| Inquiry reports are representations of reality that aim to implicate readers in a hierarchical, bureaucratic model of identities, social relations and knowledge. Critical discourse analysis of the report of the Westray mine public inquiry demonstrates that the interpretive work of that reality report positioned workers along with other actors in the semiotic position of “victims.” In this, the report met lifeworld demands of family members that the dead men not be blamed for their own deaths. It did this, however, by marginalizing family members' voices in political discourse by constructing linguistic stoppages in narrative lines that worked to connect corporate or government agents to culpability for the deaths. The Westray Story exemplifies the discursive practices of the “new prudentialism” (O'Malley, 1996) that turns responsibility for assessing and avoiding risk onto individuals who are nonetheless compelled to work within bureaucracy, and away from the welfare state collectivization of actuarial knowledge and management. It is further evidence that in occupational health and safety, where the conflict of interests between workers and their families and corporate bureaucracies is at times clearer than in any other relation, the gains of welfare state rights—to refuse unsafe work, to participate in safety committees, and to know the risks of one's workplace—have been mixed goods. As occupational health and safety specialist, Bob Sass reminds us, “We need the right to know, we need information. But remember: power is power” (Sass, in Smith, 1999: 13). |
