1st Edition

Social Contours of Risk Volume I: Publics, Risk Communication and the Social

    We live in a 'risk society' where the identification, distribution and management of risks, from new technology, environmental factors or other sources are crucial to our individual and social existence. In The Social Contours of Risk, Volumes I and II, two of the world's leading and most influential analysts of the social dimensions of risk bring together their most important contributions to this fundamental and wide-ranging field. Volume I collects their fundamental work on how risks are communicated among different publics and stakeholders, including local communities, corporations and the larger society. It analyses the problems of lack of transparency and trust, and explores how even minor effects can be amplified and distorted through media and social responses, preventing effective management. The final section investigates the difficult ethical issues raised by the unequal distribution of risk depending on factors such as wealth, location and genetic inheritance - with examples from worker and public protection, facility-siting conflicts, transporting hazardous waste and widespread impacts such as climate change. Volume II centres on the analysis and management of risk in society, in international business and multinationals, and globally. The 'acceptability' of risk to an individual depends on the context, whether the larger society or in, for example, a corporate framework. Their work clarifies the structures and processes for managing risks in the private sector and the factors that produce or impede effective decisions. The authors demonstrate that corporate culture is crucial in determining risk management. They analyse the transfer of corporate risk management systems from industrial to developing countries, and how globalization is spreading and creating new kinds of risk - the combination of traditional and modern hazards presented by climate change, technology transfer and economic growth. They describe the new priorities and capacities needed to deal with these enhanced vulnerabilities around the globe.

    Volume I * PART 1 - COMMUNICATING RISK AND INVOLVING PUBLICS * Six Propositions on Public Participation and Their Relevance for Risk Communication * Social Distrust as a Factor in Siting Hazardous Facilities and Communicating Risks * Evaluating Risk Communication * Considerations and Principles for Risk Communication for Industrial Accidents * Risk and the Stakeholder Express * PART 2 THE SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION OF RISK * The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework * Hidden Hazards * Media Risk Signals and the Proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, 1985-1989 * Stigma and the Social Amplification of Risk: Towards a Framework of Analysis * Risk, Trust and Democratic Theory * The Social Amplification of Risk: Assessing 15 Years of Research and Theory * PART 3 RISK AND ETHICS * Responding to the Double Standard of Worker/Public Protection * Developmental and Geographical Equity in Global Environmental Change: A Framework for Analysis * Redirecting the US High-Level Radioactive Waste Programme * Siting Hazardous Facilities: Searching for Effective Institutions and Processes * Climate Change, Vulnerability and Social Justice * Volume II * PART 1 RISK AND SOCIETY: FRAMING THE ISSUES * Acceptability of Human Risk * Societal Response to Hazards and Major Hazard Events: Comparing Natural and Technological Hazards* Large-scale Nuclear Risk Analysis: Its Impacts and Future * PART 2 CORPORATIONS AND RISK * Corporate Management of Health and Safety Hazards: Current Practice and Needed Research * Avoiding Future Bhopals * Emergency Planning for Industrial Crises: An Overview * Corporate Culture and Technology Transfer * Industrial Risk Management in India Since Bhopal * PART 3 THE GLOBALIZATION OF RISK * Hazards in Developing Countries: Cause for Global Concern * Priorities in Profile: Managing Risks in Developing Countries * Risk and Criticality: Trajectories of Regional Environmental * (Assessing the Vulnerability of Coastal Communities to Extreme Storms: The Case of Revere, Massachusetts, US * Border Crossings * Vulnerability to Global Environmental Change *

    Biography

    Jeanne X Kasperson was Research Associate Professor and Research Librarian and Roger E Kasperson is Research Professor and Distinguished Scientist also at Clark University, USA.