Risk and Society: The Interaction of Science, Technology and Public Policy
Life in the last quarter of the twentieth century presents a baffling array of complex issues. The benefits of technology are arrayed against the risks and hazards of those same technological marvels (frequently, though not always, arising as side effects
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The Social Genesis of Risks and Hazards MARVIN WATERSTONE
Natural, technological and social hazards form a central part of mod,ern life. The variety, magnitude and extent of such hazards is enormous, rangiI\g from everyday risks (e.g., automobile accidents, unsafe drinking water and the like) to rare, but potentially cataclysmic events (e.g., large earthquakes or nUclear holocaust). In the past, most hazards research has focused largely on delineation of hazard occurrence (location, magnitude, extent, periodicity)? on the underlying physical causes of hazards, and on human strategies for managing or reducing hazard consequences. Relatively little research has been undertaken to identify the societal phenomena which give rise to hazardous conditions (for examples which move in this direction, see Bogard, 1988; George, 1982; Hewitt, 1983; Johnson and Covello, 1987; Palm, 1990; Perrow, 1984; Sjoberg, 1987). Why do hazards and risks arise in a particular manner? Are hazardous conditions produced differently from one cultural setting to another? If so, how and why? Is the way in which hazards are being generated undergoing change as we move further into the technological age? If so, what implications do these changes pose for our institutional capacity to manage hazards and risks? This chapter seeks to establish some structure for such questions, and to provide some tentative conclusions regarding the contextual factors that generate hazards and their accompanying risks. The chapter begins with a brief examination of what might be thought of as the predominant praxis of past and current research on risks and hazards. In that section, I make the case that while much of this research may be useful for addressing one set of hazard problems, it has failed to address a much broader (and more significant) set of risk and hazard issues. The second section of the chapter focuses on this broader set of issues and documents the need for risk research to come to grips with these types of threats. The final section of the chapter suggests an approach for investigating such risks and hazards and applies the approach to an examination of the potential risks associated with emerging biotechnologies.
M. Waterstone (ed.), Risk and Society: The Interaction of Science, Technology and Public Policy, 1-12. © 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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M. Waters tone
Overview of Predominant Hazards Paradigm
There has been much written of late which cntIques the predominant approaches of hazards research. It has been suggested that this research has been largely atheoretical; has taken a mechanistic, deterministic view of events and behavior; has been scientistic and technocratic; has largely downplayed, if not ignored, the role of social and economic factors in affecting risk; and has represented an ideology of the status quo (for examples, see Brown, 1977; Cliffe, 1974; Hewitt, 1983; Kirby, 1990; O'Keefe, Westgate and Wisner, 1976; Sewell and Foster, 1976; Tinker, 1984; Torry, 1978a, 1978b; Wisner, O'Keefe and Westgate, 1976). While such argu
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