Towards A 'Standpoint' Perspective: Health And Safety In Small Workplaces From The Perspective Of The Workers

This paper seeks to demonstrate the nature and value of a 'standpoint' perspective in occupational safety and health research. Argued through the case of workers in small enterprises, the paper discusses the notion of 'standpoint'; describes and accounts for the primacy of the managerial standpoint and the invisibility of workers in occupational safety and health research and practice; and draws on several of the author's research projects on small workplace health and safety to illustrate the kind of knowledge that can emerge from taking the workers' standpoint (including studies of the impact of injury and ill health on social relations in the workplace, of the experience of return to work, of small employers' perspectives and practices, and of frontline service work in a government agency that administers a workers' compensation scheme). The paper considers why a standpoint perspective matters in understanding occupational safety and health problems, and argues that the analytic integration of multiple standpoints is necessary to our understanding of the occupational safety and health system as a whole and the possibilities for change.