaneously as a precondition both for safe operations and for the oversight of incubating hazards (the paradox of ‘safety’ culture); the challenge of dealing with complex and ill-structured hazardous situations where decision makers are faced with deep forms of uncertainty represented by incompleteness of knowledge or ignorance; the need to consider the construction of risk perceptions in workgroups, and to view risk acceptability as the outcome of a process of social negotiation; and the fact that institutional politics and power are critical for determining the achievement of safety culture goals, and in particular that of organizational learning.

Politicizing Tradition: The Identity of Indigenous Inhabitants in Hong Kong

This article investigates the identity of in contemporary Hong Kong by discussing the Pang lineage in the New Territories. It examines this identity in relation to the lease of the New Territories, the colonial government, and the modernization of Hong Kong. The article discusses the way in which tradition has been continuously interpreted, negotiated, manipulated, and reinterpreted by different parties. It argues that there has been a shift of emphasis on the meaning of the identity of inhabitants; from being an ethnic minority in the periphery of colonial culture to becoming in the mainstream Chinese culture awaiting the reunion of Hong Kong with China. (Tradition, identity, Chineseness, indigenous, Hong Kong, New Territories, colonialism) Ardener (1989:111) writes that ethnicities demand to be viewed from the inside. They have no imperative relationship with particular `objective' criteria. Dikotter (1992:viii) further claims that race is a cultural construct, while Honig (1992:9) points out that ethnicity is a process which involves the creation, invocation, and manipulation of Indeed, identity is a process of social negotiation in the continuously changing relationships between different social groups under distinctive social situations (Marcus and Fischer 1986). This article takes the view that identity, ethnicity, and culture are subjective constructs resulting from particular sets of social relationships in specific sociopolitical contexts and from the deployment and manipulation of certain notions. It investigates the ethnicity of of the New Territories villages of Hong Kong as a clear case of the politicization of identity. Information was collected from the Pang lineage village at Fanling Wai, in the northern part of the New Territories, during fourteen months of fieldwork in 1991 and 1993. Villages in the New Territories have been studied in depth by anthropologists (Constable 1994, 1996; Freedman 1958, 1966; Baker 1966, 1968; Johnson 1973; Johnson 1996; Potter 1968, 1970; Watson 1975; Watson 1985). The ethnicity of villagers has been investigated by Blake (1981), Constable (1994), and Johnson (1996). However, the identity of these villagers as indigenous inhabitants remains an unexplored subject.(2) The uniqueness of the case of the New Territories derives from the fact that it was a leased colony and destined to reunite with the motherland of China in 99 years. This article reports on research conducted on the eve of the return of the land and describes the developmental process of the villagers' identity during the period of the colonial regime. It examines the identity of by investigating their relationships to the lease of the New Territories, the colonial mentality, and the modernization of Hong Kong. During this period, there has been a shift of emphasis in the meaning of the identity of (yuanjumin) from that of an ethnic group peripheral to colonial culture to that of Chinese awaiting this reunion with China and being in the mainstream of Chinese culture. This study of the identity of the is more than research on a Chinese diaspora community; it is also an investigation of the identity of a colonized people. Their identity, constructed during the colonial regime, is a flexible construct formed through political negotiation within Hong Kong (between the villagers and the colonial government) and internationally (between China and the United Kingdom).(3) It demonstrates that capitalism and commercialization have had a considerable effect on village customs and exerted a significant influence on the interpretation and reinterpretation of these inhabitants' identity. The construction of ethnicity has been an idiom of political struggle, a vehicle of resistance to discrimination and exploitation by the colonial government, and a means of demanding economic compensation and political rights. …

Osiris. Vol. 9, Instruments ed. by Albert van Helden, Thomas Hankins

technology and culture Book Reviews 753 made in some recent studies and repeated as established fact byAfrocentrists . Many investigators now undertake reproduction experiments to learn about the requirements of executing metallurgical processes by carrying them out themselves or by hiring people to reenact the work ofothers. Some use equipment that models past processes, oth­ ers work with reproductions of the tools thought to have been used in the past, and some also attempt to recreate past physical and social environments. Craddock recounts the evidence from a number of these experiments. Since the experimenters can never exclude their knowledge of contemporary culture from the conduct of their ex­ periments, Craddock warns us that, helpful as they are, reproduc­ tions can never fully recapture the experiences of past peoples. Early Metal Mining and Production will stand for some time as the first book students should turn to for a worldwide overview of an­ cient and historical mining and metallurgy. Robert B. Gordon Dr. Gordon teaches archaeometallurgy at Yale University. His latest book is Ameri­ can Iron, 1607-1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Osiris. Vol. 9, Instruments. Edited by Albert van Helden and Thomas Hankins. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1994. Pp. 250; illus­ trations, notes, bibliography. $39.00 (cloth), $25.00 (paper). The one-word title of this volume, used without any qualification or subtitle, indicates its wide scope. Indeed, the articles range not only in terms of the instruments they feature, from standard resis­ tances to a camera for the Hubble space telescope, but also in terms of the societies where these instruments were used, from Ming-Dynasty China to late-20th-century California. Despite this diversity, the essays (with one exception) deal with western science since 1600. For the editors, one purpose of this volume is to encourage histori­ ans of science to take up the study of instruments to augment long­ standing interests in experiment and theory. To this end, they pro­ vide a comprehensive bibliography. However, they do admit it is difficult to explain exactly when instruments are or are not to be considered “scientific.” In her essay, Deborah Warner explains the difficulty of defining the category of scientific instrument. For her the category has to be fluid because it is determined by social conventions that change over time. She illustrates her case by considering the instruments used around 1700 to measure magnetic dip. Exactly the same instruments were used for practical purposes (navigation) and for research into the Earth’s magnetic field. Whether they were being used as “scien­ tific instruments” depended on the status oftheir users: seamen and 754 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE mathematical instrument makers might well navigate with them, but only natural philosophers could employ them as scientific instru­ ments. Several of the essays describe how scientific instruments helped both to create and to sustain scientific activities. Albert van Helden describes the use of very early telescopes for astronomical observa­ tion as well as the interrelated roles of instrument maker and user. He considers how Galileo, among others, constructed his authority when, because a telescope could only be used by one individual at a time, it was impossible to replicate observations and very difficult for different observers to agree on what they had seen. However, once a community of practitioners exists, they create new instruments and techniques.Jan Golinski describes the role that new and expensive instruments played in underpinning Lavoisier’s chemistry. Golinski shows how his opponents had to be persuaded notjust to accept Lavoisier’s results but also to accept the superiority ofhis equipment. Golinski comments, “We learn both that science is embodied in firmly material things and that it is nonetheless socially negotiated and historically variable.” The complex process of social negotiation leading to material things is an important theme of two other papers. Robert Smith and Joseph Tatarewicz describe how the wide field/planetary camera used in the Hubble space telescope came into existence through negotiations involving hundreds of people, over tens of years, at a cost of $125 million. But even unbuilt machines can have material consequences. Bruce Hevly shows how plans for a supervoltage x-ray tube at Stanford in the 1930s, though unrealized at the...

Social Conflict and Inflation in Mexico

Social conflict takes many forms. Violent confrontations, strikes, civil disobedience, and public demonstrations are some of the more obvious ways in which people can display their discomfort with existing social conditions. In most societies, government and established social groups will go to great lengths to prevent this discontent from overflowing the normal channels of social conciliation. Mexican society has been particularly successful among Latin American republics in keeping social conflict within bounds. Although social conflict is permanent feature of life in Mexico, as in most societies, there have only been few occasions during the past half century when events have obliged and permitted social groups to resort to unusual tactics to attempt to redress grievous injustices. For the most part, the prevailing model of economic development has apparently been able to fulfill expectations sufficiently well to avoid serious outbreaks of violence which might threaten the existence of the social structure. It seems remarkable that there have been so few occasions on which conflict has been transformed into near chaos; by examining those occasions it may be possible to gain better understanding of the underlying processes of social negotiation that promote stability. We argue that inflation is particularly important and revealing manifestation of social conflict. Inflation is actually part of the process of social conflict: it is its monetary expression. When examined as an expression of social processes instead of as simple monetary manifestation of economic problems, the study of inflation may give us insight into the way in which government, itself an expression of political balance of social forces, can develop institutional arrangements to resolve potential conflicts and defuse explosive situations. We can also derive some lessons about the kind of social process, linked to inflation, that cannot be readily controlled, thereby paving the way for authoritarianism. For most people, including economists specializing in the subject, inflation is synonymous with rises in the cost of living: a continuous increase in *The authors are members of the economics faculties of the Universidad Aut6noma Metropolitana and the Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico respectively. This article is adapted