Critical Risk Research E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 482

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Risk Research: Practices, Politics and Ethics offers a collection of essays, written by a wide variety of international researchers in risk research, about what it means to do risk research, and about how – and with what effects – risk research is practiced, articulated and exploited.

This approach is based upon the core assumption that: to make a difference in the study of risk, we must move beyond what we usually do, challenging the core assumptions, scientific, economic and social, about how we study, frame, exploit and govern risk. Hence, through a series of essays, the book aims to challenge the current ways in which risk-problems are approached and presented, both conceptually by academics and through the framings that are encoded in the technologies and socio-political and institutional practices used to manage risk.

In addressing these questions, the book does not attempt to offer a model of how risk research 'should' be done. Rather, the book provides, through illustration, a challenge to the ways in which risk research is framed as 'problem-solving.' The book's ultimate objective aims to increase critical debate between different disciplines, approaches, concepts and problems.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contributors

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction: Risk Research after Fukushima

Fukushima: lessons and challenges

Critical risk research

Structure of the book

Part 1: Practices in Risk Research

Chapter 2: Practices of Doing Interdisciplinary Risk-Research: Communication, Framing and Reframing

Introduction

Doing interdisciplinary research

The role of language in conducting interdisciplinary research

Framing

Language and framing in relation to risk research

Conclusions

Chapter 3: Religion and Disaster in Anthropological Research

Abstract

Introduction

Applied Anthropology: disasters as social processes

Recovering from hazard: disaster anthropology

Religion and disasters: an anthropological challenge

Concluding remarks

Chapter 4: ‘Risk’ in Field Research

Introduction

Conclusion

Part 2: Politics in Risk Research

Chapter 5: Finding the Right Balance: Interacting Security and Business Concerns at Geneva International Airport1

Introduction

Methodology

Positioning

Content

Public-private coalitions of interests in airport security

Tensions in airport security

The role of external technology suppliers

Conclusion: arising challenges for critical risk research

Chapter 6: Governing Risky Technologies

Models of governance

The Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre

Introducing the dialogues

Common themes and challenges for governance

Governance responses

Implications for critical risk research

Appendix 1. Sciencewise-ERC Dialogue Projects (all available at http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk)

Chapter 7: Technologies of Risk and Responsibility: Attesting to the Truth of Novel Things

Introduction

The virtues of preemption

Risk governance and the truth of things

Hybrid materialities

Preemptive governance of nanomaterials

The value of virtue

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Part 3: Ethics in Risk Research

Chapter 8: Ethical Risk Management, but Without Risk Communication?

Introduction

Risk thermostats, risk hierarchies and democratic accountability

Knowledge and living with flood risk

Redemocratising risk management

Co-producing flood risk management

Ethical reflections

Acknowledgements

Chapter 9: In the Wake of the Tsunami: Researching Across Disciplines and Developmental Spaces in Southern Thailand

Introduction

Setting the scene

Researching across disciplines

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Chapter 10: Social Work in Times of Disaster: Practising Across Borders

Introduction

Social workers' roles during times of disasters

Social workers’ roles in disaster interventions

Actions to be undertaken by social work educators, practitioners and policymakers

Conclusions

Chapter 11: Conclusion: Reflections on ‘Critical’ Risk Research

Putting risk to work

Making risk calculable

The state, institutions and governance

Interdisciplinarity

People and participation

Index

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kearnes, Matthew. Critical risk research : practices, politics, and ethics / Matthew Kearnes, Francisco Klauser, and Stuart Lane. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-470-97487-2 (cloth) 1. Environmental engineering. 2. Risk management. 3. Technology–Moral and ethical aspects. I. Klauser, Francisco Reto. II. Lane, Stuart N. III. Title. TA170.K43 2012 361.1–dc23 2011047553

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

First Impression 2012

Contributors

Louise J. Bracken is Reader in Physical Geographer at Durham University. She specialises in the science of fluvial geomorphology and the practices of interdisciplinary working through translating science into practical solutions to real-world environmental problems. Louise's research explores the complex relationships within rivers between the processes that generate and supply runoff and fine sediment, processes that move the water and sediment through the river system and how knowledge's of rivers are used in practice to manage the natural environment. This research matters to the management of river systems today and in the future, since under predicted climate change water/sediment systems will change significantly. Louise's work is shaping policy regarding river habitats, directs institutional ways of working with rivers and is establishing new research agendas. She is one of a few international physical geographers recognised for pioneering work in fluvial processes and simultaneously conducting leading interdisciplinary research across the natural and social sciences. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Jason Chilvers is Lecturer at the Science, Society and Sustainability group, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia. His research focuses on relations between environment, science, policy and society, and spans studies of governance, appraisal, public understanding, and public participation in relation to science, technology and environmental risk issues. He has published widely on these themes in books, policy reports, and peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Technology, and Human Values, Environment and Planning A and the Journal of Risk Research. Recent publications include an edited special issue on networks at the science-policy interface (Geoforum, 2009) and Sustainable Participation? (Sciencewise, 2010). He is the director of an international ESRC seminar series on ‘Critical public engagement’ and recently served on the Royal Society Kohn Award Panel for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science. He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Brian R. Cook is a postdoctoral researcher at the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee. His research explores the dynamic interactions between knowledge and behaviour in relation to the water/risk interface. He is interested in the power embedded in flood management knowledges and practices. This work has taken him from analyses of flood impacts in Canada, to national scale decision making in Bangladesh, to the non-governmental organisations that have come to mediate catchment management in the UK. He has co-edited a special issue of Environmental Hazards, which assembled key thinkers and practitioners to challenge prevailing narratives and assumptions of flooding and flood management in Bangladesh. He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Sarah R. Davies is a researcher at Arizona State University's Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS-ASU). Her research interests are in public engagement and public understandings of science, science in museums, and the governance of new and emerging technologies. Her PhD was carried out in Imperial College London's Science Communication Group; since then, she has worked at Durham University (in its Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience) and as a Public Engagement Fellow at Beacon North East before moving to CNS-ASU. She has published in journals such as Science Communication, Science as Culture and Public Understanding of Science, and has co-edited three volumes Science and Its Publics (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), Understanding Public Debate On Nanotechnologies: Options For Framing Public Policies (European Commission, 2010) and Understanding Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 2010). She can be contacted at: [email protected]. Lena Dominelli holds a Chair in Applied Social Sciences in the School of Applied Social Sciences and is Associate Director at the Institute of Hazards, Risk and Resilience Research at Durham University where she Heads the Programme on Vulnerability and Resilience. She currently holds (as PI) a Major ESRC funded project entitled ‘Internationalising Institutional and Professional Practices’ and (as CI) another significant EPSRC funded project entitled, ‘Climate Change, the Built Infrastructure and Health and Social Care Provisions for Older People’. Alongside the wealth of experience she has had as a university educator and researcher, she has worked in social services, probation and community development. She has published widely in social work, social policy and sociology. Several of these are classics and have been translated into many languages. She is recognised as a leading figure in social work education globally. Her latest book is entitled Green Social Work. Professor Dominelli was elected President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) from 1996 to 2004, and is currently chairing the IASSW Committees on Disaster Interventions and Climate Change and is representing the social work profession at the United Nations discussions on climate change, including those to be held in Durban, South Africa from 29 November to 12 December 2011. She has also been the recipient of various honours including a Medal in 2002 for her contribution to social work given by the Social Affairs Committee of the French Senate and an honorary doctorate in 2008 from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. She may be contacted at: [email protected]. Carl Grundy-Warr is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. He has engaged in long-term fieldwork within mainland Southeast Asia on political geographies of forced displacement, borderlands, environmental resource politics, and the human geographies of natural hazards. He has published in numerous journals and co-edited Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge with Prem Kumar Rajaram (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). He is currently engaged in international collaborative projects on livelihood and environmental security in the Mekong Basin, and geographies of public health in wetlands associated with food-borne parasites. He may be contacted at [email protected]. Benjamin Horton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He works in the Sea Level Research Laboratory and focuses on the relationships between climate and sea level change seeking to better understand the external (such as sea-level and climate change, earthquakes and tsunamis) and internal mechanisms (including the coastal sedimentary budget) that contribute to the sea-level changes we observe and reconstruct. He may be contacted at: [email protected]. Matthew B. Kearnes is a Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research focuses on understanding the role of scientific and technological thinking in the politics and policies of contemporary democracies. Focusing particularly on research in areas such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology, he has authored, with Phil Macnaghten and James Wilsdon, Governing at the Nanoscale: People, Policies and Emerging Technologies (Demos, 2006) and co-edited a special issue of Science as Culture on (Re)Imagining Nanotechnology. He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Francisco R. Klauser is Assistant Professor in political geography at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. His work focuses on the relationships between space, surveillance/risk and power, with a particular focus on public urban space and places of mobility. His research interests also include urban studies and socio-spatial theory. In recent years, Francisco Klauser has developed an international portfolio of work on issues of security and surveillance at sport mega-events and in the aviation sector. He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Stuart N. Lane is Professor of Geomorphology at the Institut de Géographie, Faculté des Géosciences et l’Environnement at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a geographer with some training in civil engineering and has won many prizes for his research, concerned with modelling and remote sensing of river flow, sediment and solute transport, river ecology and floods. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms and has co-edited a number of recent publications including, Landform Monitoring, Modelling and Analysis (1998, Wiley), High Resolution Flow Modelling in Geomorphology and Hydrology. (1999, Wiley Advances in Hydrology Series) and Computational Fluid Dynamics: Applications in Environmental Hydraulics (2005, Wiley). Stuart is particularly interested in the ways in which the practice of science can be democratised particularly in the field of risk management, and is currently engaged in a number of research projects in this area. He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Lisa Law is Senior Lecturer in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns. She is a cultural geographer with interests in the relation between people, place and identity – mostly in Southeast Asia – and has taught in Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom. She is author of Sex Work in Southeast Asia: The Place of Desire in a Time of AIDS (Routledge, 2000), and co-editor, with Ien Ang and Mandy Thomas, of Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture (Pluto Press, 2001) and, with Lily Kong, a special issue of Urban Studies titled “Contested landscapes, Asian cities” (2002). She has recently taken up a post as an Editor of Asia Pacific Viewpoint, a Wiley-Blackwell journal publishing articles in geography and allied disciplines about the Asia Pacific region. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Phil Macnaghten is Professor of Geography at Durham University. His research focuses on the ethical and societal dimensions of new science and technology, public deliberation and anticipatory governance, narrative approaches to policymaking, and the study of socio-nature. His principal publications include: Contested Natures (Sage, 1998), Bodies of Nature (Sage, 2001), Governing at the Nanoscale (Demos, 2006), Reconfiguring Responsibility (European Commission, 2009) as well as a number of edited collections and papers. He contributes to debates on the governance of science and technology in the UK, Europe and Brazil and is a member of the EPSRC's Strategic Advisory Network. He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Claudia Merli is Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University. She specialises in medical anthropology. Her research on disasters focuses on the religious and theological discourses following natural hazards, and the increasing application of PTSD diagnostic category across to address disasters’ consequences in post-disaster local populations. She conducted field research on Islamic and Buddhist theodicies in Southern Thailand in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (December 2004–March 2005; March–June 2006). She is author of Bodily Practices and Medical Identities in Southern Thailand (Uppsala University Press, 2008). She can be contacted at [email protected]. Katie J. Oven is a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Geography and the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR), undertaking applied, interdisciplinary research on ‘natural’ hazards and development. Katie has field experience in Nepal, Taiwan, New Zealand and more recently the UK. Her doctoral research investigated the vulnerability and resilience of rural communities to landslides in the Nepal Himalaya using a mixed methods approach. Katie's research interests include combining local and outside ‘scientific’ knowledge for disaster risk reduction (DRR), and the governance of risk and resilience at community and national scales. She has recently completed a NERC/ESRC-funded scoping study as part of the Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards programme exploring these issues in the context of seismic-related hazards in Nepal. Katie is currently a PDRA on a multi-disciplinary EPSRC-funded project which aims to develop strategies to ensure the infrastructures and health and social care systems supporting the wellbeing of older people in the UK will be sufficiently resilient to withstand the impacts of extreme weather events under conditions of climate change. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Jonathan Rigg is a Professor of Geography at Durham University. He has long field experience in Southeast Asia, working mainly on issues of rural development encompassing such themes as rural-urban relations and interactions, migration and mobility, and sustainable livelihoods. He has authored and edited a number of books including Southeast Asian Development: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences (Routledge, 2008), An Everyday Geography of the Global South (Taylor and Francis, 2007), Living with Transition in Laos: Market Integration in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2005), Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape of Modernisation and Development (Routledge, 2003), and More than the Soil, Rural Change in Southeast Asia (Prentice Hall, 2001). He can be contacted at: [email protected]. Jean Ruegg was trained as a geographer and an urban planner. He is now a professor of land use policies at the University of Lausanne. He is particularly interested in the dynamics operating between the production of territorial relations and the mechanisms designed for their regulation. He is the co-editor, with Simon Richoz and Louis-M Boulianne of Santé et Développement Territorial: Enjeux et Opportunités (PPUR, 2010). He can be contacted at [email protected]. May Tan-Mullins is a lecturer with the International Studies division of The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China campus. Her research interests are non-traditional security issues such as environmental, food and livelihood security matters. She recently co-edited, with Victor Savage, The Naga Challenged: Southeast Asia in the Winds of Change (Eastern Universities Press, 2005). She can be contacted at [email protected].

Preface

This volume was born of a collaboration of a group of scholars connected to the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Department of Geography, Durham University. The breadth of subject matter covered in this volume is a testament to the intellectual scope of the institute and extraordinary scholarly energy and enthusiasm it enables. The publication of this volume is also a timely reminder of the intellectual breadth of ‘risk research’. Included in this collection are papers dealing with the aftermath of natural hazards, the risks of new technology and the increasingly interconnected strategies adopted to ‘secure’ public spaces. As the asymmetric threats of global terrorism and the novel risks of new technologies continue to occupy the contemporary political imagination, alongside the threats posed by natural hazards, the scope of this collection is indicative of the ways in which risk research has become a key site of interdisciplinary exchange between often diverse approaches and intellectual traditions. As editors we are therefore indebted to all of the contributors to this volume. It was only their enthusiasm and energy that has made this project possible. Thanks are also due to Rachael Ballard, Izzy Canning and Fiona Woods at Wiley-Blackwell for the work they have both devoted in making the publication of this volume possible. We are grateful to Cosette Stirnemann at Neuchâtel University for formatting the chapters of this collection.

Matthew KearnesFrancisco KlauserStuart LaneMarch 2012