OSHA and the Politics of Health Regulation

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Perspectives on Government Regulation

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 1-19

3. Occupational Disease: Magnitude and Issues of the Problem

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 21-29

4. Political and Economic Factors in Occupational Health Work

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 31-69

5. Procedures of and Predictions about OSHA

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 71-80

6. OSHA’S Chemical Regulations, 1970–1976

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 81-104

7. OSHA’s Regulations After 1976

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 105-138

8. Service Activities

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 139-157

9. Regulatory Balance

   • David P. McCaffrey

   Pages 159-170

10. Postscript

    • David P. McCaffrey

    Pages 171-174

11. Back Matter

    Pages 175-192

    PDF

By way of introduction to this fascinating book, let me highlight two of its many contributions. First, it is a good example of something all too rare in sociology: testing competing general theories. Most of us either try to develop or refine theories about how the social world works, and cite convenient data as support, or we select and collect data that will fit some general theoretical position. In the first case, the data playa subor­ dinate role-bits of evidence for our view of life. In the second, the theory plays a subordinate role-a way to make sense of the social behavior we have observed. McCaffrey's position subsumes these two. He has gathered data on an important social agency, but with an im­ plicit problem in mind: which of the several theories about the social world he was exposed to in graduate school would do the best job of interpreting the data? Or, we might just as well turn it around. In a graduate department such as Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, there is a lively, never ending debate about the "truth" of competing perspectives on the political and social world. By selecting a data base and remaining alert to the kind of evidence each theory required, McCaffrey circumvented the usual" data for a theory" vs. "a theory for the data" dilemma that most of us live with.

• university

• Graduate School of Public Affairs, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, USA

  David P. McCaffrey

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