SCARR
Social Contexts and Responses to Risk

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Previous Activities

28-29 January 2005
SCARR Launch Conference - Learning about Risk

Speakers
Streamed Papers

The Context

Risk is a major theme in current public policy-making and in public debate and academic research. Important developments have been:

· Recognition of risks as threats, especially the high-profile risks associated with political, social and technological changes, including terrorism, greater flexibility in the labour market and in family patterns, nuclear power, GM food, nanotechnology and interventions in the environment.

· Increased attention by government to the question of how risks are to be handled in a complex and changing context, and the greater use of policies which emphasize individual responsibility and pro-activity in a range of areas from social welfare to education and the regulation of the media to retirement.

· New intellectual approaches that understand risk as socially constructed and amplified rather than a given in people's social lives, particularly in sociology and psychology. This has been linked to the realisation by those involved in risk assessment and risk management that human responses are an important element in dealing with risk and that psychological and social factors influence these responses. Emotion as well as judgement influences trust in professionals and newspapers; safety regimes depend on management cultures as well as technical systems.

· Social changes that focus attention on risk in relation to the choices that people face in their everyday life, from sexual relationships to pension planning, from work-plans to trust in the media, from diet to child-care. People are less willing to take on trust the ability of government and official agencies to regulate risks and manage societal pressures effectively. At the same time, globalisation reduces the extent to which governments are able to control economic and social developments in their own countries.

· Recognition that developments in individual understanding and response, coloured by emotion, cultural factors, personal relations and plans developed in an immediate family context, are significant for public policy choices in managing social risk. The less that government can direct and the more it relies on encouragement and incentives, the more important understanding of the link between micro and macro-level becomes.

9 July 2004
SCARR Workshop on Narrative and Biographical Methods
London School of Economics (LSE)
with
Dr. Corinne Squire, Co-Director, Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London
Dr Prue Chamberlayne - Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Open University
Professor Wendy Hollway - Professor of Psychology, Open University