The Westray Mine disaster, that occurred on May 9, 1992 in Pictou County, Nova Scotia led to the death of twenty-six miners and has been linked to gross corporate violations. A public inquiry into the Westray Mine explosion was called on May 15, 1992 by Nova Scotia premier Donald Cameron. In this thesis a qualitative discourse analysis is applied to the examination of the Westray Mine Inquiry Report, the seventy-four recommendations from the Inquiry and a sample of the Inquiry transcripts. This research includes the exploration of the key players, problematizations which emerged in the discourse, the formal and informal rules and the relationships of truth and power. There is also an analysis of several key themes, including: the nature of the Inquiry discourse, the Inquiry's conceptualization of risk and its construction of the distinction between the private and public sectors. The theoretical framework for this thesis was provided by literature on governmentality which I found particularly pertinent to the analysis of public inquiries. In this thesis, the governmentality framework was helpful in formulating research questions and an analytics of government approach provided useful research guidelines for my study. Public inquiries are also analyzed as an example of reflexive government since they react to governability problems by including the public and developing recommendations for changes in the governing style. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the Westray Mine Inquiry evolved as a form of governing. This is accomplished through an exploration of mechanisms, practices and discourses related to the production of the Inquiry. The thesis traces its frame of reference, formal and informal rules, power relations, hierarchies of knowledge, tactics, rules of inclusion and exclusion as well as the relationship between the Inquiry discourse and the final set of recommendations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/9299 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Ross, Wanda. |
| Contributors | Los, Maria, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 210 p. |
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