Hi Colleagues,
I am currently working on an introduction to the sociology of risk and uncertainty and wondering what you feel is most needed. There are already some books out there for example from John Adams, Roy Boyne, Deborah Lupton and recently from Jakob Arnoldi (not to forget my own attempt) but when I prepared my classes to teach an introduction into the subject I always felt that they are not good enough to introduce undergraduate students into the subject. One or the other bit is missing. They are to focused, to biased or have examples not well enough developed. I would very much like to know what your experiences are with teaching or learning about risk and uncertainty. What books you found most helpful (and which not) and what you feel is needed. I am looking forward to all critical comments.
Best,
Jens Zinn
I think Arnoldi's book is the best yet - at least as a basic introduction to the 'theoretical' side. I don't find most basic books very useful and quite a few pretty poor. But the strength here is the Beck side of things, taking much less account of the more interesting governmentality people like O'Malley. A hard question, though. I've been teaching an undergraduate course on 'Risk and Society' for years now, but I'm not sure there's many other people out there doing anything similar, and I think the things I include are pretty idiosyncratic. An obvious point is that 'theoretical' accounts are not really very empirically informed by key studies in different areas of interest like child safety, terrorism, technology etc etc. But then this becomes a pretty big task to try and draw together. And the problem with other books that have made attempts to incorporate such 'domains' of risk is that they end up being a little arbitrary and pretty 'thin' (like that book, Risk and Society, by David Denney). Gabe Mythen did a more successful thing, I think, having case study area chapters with a general theme.
I'm currently working a lot on the historical side - pre-modern absence of risk etc (which Arnoldi, curiously, contests). This is all pretty thin even in the Beck and Giddens. Even more so the absence of anything on the development of probability, brilliantly covered by Gigerenzer and some others but completely absent elsewhere. Its not sociology, of course, but seems pretty important and interesting to me. Kind of leads to thinking about a more general book on risk rather than one restricted to sociology.
Also must mention terrible book I got to review; OUP published 'short guide to risk' which turned out to be simply a short account of decision theory which the Americans take to be risk in general (when I regard it as pretty much a branding exercise). Its amazing how the Americans can entirely ignore anything remotely sociological in their thinking about risk.
All for now...
I truly agree that there is no single book sufficient for a comprehensive introduction. There is always one or many perspectives and issues missed. We have tried using Arnoldi, Denney, Lupton, and Taylor-Gooby & Zinn in various introductory courses as well as a co-authored book in Swedish ('Risk in the modern society'). But no matter which book we use we always have to add supplemental texts. Which texts are added of course depends on which teacher is giving the course.
On the undergraduate program in risk and crisis management (sociology being the principal subject) the course ‘Society and Risk’ comprise the following mandatory literature. The course runs for five weeks, full-time studies:
Since this first-semester course is surrounded by an introduction to sociology (where we use one of the previously mentioned introductory books), methodology, and social-psychology (including Slovic, and Tulloch & Lupton) and since the teacher can add one or two supplemental texts, e.g. journal articles, we find this collection of texts sufficient. However, it is pretty obvious that the literature is rather quickly becoming obsolete, especially considering the vast amount of research that is going on and the rapid technological and social/political (r)evolutions that we have witnessed the last couple of years.
Adam, it would be interesting to know more about the content and objectives for your course ‘Risk and Society’, and your opinion on Bernstein, considering that you are working on something historical.
Cheers,
//Jörgen Sparf
I co-teach a course on social risk analysis with a psychologist. We introduce perpsectives from both sociology and psychology on risk - incl. those most popular perspectives. Since I have a psychologist, the course spends more time on psychometric properties and the statistical analysis. In a sense it is good for enriching the students. I do not have a text, but adopting chapters from different books, such as the popular books by Taylor-Gooby & Zinn, Zinn, Arnoldi and Adams. I find this a preferable practice.
A part of my course is to relate the perspectives in understanding the current risk emerging in Hong Kong society. This will be based on some researches conducted by me and other scholars.
Some students find it exciting, especially of exposing to an idea that we are facing with more and more risk (in a risk society or not).
Hope to learn more from friends.
Raymond Chan