Safety on a Shrinking Margin: Manual Fallers, Uncertainty and Culture in the Southeastern B.C. Logging Industry
| atmire.migration.oldid | 2114 | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Hatt, Doyle G. | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Hawe, Penelope | |
| dc.contributor.author | Patterson, Patrick Brooke | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-05-05T20:36:37Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2014-06-16T07:00:43Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2014-05-05 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2014 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | In recent decades the rates of serious injuries and fatalities in the British Columbia logging industry have consistently remained higher than those in other dangerous workplaces, such as petroleum exploration and heavy construction, despite the implementation of technological improvements and safety awareness programs. Within the logging industry, manual tree fallers — workers who use chain-saws to fell trees — are the occupational category at greatest risk. Government inquests have suggested that the absence of a strong “safety culture” in the logging industry is a contributing factor in accident rates, but the inquests do not explain where the existing culture came from or how it might be changed. This dissertation presents an ethnographic study of manual tree fallers in the East Kootenay/Columbia region of British Columbia, focussed on the nature of their occupational culture and how it is perpetuated within their physical and social environment. The ensuing analysis draws on several areas of anthropological and social theory but throughout this thesis the emphasis is on the ethnographic material and on the perspectives of manual fallers and their colleagues. The ethnographic chapters focus on the organizational cultures of logging crews, the common experiences manual fallers have during their work tasks, as well as the economic and regulatory systems the industry operates within. This thesis argues that the occupational culture of manual fallers and the culture in the wider logging industry emerge mainly in response to continuous exposure to physical and financial uncertainty. Logging contractors and their employees, particularly manual fallers, assume that they cannot control important parts of their work and therefore their practices revolve around the trading off of alternative risks and an occupational tendency to keep several options available so that they can reduce the damage from hazardous events. In contrast, forest product companies and government agencies focus on control and respond to high accident rates by placing greater constraints on logging operations. However, by doing this, they reinforce loggers’ sense of uncertainty. The thesis concludes by discussing intervention strategies and suggesting how more effective workplace safety interventions might be achieved through partnerships between government agencies, forest product companies, and local loggers. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Patterson, P. B. (2014). Safety on a Shrinking Margin: Manual Fallers, Uncertainty and Culture in the Southeastern B.C. Logging Industry (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27702 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/27702 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1513 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Graduate Studies | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Calgary | en |
| dc.publisher.place | Calgary | en |
| dc.rights | University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. | |
| dc.subject | Anthropology--Cultural | |
| dc.subject.classification | Safety Culture | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Forest Industry | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Accident Prevention | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | British Columbia | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Ethnography | en_US |
| dc.title | Safety on a Shrinking Margin: Manual Fallers, Uncertainty and Culture in the Southeastern B.C. Logging Industry | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Anthropology | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Calgary | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | |
| ucalgary.item.requestcopy | true |