UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
IS DISASTER RISK ‘SCIENCE’ PERFORMATIVE?
ETHNOGRAPHIC THOUGHTS ON CALCULATED
UNCERTAINTIES
Kristoffer Albris
PhD Fellow
Department of Anthropology,
University of Copenhagen, Changing Disasters
Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research
Cultures of Disaster, Oslo, November 6th, 2013.
DISASTER RISK AS THE ANALYTICAL OBJECT
DISASTER
PHENOMENA
DISASTER
RISK
• The process of some event happening
defined as a disaster, given some
destructive and all encompassing
consequences.
• The calculation and assessment of
someone or something being in harms way
RISKS ARE POSTERIORI KNOWN DANGERS
“The optimism led to an underestimation of the real risks and
therefore to a low 'payment' to deal with what would later prove to be
a great risk to many types of assets. The crisis, and especially the
extent of its impact, was thus generally not foreseen by the relevant
authorities and central banks, either in Denmark or abroad.”
Danish Newspaper, Politiken, September 18th 2013.
OVERVIEW
1. Approaches to understanding risk as an object of analysis
2. Performativity theory in economic sociology
3. Fieldwork and empirical data
4. Ethnographic examples on the making of disaster risks
5. Conclusions for discussion
RISKS AND THE POST-POLITICAL
The obsession with risk is one of the defining characteristics of late
modernity (Giddens 1991; Beck 1986)
Steve Rayner and Michael Power:
- Risk thinking has emerged as a vital concept in public discourse at
some point in the 1970’s.
- A political discourse of values is pushed aside by a discourse of
valuation. The business of politics and governing is reduced to one of
risk management.
- Professional expert knowledge has increasingly become the instrument
that permits governments to impede values and judgements on citizens
in the name of scientific risk management.
THE SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION OF RISK
Understanding how perceptions of risk exist in society requires an
understanding of the complex processes by which they travel and
change between contexts.
Pidgeon et al. (1988) (and others) have developed intrinsic models that
illustrate how risk perceptions are constructed and amplified by publics.
However, they downplay the importance of expert risk assessments, as
not contributing significantly to public risk perceptions.
PROMOTING RISK
Robert A. Stallings, 1995.
Analysis of the California earthquake threat. Turning from the
earthquake to the hazard as an analytical object.
How does a hazard become determined and promoted as a risk?
How is the risk of earthquakes circulated and amplified as a social
problem between experts, authorities and the public?
POSTMODERN RISK ANALYSIS
Roy Rappaport (1988):
”There is no such thing as a pure, objective assessment [of risk], that is,
one free of ”social amplification” (…)”
”Social amplification does not commence with the transmission of alarm
signals concerning risks already percieved but with the recognition of
the dangers in the first place.”
PERFORMATIVITY IN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY
THE PERFORMATIVITY OF ECONOMICS
Economics is itself a part of the infrastructure of modern financial
markets.
Economics, taken in the broad sense of the term, performs, shapes and
formats the economy.
Here economics refers to any activity with the purpose of understanding,
analyzing and equipping markets.
Distinction here must necessarily be drawn between academic forms of
economic intellectual activity and non-academic. But the point is that
even academic economics cannot free itself of the performative impact
on financial systems.
MODELS AS ENGINES, NOT CAMERAS
”Financial economics did more than analyze markets; it altered them. It
was an engine in a sense not intended by Friedman: an active force
transforming its environment, not a camera passively recording it.”
(Mackenzie 2006: 12).
This approach marks a shift away from understanding economics as
aexternal field of knowledge that merely describe markets. Instead,
economics is itself a part of the infrastructures of markets, and co-shape
the cultural, social and technical conditions that make them possible.
The risk
management of
everything
• Risk thinking has indeed become ubiquotoues.
• But this does not mean the end of politics. The practice of making risk
assessments is itself a political activity. It relies on choices, compromises and
judgements by individuals.
The social
amplification of
risk
• Yes but only if we do not distinguish between expert risk assessment and
”social” assessments
• The recognition of a danger is the first step towards the making of risks
The promotion of
risk
• Shift to see the disaster hazard and risk as a social problem ipso facto.
• But only if we do not use the term ‘social’ to demarcate a distinct domain of life
(i.e. Latour 2005). To see a risk as a social problem, does not explain how it
affects people.
Performativity
theory
• Disaster risk science does indeed perform (i.e. shape and drive forward) the
very objects and processes they purport to assess and describe.
• But, different from economic science, the performativity of disaster risk science
lies not in the simultaneously constitution of its object and description, but on
the idea that impact and frequency of disasters can be calculated scientifically.
THE MAKING OF RISKS
I would argue, that we need a better
understanding of how (disaster) risks
are actually assessed, calculated,
formulated, processed – ultimately
”made” – by experts.
To explore this, we need to follow
disaster risk modellers and mappers
closely to understand the choices they
make whilst performing this work.
Then we can proceed to question
what the making of risks does, after
they have been construed.
FIELDWORK AND EMPIRICAL BACKGROUND
Fieldwork in Fiji, June to February 2011.
Focus on regional organizations and
institutions who are involved with
different aspects of disaster risk analysis
and risk reduction projects.
Question: what conditions are necessary
for the development of manageable
futures in relation to disasters in the
Pacific by experts?
PREDICTION DEVICES
”A MAP TALKS”
“Like a picture says more than a thousand words, so a map says more
than all the data in the world. People in the higher parts of the
government who are not occupied with the technology, they wont
understand all the background research and the data collection. It is
better just to give them a map. If you give them 4000 pages, they don’t
care. A map is not just a tool, its also a symbolic marketing function to
sell your research. That is why GIS is coming so fast on all around the
world right now. Politicians want the simple things, and that is what a
map is. If you can tell them what and where is going to get flooded, when
and how much, through a map, then that’s what they want.”
Flood modeling specialist, Suva, Fiji.
ANTICIPATION ECONOMICS
”The general approach is science first, then economics. So if you
do science, you can understand the implications of an event.
Lots of scientists are really nice, but they can be extremely
boring, and they don’t often see that decision makers worry
about money first and foremost.”
(Natural Resource Management Economist)
RISK AWARENESS
THE ONTOLOGY OF RISK
Disaster Risk Expertise defines and quantifyes the specific risks of natural
hazards in relation to humans, technology infrastructure and ecological
systems: who and what is vulnerable, resilient, exposed?
ULTIMATELY, WHO IS AT RISK AND TO WHICH EXTENT?
Risks in this sense are not ‘out there’ as a stable ontological category.
Rather, specific risks are formed out of detailed calculations and
probability assessments. Risks are always percieved.
CONCLUSIONS FOR DISCUSSION
•
Disaster risk science not only models and describes the probability of
dangers. They actively drive the constitution óf those dangers forward
by casting them as risks, Risks are created, extended and amplified,
ipso facto, through the process of analyzing them.
•
If disaster risk assessments were able to account for a complete and
accurate picture of the frequency, impact and extent of natural
hazards, then it would be a different story.
•
As such, depictions, models and damage assessments of disaster
risks, not only act as cameras that describe what is going on. They
constitute them by performing them. Furthermore, they spread out
into society through risk awareness programmes.