The Ideological Construction of Risk in Mining: A Case Study

This paper identifies five ideological themes constructed within a mining company's health and safety discourse. While recognizing the contradictory aspects of these themes, it is argued that each theme operates in different ways, both in isolation and in various combinations, to reproduce labor consent to risk. The key to understanding the discourse as a whole is that the various themes provide miners with the parameters and means of understanding who controls which risks, how, why and with what limitations. The discourse also contributes to consent by placing the specific understandings of occupational hazards within a broader conception of work, employment and economic "realities," which explain and justify the persistence of accidents, disease, and risk-taking.