Health care through the ‘lens of risk’: reflections on the recent series of four special issues

Conflicting rationalities of risk: disputing risk in social policy – reflecting on 35 years of researching risk

“…He advises both increased research and policy attention to the use of these 'in between' strategies of trust, intuition and emotion in managing uncertainty, otherwise 'individuals will disregard …advice or absorb and transform it within their own beliefs about responses to risk' (p. 447), for example, pregnant women who transformed alcohol abstinence advice into 'red wine is good for you' in order to continue drinking during pregnancy (Thirlaway & Hegg, 2005). The temporal dimension and biographical experience have also reframed both understandings of risk and the risk subject (Heyman, 2013, Brown et al, 2013a. Space precludes a full discussion (see Zinn, 2010a), but in brief, 'individual experiences during the course of one's life significantly impact on one's experience and response to risk' (Zinn, 2010a, p. 7).…”

“…The Royal Society Report on risk began to grapple with the emerging debate about objective and subjective framings of risk, and to the transition of risk from the technical to the social realm (Royal Society, 1992). Significantly the four special issues of Health, Risk & Society 'Healthcare through the lens of risk' took the objectivist framing of risk presented by this report as a critical starting point, and interviewed key authors about the objective-subjective framing of risk the report panel grappled with (see Heyman, 2013 for an overview). Considerable disagreement formed the background of the report, published eventually as representative of the author's views and not the Society's (see Adams, 1995, Adams & Thompson, 2000.…”

“…For example, on perceptions and management of health risks (Alaszewski, 2006;Hobson-West, 2003;Ruston & Clayton, 2002;Thirlaway & Hegg, 2005), crime risks (Kemshall, 1998(Kemshall, , 2003Tulloch & Lupton, 2003) and risks facing young people (Furlong & Cartmel, 2007). These studies have highlighted the situated understanding of risk and the significant role of context and conditionality in the process of risk decision making (see also Heyman, 2013).…”

Risk and social theory – a new venture and some new avenues

“…Even within reflexive modernity and individualisation approaches, Giddens's (especially 1990Giddens's (especially , 1991 concepts are more frequently applied, and Beck remains under-read, not least it would seem by a number of those who apply and/or criticise his concepts and theories. Heyman (2013) has recently denoted some aspects of Beck's work which continue to enable some useful theoretical purchase and, indeed, researchers interested in risk and uncertainty would do well to recover more mechanisms and lines of inquiry from his key works.…”

When it’s good to be a bad nurse: expanding risk orders theory to explore nurses’ experiences of moral, social and identity risks in obstetrics units

“…Although risk scholarship is far from a cohesive discipline, trends have emerged (Alaszewski, 2009;Brown, 2013) as some scholars have successfully reframed objectivist views of risk into interpretive and critical standpoints (see for example Heyman, 2013). Alaszewski (2009) identified three macro theories of risk: risk society theory, cultural theory and the governmentality perspective.…”