Private Risks and Public Dangers

Private Risk and Public Dangers is comprised of a collection of chapters which were originally papers presented in the 1991 British Sociological Association Conference on Health and Society, and they address a range of private risks and public dangers. Issues covered vary from the response to HIV and AIDS and 'foetal alcohol syndrome' to the nature of accidents. These seemingly diverse social situations within which emerges is that we need a more sociologically informed understanding of the personal shading the public dangers they are expected to manage.

Stephen Platt, Hilary Thomas, Sue Scott, Gareth Williams

About the editors Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Foreword 1. Introduction 2. Health and Social Body 3. Some Problems in the Development of a Sociology of Accidents 4. The Idea of Prevention: A Critical Review 5. Health, Harm or Happy Families? Knowledge of Incest in Twentieth Century Parliamentary Debates 6. The Gaze of the Counsellors: Discourses of Intervention in Marriage 7. 'To Hell with Tomorrow': Coronary Heart Disease Risk and the Ethnography of Fatalism 8. More Medicalizing of Mothers: Foetal Alcohol Syndrome in the USA and Related Developments 9. 'What's Your Excuse for Relapsing?': A Critique of Recent Sexual Behaviour Studies of Gay Men 10. Quo Vadis the Special Hospitals? 11. The Social Relations of HIV Testing Technology 12. Safety as a Social Value Index