Risk and Responsibility in a Manufactured World

Abstract

Recent criticisms of traditional understandings of risk, responsibility and the division of labour between science and politics build on the idea of the co-produced character of the natural and social orders, making a case for less ambitious and more inclusive policy processes, where questions of values and goals may be addressed together with questions of facts and means, causal liabilities and principled responsibilities. Within the neo-liberal political economy, however, the contingency of the world is depicted as a source of unprecedented opportunities for human craftsmanship, rather than of possibly unmanageable surprises. Gene technologies offer a vantage point for reflecting on the consequences of the drift from discovery to invention as a master frame in the appraisal of human intermingling with the world. Biotech patenting regulations carve out a sovereign agency which, by crafting nature, also crafts the distinction between the manufactured and non-manufactured world. Difficulties in ascribing responsibility stem as a consequence. It is likely that politics and economy can be democratized and responsibilities rearranged not by 'democratizing' knowledge production, but rather the reverse.

Earthquake Controversies, the L’Aquila Trials, and the Argumentative Struggles for both Cultural and Scientific Power

“…Growing numbers of researchers interested in Science and Technologies Studies (STS) underscore the importance of human agency, power, the polysemy swirling around any science, and ideological viewpoints in studying risk assessments. Pellizzoni (2010), for example, emphasizes the importance of considering the influence of neoliberal worldviews in scientific theories of human invention and discovery. He asserts that contemporary global society has moved from assessments of risk to assessments of uncertainty.…”

“…Given the polyvalent features of scientific language, this also means that audiences do not always have to think of uncertainty as some problematic feature of risk assessment that needs to be treated as a gap standing in the way of scientific progress. Pellizzoni (2010) …”

“…Will they also view this as information that contributes to enhanced manageability? Following Pellizzoni's (2010) suggestion that STS researchers focus on the co-productive capacities of various social and natural sciences, we use the L'Aquila legal proceedings to illustrate how many of the scientists involved in these controversies engaged in boundary work that maintained the scientific ethos of seismologists, while absolving them of legal responsibility. Through their use of various argumentative practices, advocates for the defendants advanced what they viewed as the accurate way of thinking about uncertainty, while downplaying the contingencies and partialities of scientific knowledge.…”

“…This is especially true for scientific communities, like seismologists, who claim to be studying and forecasting natural phenomena that cannot be investigated in the same manner that one examines volcanoes, hurricanes, or other disasters. As Pellizzoni (2010) notes, the management of epistemic uncertainty-which for many seismologists means placing studies of prediction and control in the hands of the knowledgeable-becomes an enabling factor for select human agents. While this type of reasoning may not res-…”

Weighing Up the Risks: The Challenge of Studying ‘Risk’ in Empirical Research

“…In relation to understandings of risk, an extensive body of literature considers the ways in which cultural barriers are strengthened through the development of public distrust of regulating institutions (Lomax 2000;Priest 2001;Renn et al 1992;Renn and Levine 1991). Lash and Wynne (1992) argue, along with a large body of more recent sociology literature (Finucane and Holup Irwin and Michael 2003;Pellizzoni 2010;Stirling 2003), that it is in these barriers and social and cultural practices that risks are socially constructed.…”