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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access published online on March 5, 2009
British Journal of Criminology, doi:10.1093/bjc/azp004
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The British Journal of Criminology 0:azp004 (2009)
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

THE RESPONSIBILIZATION STRATEGY OF HEALTH AND SAFETY

Neo-liberalism and the Reconfiguration of Individual Responsibility for Risk

Garry C. Gray*

* University of Toronto, Canada. Email: garry.gray{at}utoronto.ca


  Abstract

Workplace safety is undergoing a process of ‘responsibilization’. While employers have traditionally been the target of health and safety law, workers are increasingly assigned greater responsibility for their own safety at work and are held accountable, judged, and sanctioned through this lens. This is illustrated through an analysis of the rationales and mentalities of a new ticketing regulatory system in Canada whereby workers are targeted for sanctions and blamed for health and safety violations. Under the responsibilization strategy of health and safety, workers are not only re-defined as both potential victims and offenders but they also find themselves forced to adopt a rights-defined identity. This is a significant albeit subtle shift that paves the way for a host of new projects that strive to reveal the discourses and techniques that define and characterize individual responsibilization in health and safety.


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