| View Larger Image | Injury: The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States | Paperbackby Sarah S. Lochlann Jain (Author)
| List Price: | $26.95 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Princeton University Press | | Edition: | annotated editionth Edition | | Page Count: | 230 Pages | | Publication Date: | March 06, 2006 | | Sales Rank: | 1,120,166st |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Injury offers the first sustained anthropological analysis and critique of American injury law. The book approaches injury law as a symptom of a larger American injury culture, rather than as a tool of social justice or as a form of regulation. In doing so, it offers a new understanding of the problematic role that law plays in constructing Americans' relations with the objects they consume. Through lively historical analyses of consumer products and workplace objects ranging from cigarettes to cheeseburgers and computer keyboards to airbags, Jain lucidly illustrates the real limits of the product safety laws that seek to redress consumer and worker injury. The book draws from a wide range of materials to demonstrate that American law sets out injury as an exceptional state, one that can be redressed through imperfect systems of monetary compensation. Injury demonstrates how laws are unable to accommodate the ways in which physical differences among citizens are imposed by the physical objects of culture that distribute risk differently among populations. The book moves between detailed accounts of individual legal cases; historical analyses of advertising, product design, regulation, and legal history; and a wide reading of cultural theory. Drawing on an extensive knowledge of law and social theory, this innovative book will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in design, consumption, and the politics of injury. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 2 reviews)
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Great legal-anthropological work -- fascinating by sarah helen  5 Stars
September 14, 2008
It's been a while since I had to read this book for one of my grad school seminars, but I thought it offered a remarkably perceptive and engaging perspective on tort reform. If you've ever wondered if there might be cultural or systemic reasons Americans file so many frivolous-seeming injury-related lawsuits, this is the book for you. Jain's central thesis is as persuasive as it is empathetic, and like the previous reviewer, I found her writing style to be very clear and compelling. Highly recommended for attorneys, anthropologists, and laypeople alike.
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Brilliant out of the box thinking by Sudhir Jain (Calgary, AB Canada) 5 Stars
April 09, 2006
I read this book cover to cover in two days. It is a brilliant piece of deep out of the box thinking expressed lucidly; even a layman like me could understand it without having to read again and again. The review of Healthcare in the U.S., Canada and Europe are particularly outstanding and should be read by decision makers everywhere. The author and the publisher are to be complimented for the book and readers will be grateful to them for the opportunity to look at every day problems in a new lights. I, for one, will keep this book on my shelf to quote from it at every opportunity.
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