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Article

The safe hand: Gels, water, gloves and the materiality of tactile knowing

Details

Citation

Pink S, Morgan J & Dainty A (2014) The safe hand: Gels, water, gloves and the materiality of tactile knowing. Journal of Material Culture, 19 (4), pp. 425-442. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183514555053

Abstract
In this article, the authors demonstrate how an anthropologically informed approach that attends to the material culture of occupational safety and health (OSH) offers new insights for such applied research fields. Research into OSH typically seeks to solve its perennial problem of ‘improving’ workers’ health and safety through scholarship dominated by management disciplines, human factors and ergonomic sciences, and psychological and physiological theories. Here, they focus on the example of ‘the safe hand’ and its making through the materiality of gels, water and gloves in the work of health care workers. In doing so they show how organizational, environmental, embodied and biographical elements of OSH intersect with institutionalized and personalized constituents of the material and sensory culture of safety amongst health care workers. They argue that material culture studies have a pivotal role in revising the agendas of applied research and intervention.

Keywords
Gel; gloves; safety; tactile knowing; the hand;

Journal
Journal of Material Culture: Volume 19, Issue 4

StatusPublished
Funders
Publication date01/12/2014
Publication date online20/10/2014
Date accepted by journal01/07/1900
URL
ISSN1359-1835
eISSN1460-3586

People (1)

Dr Jennie Morgan

Dr Jennie Morgan

Senior Lecturer in Heritage, History