Any writing is a product of its time; Governing Risks and this review of it are no exception. Whilst reading, I belatedly was learning to drive. Teaching was rooted in the idea that caution was ‘a bad thing’; was this, I wondered, due to cultural notions of risk that modern Britons inherited from traditional male authority? Governing Risks is itself dominated by male authors. Oxford Brookes University's 2013 conference, from which it emerged, predominantly featured male speakers. This may be for a host of reasons, but I suspect that most people working on risk and deciding what is risky are male. I may be entirely wrong – I am no expert on employment patterns. It is this, the theme of expertise, and the defence against its doubters, which runs through the book; a response to the cavalier attitude in Britain before June 2017’s Grenfell Tower Disaster.
Governing Risks is a confident, eclectic and cohesive look at the ways in which ‘risk and risk-related problems constitute a useful means for rethinking how Britons have been governed over the past 200 years and more’ (p. 297). The 11 central chapters, occasionally in conversation with one another, are bracketed by valuable positioning introductory and concluding pieces. The well-curated collection is firmly rooted in urban history. The concentration on the changing conception and production of risk within the urbanizing and de/industrializing localized spaces and national landscapes renders audible the background hum and clutter dictating how people lived in modern, metropolitan Britain.
Crook and Esbester's ‘Introduction’ is essential reading, gathering several theoretical underpinnings of the study of risk, including ideas from social scientists, particularly Ulrich Beck's ‘risk society’; it is less attentive to those of governmentality or material culture, though both are integral to the collection. That little attention is given to central themes of social history – notably race, gender and disability – confirms the editors’ assertions that the field is in its infancy and ripe for exploration.
Class does, however, feature comparatively strongly in the book, which is divided into four sections. The first, ‘Early risk societies’, is comprised of two chapters and helps form the bedrock of the volume. Francis Dodsworth identifies the shift from crime-fighting to crime-prevention in policing as between 1750 and 1850 (much earlier than previously argued), influenced by the growth of insurance as an organizer of governance, and developing with the in-built need to identify threats and risky behaviour. Ryan Vieira also challenges Beck's periodization of ‘risk society’. While there may be issues with assumptions about the press, Vieira's engaging study of London newspapers helps him argue that the 1820s were key to the transition from multi- to single ‘accident narratives’, which were designed to articulate social and political concerns.
Four chapters make up the ‘Environmental risks’ section. Chris Otter's piece on synthetics is essentially a survey of technology, environment and risk since 1800, demonstrating that danger encroached with urbanization. Otter's point about the symbiosis of progress and hazard is one repeated throughout the collection, including the following two chapters. Crook explores efforts to eradicate the dangers of outdoor cesspools through the internal sewerage systems, which carried into the home the novel risk of sewer gas. The improvement brought by individual wealth and collective sanitary reform encapsulated the tensions of modernization, and will be well known to historians of urban public health. Similarly, Rebecca Whyte considers the ‘Dilemmas of disinfection’ (p. 146) – greater hygiene versus potential ease of suicide – by studying the expanding availability of carbolic acid. The subject is a useful example of the balance between public health and public danger; governing risk and ‘grandmotherly interference’ (p. 140). Markedly different in tone is Timothy Cooper's piece. Using two case-studies – waste management and the Torrey Canyon oil tanker spill – Cooper employs Marxist theory to explore the temporality of short- and long-term environmental ‘dis-enhancement’/interruption. The discussion of the imprint left by town planning and disaster is an energetic and stimulating melee of ideas.
‘Mobility and leisure risks’ holds three chapters. Bill Luckin's impeccably researched piece charts changes in transport and the acceptability of drink-driving, c. 1800–1920. Luckin demonstrates it was an unlucky (working-class) man that was prosecuted and found guilty of maiming or killing the more frequently blamed female, juvenile or elderly pedestrian. Chris A. Williams’ chapter impressively discusses how the twentieth-century police secured control over driving-associated risks through expertise in roads and accidents, and gathering statistics. The police, he argues, felt public safety education was redundant and that their urban engineering plans would eradicate danger. Conversely, Glen O'Hara explores how post-war anxiety surrounding ‘public water’ spawned public education measures by a nexus of actors (including third sector organizations); this mixed economy is a theme of the entire volume. O'Hara posits the perceived risk around water play as emblematic of post-war affluence, noting that ‘risk society’ can be intimate and familial.
The final section, on ‘Occupational risks’, opens with two complementary chapters tracing the modern conception of health and safety. Christopher Sirrs discusses the Robens Report, which looked to streamline two hundred years’ worth of piecemeal regulation, eradicating red tape, while also renewing the traditional emphasis on self-regulation. The resultant Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974) became an organizer of modern Britain through the ‘delocalization’ of risk, as evidenced by the workplace disasters that spilled into surrounding communities. Paul Almond and Esbester bring the post-Robens landscape up-to-date. They chart the emergence of ‘the public’ as an arbiter of public safety in neoliberal, post-industrial Britain, and note that man-made disasters have foregrounded public safety and shifted public opinion. Despite mixed views on health and safety, including ‘health and safety gone mad’, overall ‘the public’ think it is ‘a good thing’.
The trouble is that ‘the public’ consists of voices that are listened to about risk, and that are ignored, and this is an aspect that the ‘Conclusion’ might have addressed. It is a valuable overview, serving both as a reflection on the volume and opening international horizons. Arwen P. Mohun, Thomas Le Roux, Crook and Esbester argue that the collection feeds into the ‘big questions’ that this history might help answer, particularly the political problem of reconciling liberty and security, and understanding the production of national peculiarities and international connections. Involving such prominent thinkers in the area, as well as newer perspectives, Governing Risks will surely help define the field, stimulating urban history and beyond.
