Social Science of Risk Flashcards Preview

Volatile Planet > Social Science of Risk > Flashcards

Flashcards in Social Science of Risk Deck (42)
Loading flashcards...
1
Q

What is the risk?

A
  • Perception of risk;
  • Experience of hazard
  • Denial of consequences
  • Personal ‘absolution’ from consequences
  • Social conformity to norms and group behavior
  • Social architectures of choice for change
2
Q

Fukushima Accident

A

“There were studies which showed a one-in-1000-year probability of the Fukushima coast being hit by a 10m tsunami,” he said. “Unfortunately, those studies were dismissed. The nuclear industry didn’t think it would happen, so they didn’t prepare for it” (Tatsujiro Suzuki, deputy head of Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission)

3
Q

Attributes of the Psychological approach

A
  • Theory-led
  • Individualistic
  • Rational-actor paradigm
  • Information and ‘fact’ based
  • Hazard-specific
  • Quantitative
4
Q

Attributes of the Sociological approach to risk

A
  • Data-led
  • Social scale
  • Subjective actor paradigm
  • ‘Ways of seeing’
  • Group-specific
  • Qualitative
5
Q

Bounded Rationality of hazards

A
  • The law of small numbers
  • Causation and correlation
  • Availability and resonance
  • Insufficient adjustment
  • Information ‘shortcuts’
    Slovic, 2000
6
Q

Critiques of psychological approach - policy failures

A

“polarized views, controversy, and overt conflict have become pervasive within the domain of risk assessment and risk management. A desperate search for salvation through risk communication efforts began in the mid-1980s, yet, despite some localized successes, this effort has not stemmed the major conflicts or reduced much of the dissatisfaction with risk management” (Kunrether and Slovic, 1996:118)

7
Q

Critiques of psychological approach - problems of key assumptions

A

Lupton (2013:29) critiques the ‘techno-scientific’ perspective of psychometric approaches: “Such risk calculations tend not to acknowledge the role played by ‘ways of seeing’ on the part of experts themselves that produce such calcualtions. Their understandings of risk are represented as neutral and unbiased.”

8
Q

The Scientific Approach

A

“Whereas science was previously understood as steadily advancing in the certainty of our knowledge and control of the natural word, now science is seen as coping with many uncertainties in policy issues of risk and the environment, In response, new styles of scientific activity are being developed. The reductionist, analytical worldview which divides systems into ever smaller elements, studied by ever more esoteric specialism, is being replaced by a systemic, synthetic and humanistic approach” Funtowitcz + Ravetz (1993)

9
Q

Calls for a post-normal science

A

“This emerging science fosters a new methodology that helps to guide its development. Uncertainty is not banished but is managed, and values are not presupposed but are made explicit. The model for scientific argument is not a formalized deduction but an interactive dialogue. The historical dimension, including reflection on humanity’s past and future, is becoming an integral part of a scientific characterization of nature.“ Funtowitcz + Ravetz (1993)

10
Q

Key Signifiers of Western Risk

A
  • All pervasive
  • Central to human subjectivity
  • Something that is manageable
  • Framed by choice, responsibility and blame
    Lupton, 2013
11
Q

Symbolic basis of our uncertainties

A

“As in pre-modern times, the symbolic basis of our uncertainties is anxiety created by disorder, the loss of control over our bodies, our relationships with others, our livelihoods and the extent to which we can exert autonomy over out lives”

12
Q

Individuals choices about risk

A

Douglas argues that (1992:58) “individuals do not try to make independent choices, especially about big political issues. When faced with estimating probability and credibility, they come already printed with culturally learned assumptions and weightings”

13
Q

Risk and culture

A
  • The importance of: group behavior; cultural differences in perception; political construction of risk; blame.
  • “Under a new banner of risk reduction, a new blaming system has replaced the former combination of moralistic condemning of the victim.
14
Q

Risk and Governmentality

A

Risk as ‘calculated rationality’ rather than an objective entity.
“risk may be understood as a governmental strategy of regulatory power by which populations and individuals are monitored and managed through the goals of neo-liberalism…through these never-ceasing efforts, risk is problematized, rendered calculable and governable” (Lupton, 2013)

15
Q

Wealth and risk

A

Wealth leads to a greater sense of risk, linked to late modernity (Adams, 1995)

16
Q

Risk Society

A
  • Individualisation, reflexivity and globalization
  • Inter-linked hazards of global and temporally extended proportions
  • Greater uncertainties of impacts and therefore of risk
  • Scientisation and social de-sensitisation of risk
  • ‘Natural ‘ hazards are humanized and reponsibilised.
17
Q

Risks, as opposed to older danger

A

“risks, as opposed to older dangers, are consequences which relate to the threatening force of modernization and its globalization of doubt. They are politically reflexive (Beck, 1992:21)”

18
Q

Reflexive modernisation

A

“the naïve certainties of the enlightenment…have disintegrated, resulting in individuals’ need to seek and invest new certainties for themselves…lay people have become skeptical about science, because they are aware science has produced many of the risks…people must therefore deal with constant insecurity and uncertainty” (Lupton, 2013)

19
Q

Individualisation

A

de-insutrialisation, post-fordism, social mobility, personal mobility, rolling back of the state, changing family and gender roles, choice and freedom, vulnerability and stress

20
Q

Social representations theory

A

“The theory maps the processes whereby sociocultural, historical and group-specific forces become sedimented in inner experiences, how the ‘we’ becomes contained in the responses of the ‘I’ (Joffe, 2003

21
Q

Social representations theory- Anchoring

A

Anchoring – rendering new and threatening knowledge ‘knowable’ and possible to assimilate through reference to the past

22
Q

Social

A

simplifying new knowledge with reference to current experiences.

23
Q

Depoliticizing hazard through rationality

A

Goede and Randalls (2009:859) – “managing the global future is legitimated under conditions of ‘extreme uncertainty’ with these ‘total threats’ that are…vague, ambiguous, but homogenous.

24
Q

Precautionary principle

A

Precautionary principle enacts both a discourse of catastrophe and of rational legitimacy e.g. Climate Change or the War on Terror.

25
Q

Dominant perception of an American to Risk

A

The dominant perception for most Americans is that they face more risk today than in the past and that future risks will be even greater than today’s (Harris, 1980)

26
Q

Weighing technological risks against benefits

A

acceptability of risk from an activity is roughly proportional to the third power of the benefits for that activity and; the public will accept risks from voluntary activities that are roughly 1000 times as great as it would tolerate from involuntary hazards that provide the same level of benefits. Starr (1969)

27
Q

Laypeople conceptualization of risk

A

Laypeople sometimes lack certain information about hazards. However, their basic conceptualization of risk is much richer than that of experts and reflects legitimate concerns that are typically omitted from expert risk assessments. (Slovic, 2000)

28
Q

Risk management efforts must be formatted in a certain way

A

Risk communication and risk management efforts are destined to fail unless they are structured as a two way process – each side, expert and public, has something valid to contribute. (Slovic, 2000)

29
Q

20th Century management of risk

A

During the 20th Century, massive governmental programs and bureaucracies aimed at assessing and managing risk have emerged in advanced industrialized societies. Despite the expenditure on safety, people feel they are more rather than less vulnerable to the dangers posed by technology.
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

30
Q

Social Amplification of Risk

A

Social amplification of risk denotes the phenomenon by which information processes, institutional structures, social-group behavior and individual responses shape the social experience of risk, thereby contributing to risk consequences.
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

31
Q

Information system amplifying risk

A

The information system may amplify risk events in two ways: intensifying or weakening signals that are part of the information that individuals and social groups receive about the risk; or filtering the multitude of signals with respect to the attributes of the risk and their importance.
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

32
Q

Amplification of risk ‘stations’

A

Amplification ‘stations’ include – scientists who conducts the technical assessment of risk, the news media, activist social organizations, opinion leaders within groups etc
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

33
Q

Social amplification stations lead to

A

Filtering of signals, decoding of the signal, processing of risk information, attaching social values to the information, interactions with one’s cultural and peer groups to interpret and validate signals, formulating behavioral intentions to tolerate the risk; and engaging in group or individual actions to accept, ignore, tolerate or change risk.

34
Q

Social amplification of risk will spawn behavioural responses

A

which, in turn will result in secondary impacts. Secondary impacts include: enduring mental perceptions, images and attitudes, local impacts on business sales residential property values, and economic activity, political and social pressure, changes in the physical nature of risk, changes in training, education or required qualifications of operating and emergency response personnel; social disorder; changes in risk monitoring and regulation; increased liability and insurance costs etc.

35
Q

Risk equation

A

Risk = (Likelihood of hazard occurrence)(consequence) (Ansel and Wharton, 1992)

36
Q

Definition of risk

A

“the likelihood, or more formally the probability, that a particular level of loss will be sustained by a given series of elements as a result of a given level of hazard impact”.
Lowrance’s (1976)

37
Q

Risk perception refers to

A

Risk perception refers to the subjective judgment that individuals make about the characteristics and severity of a risk (Slovic, 1992,1999

38
Q

Paul (2011) systematic biases

A

Researchers have identified four systematic biases that could account for these misconceptions regarding risk. - The four biases noted are: availability, overconfidence, desire for certainty, and the notion “it won’t happen to me or us”, which has also been termed “optimistic bias” (Witte et al, 2001).

39
Q

Gambler fallacy

A

One common misconception includes what Burton and his colleagues (1993) termed the “gambler fallacy” or the idea that once a disaster has occurred, it us unlikely to occur again for a while

40
Q

Media exacerbating risk

A

The media also create problems – media people often deliberately exaggerate the risk in order to make it sensational (Hegger, 2007).

41
Q

Journalistic reporting of risk

A

Journalists may have a limited understanding of risk and options, which makes their reporting prone to error (Tobin and Montz, 1997)

42
Q

Difference between risk as identified by expert groups and peoples perceptions of risk

A

There remains a significant gap between the general public’s perceptions of risk and the objective risks as identified by expert groups – one reason is that scientists usually define risk in terms of effects on populations, while the ordinary citizen is primarily concerned with the effect on the individual.