How about the relations of coal mining communities to coal dust, etc?
Googling for chat and coal mining seems to come up with some results.
Perhaps a combination of cognitive dissonance and
identification/social esteem through personal sacrifice?
Not that I think workers who come into contact with asbestos
particular lean upon it in this way, but I do know that generations of
builders commonly have an 'acceptance' of the way of life that
regularly brings them into contact with harmful substances that are,
for example, known to be carcinogenic upon frequent exposure. Smoking
would be another one. Or how about deep sea divers paid for the
additional known long term health problems. Weird and scary sense of
exchanging ones health for pay -- perhaps the ultimate statement, when
willingly performed, that 'this is where I belong'?
Is this always denial though, or is it more a case of other parallel
considerations along the lines of "I do not live the life of a bean
counter, I take it as it comes"?
Huw
On 27 December 2011 03:47, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
I am considering doing some work with an historian who has written
the history of an asbestos plant and its community. Does anyone
know of any work done, preferably in the CHAT tradition, on the
opposite of a moral panic, what we could call, I suppose, "moral
denial"? There is lot about management cover-up, even stuff about
panic over asbestos, medical evidence, and "living with asbestos,"
but nothing about how a whole comunity can keep on working with
asbestos when the lethal nature of the material was already public
knowledge, until half the town had died of or contracted
asbestosis. We have lots of ideas, but like to know if anyone else
has looked at this.
Any hints?
Andy
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
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