Talk, Safety Science and Culture Change in Human Services in Two States: Some Insights from an Anthropological Study

Abstract

For human services professionals, safety is a practical and professional commitment. However, so far the human service community has made little use of the safety science literature. Using qualitative methods this paper tracks how the introduction of a safety science model to the human service organizations in two states resulted in shifts in talk about accidents and work. This in turn led to insight and positive change in these human service organizations and for their clients.

Keywords:

• accidents
• culture
• human service organizations
• institutional change
• safety science
• talk
• work

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank here all the staff in both states who participated in and supported this study. Without their help, this paper would have never seen the light of day.

Notes

1 For a discussion of the similarities and differences between what ethnographers and ethnographic software do that falls under the rubric of analysis or interpretation can be found in Ortner’s New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture and the Class of ’59 (Ortner, 2003).

2 Strong positivists might not agree with the staff that they were necessarily collecting empirical or scientific data. The point here is that the staff believed that the Collaborative Safety LLC activities and data collection methods were stronger empirically and more like science than what they had available to them before the Collaborative Safety LLC model was introduced.

3 The radical edge of this idea is that a person can always choose to accept death before committing an act she or he believes is wrong. Rarely do we find ourselves in such situations, but this is the stuff American legends are often made out of. In short, the point is that we often hold this up as an ideal in American culture(s).