Environmental risk narratives in historical perspective

This article builds upon earlier risk narrative research, focusing upon their historical development primarily in the US and UK and drawing upon a wide range of key historical and contemporary moments and examples. It proceeds from an understanding risk not as a thing, but a tool that brings together an understanding of threats, what is threatened and how that might be remedied in the future, increasingly based upon past experience. Risk narratives emerge historically with the growth of concern for the public impact of environmental events, through individuals prepared to articulate this and then challenge the denial of institutional responsibility. The explicit language of environmental risk only emerges in postwar America through challenges to fluoridation, pesticides and consumer safety, however, amidst concern with the greater impact of man-made risk and situated within a radical discourse of systemic blame. The introduction indicates the power and 'independence' of narratives with the important example of 'nuclear catastrophism', and then sets out definitions and location, including the related fields of framing and stigmatization. The article then begins with the absence of narrative in ancient Roman accounts of environmental events and proceeds chronologically through 18 th century beginnings, the development of more critical responses in the 19 th and early 20 th Century and the full emergence of 'risk society' type narratives, to today. After summarising, it finally suggests that if narrative is to be used in risk communication it will require more sophisticated forms that go beyond only exposing risk and insisting upon blame, based upon cultural assumptions of necessary harm from association with the corporate, 'unnatural' and stigmatized.

Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung

This article contributes to the development of methodological practices promoting greater epistemic reflexivity in risk research and in social science generally. Knowledge of the specific practices researchers will find useful cannot exist separately from any particular empirical project. Accordingly, we report on, and provide a reflective account of, the "nuclear risk" project that was part of the Social Contexts and Responses to Risk (SCARR) network in the UK (2003-2008). A key focus is exploring the value of narrative methods-especially narrative elicitation methods-for understanding people's perceptions of, and ways of living with, risk. We credit our deployment of a narrative method with producing a rich form of data on risk-biography intersections, which have carried great significance in our analytical work on the way biographical experiences, dynamically unfolding through space and time, can be interrupted by risk events. Arguments from the literature on reflexive modernity are deployed to make the case for: researching risk in everyday life as a problematic in and of itself; placing concepts of risk-biography, risk-reflexivity and risk-subjectivity at centre stage; and finding ways to inquire into the social and psychic complexities involved in the dynamic construction and reconstruction of risk phenomena.

Journal of Risk Research, 2008

Risk is a probabilistic notion which was used by scientist from the XVI It is not a perception but a calculation or a narration. This paper proposes a historical perspective to show how risk jumped from mathematical calculation to the narrative. A book by Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, which was published in 1720 is the best example of an early narrative of risk. Together with the example of Defoe´s book, some ethnographic episodes from Spain are described and analysed: the protest against the Almaraz nuclear power station, the sinking of the Prestige and the subsequent oil slick, the flooding of a campsite in Biescas where 86 people died. This paper suggests an exploration into the narratives of evil, harm and suffering to classify them in terms of uncertainty, risk, fear, panic and terror. The Diaries of Viktor Klemperer (1996) are here the narrative material to be interpreted in order to identify different kinds of narrative. In other hand, the literature written by some of the Holocaust survivors, Primo Levi for example, becomes a very relevant source to understand how the identity of victims comes from a narrative challenge: to tell the truth. KEY WORDS; Narratives of risk, probability, danger, narration, history of risk, narrative model "... between the action of narrating a story and the temporal character of human existence there is a correlation which is not purely accidental, but it represents the shape of a transcultural need. In other words: time becomes human time if it is articulated in a narrative way, and the narration gets its full meaning when it turns into a condition of time existence" 1 ( Paul Ricouer.

Ecozon@, 2020

Ecocriticism has been at the forefront of introducing risk theory and risk research to literary and cultural studies. The essay surveys this more recent trend in ecocritical scholarship, which began with the new millennium and has focused on the participation of fictional texts in various environmental risk discourses. The study of risk fiction draws our attention to cultural moments of uncertainty, threat, and instability, to risk scenarios both local and planetary-not least the risk scenarios of the Anthropocene in which species consciousness and 'planetariness' have become central issues. The essay reviews how key publications have shed light on the cultural and literary historical relevance of environmental risk and on various issues that are central to ecocriticism. It points out how they have sharpened our sense of both the spatial and temporal dimensions of environmental risk and environmental crisis, introduced new categories of ecocritical analysis, contributed to clarifying some of the field's major conceptual premises, and added a new approach to genre discussions, in particular relating to fiction engaging with global anthropogenic climate change.

In: Zölzer, F., and Meskens, G. (eds.), Ethics of Environmental Health, pp. 89-102, Routledge, 2017

This chapter presents some general reflections on the subjective, social, and cultural aspects of (our responses to) risk. The first part of the chapter discusses the nature of risk and on the ways humans respond to risk and the corresponding vulnerability, in particular on the phenomenology of being-vulnerable to environmental risk. Drawing on Human Being @ Risk (Coeckelbergh 2013), this chapter briefly analyses the existential and cultural dimension of risk and vulnerability, and explores its implications for our thinking about environmental health risk. Then it is argued that in modern technological culture there is gap between the production of risk and the experience of risk, which has political consequences with regard to the power of persons and communities. This modern situation is compared with traditional risk cultures and the question is raised if and how we can re-appropriate risk and re-empower people. The chapter ends with conclusions for coping with environmental health risk and a call for a different risk politics.

On 11 March 2011, an earthquake of a 9.0 magnitude and the consequent tsunami destroyed Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant. Known as 3/11 in Japan, the effects of this triple disaster will continue for decades. How did the media covering the catastrophe articulate issues of risk to the general public? This article is a textual analysis of accounts about the Fukushima disaster published between 11 March 2011 and 11 March 2013 in four of the most prominent media outlets in the United States. In particular, the analysis explores the practices through which these US media constructed the presence and meaning of public health risks resulting from the nuclear meltdown. The article illustrates how systematic media practices minimized the presence of health risks, contributed to misinformation, and exacerbated uncertainties. In the process, the study demonstrates how the media created vernacular epistemologies for understanding and evaluating the health risks posed by nuclear radiation. The article concludes by weighing the implications of the vernacular epistemologies deployed by media.

This paper analyses environmental narratives in the legislative stages presented in UK white papers, the Prime Minister's speeches, and the Queen's speeches, all of which were released between 1997 and 2011, during the regimes either of New Labour (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) or of the currently governing Coalition (2010 -). This research acknowledges that the link between risk perception and environmental policy is strong because environmental policy narratives either reflect or influence risk perceptions, or both. The findings of this research demonstrate that the risk of climate change has emerged as a key agenda due to combined risk perceptions on economy and environment. Subsequently, that risk has developed a connection to the risk of energy scarcity and energy facilities. Nuclear power has posed a possible resolution to the energy risk, but at the same time, it has posed another kind of risk too. Under the Coalition government, the risk of natural diversity loss emerged while the risks of climate change and energy continued. The dynamics of the negotiation among different risk perceptions would depend on the power relations among the groups.

A significant probleAI in radioactive waste fac11tty siting is that apparent SIIIall risks or minor risks events produce substantfal public concern and sochl impacts. The reasol's for this difference in public health and societal impacts is not well understood. This paper explores the issues involved in the socIal iJIIpltfIcat10n of r1sk, using the rIsk associated wtth site characterization as the exanple. Noteworthy as sources of anpl1ftcation are the infomation flow associated with risks and risk events fncluding the large voltJlle of information, the extent of dispute, lind mfslnfonnation and rumor. Such fnformation passes throu!fI the mass media and fnterpersonal networks. The rDajor mechanisms involved in risk i!I1Iplffications a.re discussed and their Hkely ;mpacts on society described.

Health, Risk & Society, 2006

Despite the apparent triumph of social perspectives on risk, the predominant approach to risk is less social and contextual than is often supposed. A widespread acceptance of a constructionist approach is more formal than substantive. Risk 'objects' and events remain given and objectified in many accounts, at the same time as they have been subject to little critical empirical enquiry. Iconic risk events such as the BSE crisis and Chernobyl have shaped academic and policy responses to risk despite the gap between their putative and actual impacts. This editorial calls for a more interdisciplinary approach able to trace the historical evolution and changing character of risk perceptions that rigorously analyses and clearly distinguishes the scientific/technical, and socially and politically manufactured dimensions of risk.

2006

To appear in G. Mythen (2006) (ed.) Beyond the Risk Society. London: Routledge 'community'. Giddens says that 'humankind in some respects becomes a "we", facing problems and opportunities where there are no "others"' (1991: 27). Or as Beck argues: 'With nuclear and chemical contamination, we experience the 'end of the other', the end of all our carefully cultivated opportunities for distancing ourselves and retreating behind this category' (1992a: 109).