Working hard and staying safe: Drilling rig hands in Alberta

Dan E. Houser

A chapter in Economic Action in Theory and Practice: Anthropological Investigations, 2010, pp 331-349 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Drilling rig work is dangerous, repetitive, and both physically and emotionally taxing, but is attractive to many workers because it affords a means whereby those lacking postsecondary education are able to earn high salaries while still in their twenties and thirties. This chapter examines the workplace culture of the personnel at a number of rig sites in Alberta, Canada. It focuses on the ways in which workers speak about their own motivations and goals and discusses the verbal norms surrounding safety and accidents. It concludes that – the insistence on “money” as the prime motivator in the workers' folk model notwithstanding – there are significant personal rewards inherent in being an accepted member of the production team.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 1281(2010)0000030017
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(2010)0000030017

DOI: 10.1108/S0190-1281(2010)0000030017

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Economic Anthropology from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().