Regulatory inspection and the changing legitimacy of health and safety

The regulation of conduct via law is a key mechanism through which broader social meanings are negotiated and expressed. The use of regulatory tools to bring about desired outcomes reflects existing social and political understandings about¬ institutional legitimacy, the meanings attached to regulation, and the values it seeks to advance. But these contextual understandings are not static, and their evolution poses challenges for regulators, particularly when they reflect political framing processes. This paper shows how inspection has been reshaped as a tool within the United Kingdom’s health and safety system by changes in the meanings attached to the concept of ‘risk-based regulation’. While rates of inspection have fallen dramatically in recent years, the nature and quality of inspection have also been fundamentally reshaped via an increasingly procedural and economically-rational ‘risk-based’ policy context. This has had consequences for the transformative and symbolic value of inspection as a tool of regulatory practice

Impersonation in ethnic tourism – The presentation of culture by other ethnic groups

Adopting Goffman’s (1959) theories about presentation in daily life, this paper discusses the use of the culture of marginalised peoples whose very marginality forms the focus and subject of a tourist gaze and tourism development. This paper (a) examines to what extent Goffman’s theory (1959) regarding presentation of self in daily life can be applied in discussing commercial cultural performance, and (b) explores the operational mechanism of impersonation in multi-ethnic communities. The discussion is based in an ethnic community, Xinjiang, China where the first author resided for a year for fieldwork. An interdisciplinary approach is adopted in this study. Sociological theory, anthropological research method and management practice are all involved and the implications for both theory and practice are discussed