Context
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.
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