Background: Risk was not one of the early specialties of environ-mental sociology (ES), but emerged several years after the forma-tion of the E&T Section. It is perhaps for this reason that members of the section are generally aware of the risk topic, but are not quite clear about its place within ES. How does risk fit into the intellectual agenda of ES? My intention here is to offer a brief answer to this question via an historical account of the risk specialty.
Introduction: The use of risk analysis can be traced as far back as 18th century BC Babylon where it is mentioned in the code of Hammurabi (Dietz, Frey, and Rosa, 1998). Subsequent develop-ment of the field took place in sporadic fits and starts, with the first signs of sophistication appearing in the insurance industry from the 15th century onward in response to the enormous amount of sea exploration and trade by the European powers.
But, in essence, risk is really a twentieth century phenomenon. Its sophistication as an analytic and management tool and its widespread adoption can be traced, in part, to space exploration but mostly to the intent of several nations to produce commercial energy with nuclear power. Early nuclear power plants were small and relatively simple, operating-more or less-within a range of deterministic physical processes. Thus, there was virtually zero probability of a serious failure. But, in order to take advantages of the economies of scale the size of plants was rapidly increased-- dramatically increased, introducing the probability (however small) of serious mishap. As a consequence there was a need to assess the risk (or safety, its semantic complement) of serious mishap at nuclear installations. The need was filled by Probabilistic Risk Anal-ysis (PRA), a reductionistic engineering technique that estimates the risk of a plant mishap by computing the probability of failure of all of the plant's parts and sub-systems and by then aggregating these probabilities.
The appeal of PRA as an analytic tool to the nuclear industry stimulated the growth of risk assessment for other technologies, for environmental problems, and for safety management.
What is Risk?: There are many definitions of risk, but the one I have developed is: Risk is a situation or event where something of human value (including humans themselves) has been put at stake and where the outcome is uncertain. (Justification and elaboration of this definition can be found in Rosa, 1998). In my way of thinking this definition goes to the core of environmental sociology, for the definition succinctly translates ES's orienting perspective. We con-ceive of the environment--however widely or narrowly defined--as something of human value and which, by our activities, is being put at perilous stake with some probability (seldom with certainty). Thus, concern for the environment is tantamount to making judgments about the risk of environmental impact or unwanted change. For example, concern about ecosystem sustainability is concern about the increasing probability that human activities are threatening the long-term viability of human survival (surely, a human stake of daunting consequence).
Risk analysis is a tool for operationalizing the human stakes (consequences to the environment, for example) and for estimating the probability of occurrence. It typically comprises three comple-mentary activities: (I) risk assessment; (ii) risk evaluation; and (iii) risk management (Dietz, Frey, and Rosa, 1998). Risk assessment is the procedure for identifying technological or environmental hazards and for estimating the probability of untoward end states (e.g. loss of life). Risk evaluation is the procedure for determining the acceptability of the estimated risk, an essential feature of informed policy making. Risk management is the full range of activi-ties undertaken to avoid, reduce, mitigate, and control unacceptable risks.
That risk analysis is central to systematic evaluation of environ-mental impacts is made clear by activities of U.S. agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the National Park Service, and especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While the latter agency is engaged in an ongoing debate about risk evaluation (in particular, how to distribute the weight of judge-ment between scientific estimates of risks and public perceptions of those risks), risk analysis remains its core analytic tool. Risk analysis serves a similar role for other government agencies here and abroad and for a variety of non-government organizations (NGOs).
Risk and Sociology: Sociological interest in risk is about a decade and one-half old. Early work in the field includes the 1983 ASA presidential address of my Washington State University colleague, Jim Short, ("The Social Fabric at Risk"), Chick Perrow's 1984 near-instant classic, Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies, and a 1984 volume, Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There Critical Masses?, co-edited by Bill Freudenburg and me.
This early work was followed by regular sessions on risk at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, at the World Congresses of the International Sociological Association, at the Congresses of the International Institute of Sociology, and at a variety of other professional venues. It was also followed by a fairly steady flow of research by Tom Dietz, Bill Freudenburg, Chip Clarke, Jim Jasper, Ortwin Renn, Ragnar Löfstedt, Jim Short, Scott Sagan, Diane Vaughan, Tom Webler, Carlo Jaeger, Kai Erikson, Carol Heimer, Allan Mazur, Paul Stern, Scott Frey, Dot Nelkin, Todd LaPorte, Stephen Hilgartner, Gary Machlis, Bob Stallings, Tim O'Riordan, and others (including me).
The most recent development in the sociology of risk is entrance into the field by European theorists: Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, and Niklas Luhmann. This is both an important and chal-lenging event. It is important because it is another step in the recognition by the larger discipline of the importance of environmental topics to sociological theorizing. It is challenging because the theories of Giddens, Beck, and Luhmann have been unmindful of the analytic literature on risk and, therefore, raise the question of whether their adoption of the term "risk" is epistemically justified or merely a metaphor for describing the current spirit of our age, our zeitgeist. I hope that environmental sociologists take up this challenge.
References:
Dietz, Thomas, R. Scott Frey, and Eugene A. Rosa. 1998. "Risk, Technology, and Society." In Riley E. Dunlap and William Michelson (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (forthcoming).
Rosa, Eugene A. 1998. "Metatheoretical Foundations for Post- Normal Risk." Journal of Risk Research, 1:15-44.
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