Abstract
Unlike politicians, sports legends and famous actors, academics seldom publish autobiographies. In an era increasingly characterised by narcissistic individualism, that may not be a bad thing. The reading world will be blessed if we never see a stream of self-serving eulogies from business school professors on how they climbed the greasy pole of a career by publishing barely cited papers in Financial Times 50 listed journals. Fortunately, this pithy and riveting book from Andrew Hopkins demonstrates there is real value in an intellectual history that is of its time.
There is so much to ponder in this book that I will only illustrate a few highlights – for me at least. Hopkins traces his progressive roots in a Quaker family, student activism during the Vietnam War years, his critical engagement with Marxism, equally critical involvement with the Australian Labor Party and involvement in various causes (including domestic violence) before and alongside becoming part of the workers’ health movement that has helped to reshape community perceptions on workplace health and safety since the 1980s.
Hopkins’ major intellectual contribution was and is a series of detailed ethnographies of workplace disasters in mines, on oil rigs, petrochemical plants and other workplaces. His work has become an exemplar of the contribution sociologists can make to understanding important social issues – he has won international recognition in his academic community, including the respect of other eminent figures in the field like James Reason. He has influenced the work of other scholars, including setting the foundations for my own book on the pattern of causes of death in high-hazard workplaces. He has led the way in providing critiques of ‘safety culture’, behaviour-based safety and other fashionable but misguided ‘contributions’ of some psychologists and others to the field.
But Hopkins was and is much more than a researcher. He has used his research to engage with industry and government not just in Australia but globally. He is a public intellectual – something sociologists and other social scientists in particular should aspire to but something that the current reward regime in academia actively discourages. Hopkins has tried to make workplaces safer and the effectiveness of the cases made in his books has influenced senior managers, government regulators and a range of others in Australia, the USA and elsewhere. One of the illuminating aspects for the reader is the occasional asides about conversations he has had with managers to illustrate particular points, including the limits to his influence. Hopkins has engaged with industry, been involved in investigations/inquiries into incidents and other aspects of ‘engagement’, which garner lip service but little more in increasingly ‘managerialist’ universities.
Like other scholars, he has made errors and these are freely acknowledged in the book, which takes on an increasingly thematic approach as it proceeds. Hopkins acknowledges the importance of telling stories both in research and teaching, but he doesn’t allow the dictates of a neat chronology to pre-empt the exploration of important issues like safety culture.
Rather than examine more of the issues pursued I would prefer to make a few observations about what I see as critical underlying themes or insights in Hopkin’s book. One is his brief discussion of the emergence of the safety movement in Australia in the 1970s where he argues, correctly in my view, that this movement, with its origins in women’s health centres and workers’ health centres as well union activism, made a difference in how occupational health and safety is perceived. Parallel movements can be identified in other countries and again, as Hopkins observes, such movements create their own intellectuals. This group is now of course beginning to retire out/be pensioned off, which brings me to the second point.
Hopkins is a baby boomer, part of generation that, along with their parents and grandparents, understood something of the importance of collectivism in society – like unions and the welfare state – providing a layer of protection, so that not all risks associated with capitalist societies resided with individuals. The rise of neoliberalism since the mid 1970s has not just reversed some of the important lessons of history in terms of public policy, and wound back if not offset critical gains made in rich countries like Australia in the post-war period, it has also shifted the social discourse in academia and the wider community. Subjects like history, sociology and industrial relations, which grew in the post-war period, are now in retreat within universities, while subjects that portray society in more individualised terms – like psychology, law, human resource management and business studies – have grown strongly. The latter reinforce an individualised discourse where social structures and economic policy promoting greater social inequality are generally not questioned. Even where challenges occur, these are circumscribed and couched in terms of an individual discourse, so social inequality itself is viewed through the lens of personal rights. Individualism has seeped into every aspect of human debate and experience.
The book’s title – Quiet Outrage – captures many things about Hopkins’ life and work. But it also strikes a chord with those of us watching social changes they see as backward steps into an uncivilised world dominated by corporate capitalism.
The pessimism just expressed should not be seen to reflect on Hopkins’ book, which has a more optimistic tone but one tempered by recognition of how difficult positive change is to achieve when it flies in the face of powerful interests.
Most of all, Hopkins’ autobiography is eloquent testimony to the value of sociology as a field and why we need engaged sociologists as critical observers of and contributors to society.