Risk theory

Historically the concept of risk is rooted in Renaissance lifestyles, in which autonomous agents such as sailors, warriors, and tradesmen ventured upon dangerous enterprises. Thus, the concept of risk inseparably combines objective reality (nature) and social construction (culture): Risk = Danger + Venture. Mathematical probability theory was constructed in this social climate in order to provide a quantitative risk assessment in the face of indeterminate futures. Thus we have the famous formula: Risk = Probability (of events) x the Size (of future harms). Because the concept of harm is always observer relative, however, risk assessment cannot be purely quantitative. This leads to the question, What are the general conditions under which risks can be accepted? There is, after all, a difference between incurring a risk and bearing the costs of risks selected for by other agencies. Against this background, contours of a theology of risk emerge. If God creates a self-organizing world of relatively autonomous agents, and if self-organization is favored by cooperative networks of autopoietic processes, then the theological hypothesis of a risk-taking God is at least initially plausible. Moreover, according to the Christian idea of incarnation, God is not only taking a risk but is also bearing the risks implied by the openness of creation. I thus argue for a twofold divine kenosis-in creation as well as in redemption. I discuss some objections to this view, including the serious counterargument that risk taking on behalf of others remains, even for God, a morally dubious task. What are the conditions under which the notion of a risk-taking God can be affirmed without leaving us with the picture of God as an arbitrary, cosmic tyrant? And what are the practical implications for the ways in which human agents of faith, hope, and love can learn to cope with the risks of everyday life and of political decisions?

In the usual model of the collective risk theory, we are interested m the severity of rum, as well as its probability. As a quantitative measure, we propose G(u, y), the probability that for given initial surplus u ruin will occur and that the deficit at the time of ruin will be less than y, and the corresponding density g(u, y). First a general answer in terms of the transform is obtained. Then, assuming that the claim amount dlstrlbuuon is a combination of exponential distributions, we determine g; here the roots of the equauon that defines the adjustment coefficient play a central role. An explicit answer is also given m the case in which all claims are of constant size.

The Zero Emissions Research and Technology (ZERT) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is studying the injection of CO2 into geologic repositories. We are formulating the problem as science based decision framework that can address issues of risk, cost, and technical requirements at all stages of the sequestration process. The framework is implemented in a sys tem model that is capable of performing stochastic simulations to address uncertainty in different geologic sequestration sc enarios, including injection into poorly characterized brine aquifers. Processes level laboratory experiments, field experiments, modeling, economic data, and risk theory are used to support the system level model that will be the basis for decision making. The current system model, CO2-PENS, is already proving to b e useful in showing complex interactions between the different components of the framework. The system model also provides a consistent platform to document decisions made during the...

actuar is a package providing additional Actuarial Science functionality to the R sta-tistical system. The project was launched in 2005 and the package is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network since February 2006. The current version of the pack-age contains functions for use in the fields of loss distributions modeling, risk theory (including ruin theory), simulation of compound hierarchical models and credibility the-ory. This paper presents in detail but with few technical terms the most recent version of the package.

The objective of this paper is to develop conditions for global multivariate comparative risk aversion in the presence of uninsurable, or background, risks, and thus generalize Kihlstrom and Mirman [1974] and Karni [1979,1989]. We analyze von Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) utility functions as well as smooth preference functionals which are nonlinear in distribution but locally linear in probabilities. In each case we provide an economic application which illustrates how our theorems can be used. We analyze a risk sharing, a portfolio choice, and a labor supply problem for VNM utility functions, and the optimal allocation of effort to risky technologies in the presence of a random supply (or quality) of a public good for nonlinear preference functionals. We consider the case where the random variables are mean-independent as well as the case where they are independent. In the labor supply application for VNM utility functions, we show that if the two risks are independent, the comparative statics effect of greater risk aversion on labor supply in the presence of a background non-wage income risk is determined by a monotonic relationship between labor supply and the wage rate under certainty. That is, we extend the applicability of the Diamond-Stiglitz [1974]-Kihlstrom-Mirman [1974] single-crossing property to the case where an independent background risk is present.

The article focuses on the psychological dimensions of readers’ engagements with young adult climate change fiction. It argues that that the embodied simulation of a fictional climate-changed world can offer much more than simple entertainment or escapism. Instead, it has the potential to impact teenagers’ understanding of the social, economic, and ecological risks associated with climate change and to give them a better sense of the vulnerability of their current lives and lifestyles. By way of example, the article draws on research in cognitive literary studies, neuroscience, and the psychology of fiction to examine the narrative strategies of Paolo Bacigalupi’s YA cli-fi novel Ship Breaker. It demonstrates how the novel’s depiction of a dystopian future cues both negative emotions and more positive emotions in in order to warn about the future risks of climate change and still make the reading experience pleasurable for young readers.

The latest wave of zombie enthusiasm in the US coincided with a series of spectacular failures of risk assessment and response. Drawing on Ulrich Beck, this article argues that Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later stage audiences’ radical uncertainty in the face of risk. While Dawn of the Dead alludes to a long-debated risk—nuclear disaster—28 Days Later figures risks that erupt before public discourse can begin to register them, including terrorism and emergent diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy and the AIDS pandemic. These shifts in the nature of risk perception can be indexed to the move from Dawn of the Dead’s aesthetics of slow suspense to 28 Days Later’s fast, MTV-style editing.

Chinua Achebe’s seminal work, Things Fall Apart, has been widely analysed through the framework of postcolonialism, psychoanalysis and feminism but not much research has been carried out on how the fear of the unknown, that is risk, guides the lives of the characters in this novel. For example, the actions of the novel's protagonist, Okonkwo, are mostly dictated by the fear of effeminacy and the possibility of him turning out to be like his father. I want to argue that these are forms of risk: lifestyle, political and interpersonal risk. Ulrich Beck and Deborah Lupton’s concepts of risk see risk as the anticipation of negative or undesirable outcomes or catastrophe. These definitions of risk may help in understanding the actions of the principal characters of Things Fall Apart better. For this paper, Things Fall Apart will be considered as a “risk narrative,” that is, the manner in which risk, fear and catastrophe play out in the novel will be examined, as the novel fictionalizes risk scenarios such as interpersonal, life-style and political risk. In the same vein, the effect of risk on the subjectivity of Okonkwo and other characters in the novel will be discussed. Similarly, the fictional character, Okonkwo’s fear of the unknown as prompted by the coming of the Europeans to Umuofia will be examined using Beck’s concept of the World Risk Society. In the process, I'll examine Things Fall Apart in this new lights and show how the novel can help us articulate the idea of risk.

This essay is an introductory chapter to some different ways in which social theorists have approached the concept of risk and various processes which this concept is applied to.

The chapter is published in:  Elliott, A. (ed.)  The Routledge Handbook of Social and Cultural Theory. London: Routledge; pp. 157-174.

This article develops the concept of "olfactory narcissism" through an analysis of Boris Raux's multi-media artworks. Approaching narcissism through the sense of smell, Raux frames the self in insistently material, trans-corporeal terms. His olfactory projects thus explore questions about the porous self and the ethical and environmental stakes of "deodorization" and olfactory self-fashioning. The paper explores how olfactory aesthetics can contribute to a deeper understanding of modernity's atmospheric practices as well as their implications for subject formation, social relations, and environmental health.

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 this article, the authors examine consumers' behavior with respect to expiration dates for grocery store perishable products. A better understanding of such behavior can both guide efforts to educate consumers about the risks associated with perishables that are approaching their expiration dates and help managers implement effective promotional strategies for these products throughout the course of their shelf lives. Both of these approaches can help reduce waste due to spoilage. ). The authors thank Tom Jansen, a grocery store manager in the St. Louis, Mo., area for his invaluable insights into the issues studied herein. They also thank four anonymous JM reviewers whose comments improved the contributions of this article.

This paper outlines a relational theory of risk. According to this theory, risk emerges from situated cognition that establishes a relationship of risk between a risk object and an object at risk, so that the risk object is considered, under certain contingent circumstances and in some causal way, to threaten the valued object at risk. This relational theory of risk is a theory about the interpretative nature of risk that answers the key theoretical and practical questions of why and how something is considered a risk. The relational theory of risk allows for the interpretation of risk situations as culturally informed, and thereby suggests new ways to approach risk communication, risk governance, and risk management by taking into account bounded rationalities of thought and action.

In recent years there has been a distinct performative turn in the development of landscape-based architecture; it is now more than possible to consider scenographic models of spatial conceptualization – the “creation of spaces within which performing bodies can interact” (McKinney and Butterworth 2009:3) - as primary tools to analyse architectural interventions into landscape. Drawing on research for a forthcoming book, Performing Mountains (Palgrave 2018), this paper will seek to explain and critique the recent growth of ‘skywalks’, focusing primarily on mountain landscapes and on the scenographic management of risk, fear and exhilaration. In urban contexts skywalks are pragmatic links between buildings, designed to eliminate the need to descend and re-ascend. But in rural contexts the opportunity to enhance the experience of dangerous landscapes is being exploited by architects in high places all over the world – from the Rockies to the Alps, from the Grand Canyon to Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, China.

What does this growing phenomenon of skywalks tell us about the ways in which construction technologies are being utilised to heighten the experience of landscape? What behaviours are produced by such environments? What are the surrounding technologies used to facilitate this heightening of experience – social media and wearable technology for instance? How might a scenographic lens draw out aspects of landscape performativity that might otherwise remain dormant?

With specific reference to one recent example of mountain skywalks, the ‘Walk of faith’ on Tianmen Mountain, China, this paper seeks to answer these questions, building a case for a scenography-based reading of mountain architecture.

L’alliance entre les sphères de pouvoir politiques et psychiatriques s’est longtemps justifiée par la nécessité et la complémentarité. Or, depuis le milieu du vingtième siècle, les bases de la gouvernance politique et les fondements du système juridique se sont profondément transformés. Comment concilier les fondements du système juridique, qui s’attache au droit des personnes, et les mesures préventives liées à la gestion du risque psychiatrique qui, de par leur nature, sont immanquablement attentatoires aux droits fondamentaux?
L’auteure postule qu’à travers le développement d’un discours psychiatrique expert sur le risque, de nouveaux repères normatifs ont favorisé l’émergence d’une tension au sein du système juridique. Ainsi, cette tension pourrait servir d’illustration au phénomène plus global de pluralisme normatif, qui complexifie le rapport individuel aux normes multiples et concurrentes. En outre, le formalisme juridique ne peut plus suffire à la protection des droits fondamentaux en toute égalité. Dans ce contexte, l’intégration d’une perspective matérialiste et holiste constitue éventuellement une avenue à emprunter.

Pursuing a line of thought initiated by Maurice AUais (1979), I consider whether the mean-risk method of decision making introduced by Harry Markowitz (1959) and other resolves Karl Menger's (1934) version of the St. Petersburg paradox. I provide a conditional answer to this question. I demonstrate that given certain plausible assumption about attitudes toward risk, a certain plausible development of the mean-risk method does resolve the paradox. My chief premiss is roughly that in the St. Petersburg gamble the small chances for large prizes create big risks.

This editorial marks a new venture in this journal, towards a regular special issue focusing specifically on social theories of risk and uncertainty. I begin by introducing part of the rationale behind this development, before reviewing some recent debates and concerns regarding the advancement of theory within social scientific approaches to risk. Focusing in particular on three predominant traditions of interpretative risk theory – those following Douglas, Beck and Foucault – the second part of the editorial then considers some emerging and future lines of research. Different approaches pertaining to emergent ontologies, intersectionalities, and morality and taste are then considered.

Generally, when calculating value-at-risk (VaR), little importance is attached to extreme losses because they do not adequately reflect the skewness and kurtosis of the distribution. Moreover, assuming normality in VaR tends to overestimate the VaR values for upper percentiles, while it underestimates VaR for the lower percentiles of values that correspond to more extreme events.

In this chapter we explain the nature of virtue ethics, differentiating it from competing moral theories - consequentialism or deontology - and arguing that it is superior to both when it comes to the moral assessment of risk. We explore in detail what a virtue ethics approach to the moral evaluation of risk-taking would involve, focusing particularly upon the role played by character in such assessments. Our main argument is that individual instances of risk-taking are not isolated events but part of a pattern of behaviour on the part of the risk-taker. We argue, furthermore, that this pattern does not arise as a result of arbitrary, automatic processes over which individual agents have no control. Rather, risk-related behaviour patterns are the product of a complex set of settled dispositions which constitute character. We argue that character dispositions are developed over-time through education which involves habituation, active reflection and reflective self-modification. They bring together the influences of desire, emotion and thought to provide explanations of actions and decisions which are multi-dimensional and profoundly sensitive to the particularity of individual risk-involving actions and choices. Risk-taking is both a necessary part of human life and a source of moral vulnerability – it is very difficult to make good choices about risk and there are a lot of different ways in which our risky choices could prove to be morally inadequate. It is our contention that only virtue ethics with its emphasis on character - character-development and character-vulnerability - provides us with a sufficiently rich vocabulary to a) furnish satisfying explanations of the sensible moral judgements we make about risks and risk-takers all the time and b) facilitate effective rational reflection about common-sense moral evaluations of risk-taking. We illustrate the value of the virtue ethics approach using a hypothetical time-travel experiment in which an agent must choose whether to take some very serious risks and/or whether to expose others to risk.

We consider an insurance portfolio situation where there is possible dependence between the waiting time for a claim and its actual size. By employing the underlying random walk structure we obtain rather explicit exponential estimates for infinite and finite time ruin probabilities in the case of lighttailed claim sizes. The results are illustrated with several examples worked out for specific dependence structures.

In this article we describe a method for carrying out Bayesian estimation for the double Pareto lognormal (dPlN) distribution which has been proposed as a model for heavy-tailed phenomena. We apply our approach to estimate the $\mathit{dPlN}/M/1$ and $M/\mathit{dPlN}/1$ queueing systems. These systems cannot be analyzed using standard techniques due to the fact that the dPlN distribution does not possess

Over the past two decades, the global flow of Chinese student migration has changed significantly. Overseas Chinese students are torn between the desire to return to China and a fear of returning. Based on a study of employability among Chinese students who arrived in France in the 2000s, the study adopts a sociological perspective of risk in analysing student mobility. The findings show that risk and uncertainty shape the migration process for Chinese students. Overseas Chinese students are engaged in an individualisation process in which they are vulnerable to social change, and they must address risk in different areas of life upon graduation. Thus, many students find achieving a traditional ideal of success difficult, and they must postpone their return to China.

This article proposes a (re)consideration of antisocial behaviour control informed by an analysis of the seminal work of sociologists of 'reflexive modernity' . It is hoped that the arguments advanced within this article will prompt further consideration of the following questions:What does the relative neglect of the reflexive modernity thesis tell us about the domain conjecture(s) of sociological theory on antisocial behaviour policy and the use of ASBOs? And can a focus upon reflexive modernity theory help to construct a more proportionate account of ASBOs as a form of social control? Hence, it is the purpose of this article to consider critically the implications of Beck's 'risk society' to our understandings and explanations of antisocial behaviour, ASBOs and social control, by linking the late modern (re)formatting of antisocial behaviour(s) and the creation of ASBOs to the new parameters of the 'risk society'.

Possibilistic indicators of fuzzy numbers (expected value, variance, and covariance) are an e±cient instrument in the modeling of uncertainty phenomena. Various models of uncertainty phenomena have led to several notions of variance and covariance. In particular, the possibilistic models of risk aversion previously studied by one of the authors imposed a notion of variance of a fuzzy number di®erent from those existing in the literature. In this paper, a new notion of covariance of two fuzzy numbers corresponding to the possibilistic variance mentioned is studied. This possibilistic covariance can be used, e.g. in models of possibilistic risk aversion with many parameters.

This essay addresses the rhetorical issues at stake in contemporary architecture's attention to sustainability issues.  Symbolic practices that do not lie within the technical domain of sustainability practices undergird much orf contemporary architectural practice.  This essay examines sustainabiliity as a symbolic practice.

In the period from 1997 to 2009 Australia experienced a severe drought, which significantly
affected the Murray-Darling Basin. The drought has broken but state governments
are still in conflict over water allocations. The establishment of the Murray-Darling Basin
Authority (MDBA) in 2007 was intended to address these issues but the management of the
Basin remains complicated by constitutional ambiguity. This paper addresses the question
of whether it is possible to implement effective policies for the health of the Murray-Darling
Basin without the present danger of a drought. We suggest that the MDBA has encountered
what Beck refers to as the ‘boomerang effect’. The MDBA’s plans seem to have produced
new challenges and the Authority might find the Basin is exposed to risks it has created.

Mariella Nocenzi divides her intelligent discourse on the problems, and indeed the surprising prospects of living in a world of perpetual uncertainty, into two parts of unequal length. Via a functional analysis and then a clever empirical exploration of the role played by environmental risk in contemporary society, the book is deftly woven together into a confident and coherent whole. The parts are further divided into three, and then two unequal chapters, respectively, and each could be read as a separate essay of various length, detail, and intensity.

According to a deep-rooted conviction, the occurrence of a tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea would bevery rare. Unfortunately, this belief is definitely false: at least 2,000 of the 80,000 victims of the great earthquakein Messina (1908) were due to the tsunami that followed earthquake (Boschi et al. 1995). In 1956, a 7.7 magnitudecearthquake close to the Cycladic island of Amorgos (Greece) triggered large waves that also hit coasts of Amorgos, Astypalaia and Folegandros, with run-up values of 30, 20, and 10 mt (Okal et al., 2009). More recently, in 2003 a relatively small tsunami caused by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Boumerdes (Algeria) hit the Western Mediterranean coast causing damage properties in at least eight harbours in Balearic Islands (Velaet al. 2011) and two little tsunamis occurred in Dodecanese respectively in 2016 and 2017. Such events, that are just a little part of the over 290 historically known events occurred in the Mediterranean (Maramai, Brizuela & Graziani, 2014) should remind geoscientists that 1) tsunami hazard is everything but impossible and 2) tsunami come in all shapes and colours, and even a small event can result in serious damages and loss of lifes. In such a scenario, risk communication about Mediterranean Tsunami is a challenging enterprise. According to Astarte project, which investigated people’s knowledge, preparedness and attitudes to cope with Tsunami within six test sites across different nations, people have little knowledge about tsunamis, are likely to underestimate both probability and consequences of such events, and their understanding is significantly affected by media coverage (and social imagery) of big events such as the 2004 Sumatra Tsunami and the 2011 TohokuTsunami (Astarte, 2014). In such a scenario, where low probability and high uncertainty match with poor knowledge and familiarity with tsunami hazard, risk communicators should avoid undue assumptions about public’s supposed attitudes and preparedness, that may results in serious consequences for the exposed population, geoscientists, and civil protection officers. Hence, scientists must carefully shape their messages and rely on well-researched principled practices rather on good intuition (Bostrom, & Löfstedt, 2003). For these reasons, the Centro Allerta Tsunami of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, to ground aneffective science communication strategy, promoted a survey to investigate tsunami’s risk perception in two pilot regions of southern Italy, as to represent about 3.2mln people living in 183 coastal municipalities.The research is based on a sample of > 1000 people, organized into six main sections: socio-demographic data and information on respondents’ territory; knowledge and sources of information on tsunami risk; contextualperception of risk posed by tsunamis; social representations of tsunami; role of cultural attitudes and worldviews;messages and channels to be used for tsunami early warning. Interviews will be administered within the end of February 2018, first data will be presented and discussed in this session.

Although the human dimensions (HD) of chronic wasting disease (CWD) research is relatively new, at least 38 journal articles have been published in the last seven years. This article synthesizes seven lessons learned from HD of CWD research (e.g., hunters vary in their behavioral response to CWD and perceived human health risks; agency trust can influence behavior and acceptance of management actions; not all management actions are equally acceptable and/or effective). This body of work directly incorporates concepts found in social psychological, economics, communication and risk theories to better understand the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of multiple stakeholders (e.g., hunters, non-hunters, guide outfitters) across multiple states. The general approach utilized by human dimensions research on CWD can be applied to a variety of wildlife diseases. A systematic program of human dimensions inquiry is necessary to understand and prepare for the next wildlife disease crisis.

Risk communication and the social amplification of risk ORTWIN RENN "Fish may die or human beings; drinking water or swimming in rivers or lakes may cause diseases; we may run out of oil; the glaholtemperature may rise or fall; all these effects will not cause allY societal effects unless society communicates about it. Society is sensitive to tire natural environment, but it operates as a closed system. Society observes nature and environmelJl through communication. Communicating meaning is the only means for initialing responses: therefore it can regu/are communication only by olher forms of communication. In essence, it is society which poses a threat /0 ;IS survival, not the environment. JJ (Niklas Luhmann 1986, p. 63; Translation by author) Most societies have become highly preoccupied with the notion of risk. Th~ interest of public institutions and academia in risk communication has considerably grown during the last five years. Accordingly, risk communication has become a popular topic in the literature. Although originally conceptualized as a follow-up of risk perception studies, the work on risk communication has surpassed the limited boundaries of giving public relation advice for information programs on risk and extended its focus on the flow of information between subsystems of society (Jasanoff 1987, p.U6; Zimmermann 1987, p. 131; Kasperson 1986, p. 275). The interactions of social groups about risk-related issues are potential amplifiers or attenuators of communication signals. Therefore, the concept of social amplification of risk may be an interesting and rewarding framework for analyzing risk communication The main thesis of the social amplification concept is that events pertaining to hazards interact with psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes in ways that can heighten or attenuate public perceptions of risk and shape risk behavior. Behavioral patterns, in turn, generate secondary social or economic consequences. These consequences extend far beyond direct harms to include significant indirect impacts , e .g. liability , insurance costs, loss of confidence in institutions , or alienation from community affairs (Kasperson et al. 1988, p. 181). Under certain circum-287

In a number of applications, particularly in financial and actuarial mathematics, it is of interest to characterize the tail distribution of a random variable V satisfying the distributional equation VD=f(V), where f(v)=A{v,D}+B for (A,B,D)∈(0,∞)×R^2. This paper is concerned with computational methods for evaluating these tail probabilities. We introduce a novel importance sampling algorithm, involving an exponential shift over a random time interval, for estimating these rare event probabilities. We prove that the proposed estimator is: (i) consistent, (ii) strongly efficient and (iii) optimal within a wide class of dynamic importance sampling estimators. Moreover, using extensions of ideas from nonlinear renewal theory, we provide a precise description of the running time of the algorithm. To establish these results, we develop new techniques concerning the convergence of moments of stopped perpetuity sequences, and the first entrance and last exit times of associated Markov chain...

This paper focuses on analysis techniques of modern reliability databases, with an application to military system data. The analysis of military system data base consists of the following steps: clean the data and perform operation on it in order to obtain good estimators; present simple plots of data; analyze the data with statistical and probabilistic methods. Each step is dealt with separately and the main results are presented.Competing risks theory is advocated as the mathematical support for the analysis. The general framework of competing risks theory is presented together with simple independent and dependent competing risks models available in literature. These models are used to identify the reliability and maintenance indicators required by the operating personnel. Model selection is based on graphical interpretation of plotted data.

This paper derives several formulas for the probability of eventual ruin in a discrete-time model. In this model, the number of claims process is assumed to be binomial. The claim amounts, premium rate and initial surplus are assumed to be integer-valued.

Introduzione: il contributo delle scienze sociali agli studi sul rischio Questo lavoro si propone come un breve percorso introduttivo alla letteratura delle scienze sociali, con il fine di analizzare criticamente alcuni tra i principali paradigmi teorici, i concetti e temi di ricerca più importanti e la loro rilevanza nell’ambito dei processi di policy making. Il consolidamento del paradigma dei risk studies e l’emergere della risk governance come campo di ricerca autonomo e multidisciplinare molto devono al fondamentale contributo delle scienze sociali, che costituisce l’oggetto di questo paper. La comunità scientifica internazionale ha infatti da tempo riconosciuto il ruolo delle scienze sociali, sottolineando come il raccordo e il confronto tra saperi diversi sia essenziale per il raggiungimento di un unico obiettivo, e cioè la tutela della salute umana, dell’ambiente e delle comunità e gruppi sociali esposti ai rischi. La forte sovrapposizione delle dimensioni fisiche e materiali del rischio a quelle sociali, psicologiche e politiche ha inevitabilmente comportato la necessità di superare l’impasse delle spiegazioni riduzionistiche e l’idea dell’autosufficienza delle singole discipline [Horlick Jones & Sime, 2004], che peraltro è da tempo oggetto di una riflessione epistemologica anche in altri campi [Morin, 2000]. Tuttavia, è bene sottolineare che questo allargamento del campo dell’analisi del rischio anche alle scienze umane e sociali non è stato sempre agevole e tantomeno incruento. La piena accettazione delle scienze sociali nelle questioni relative alla valutazione, alla gestione e alla comunicazione del rischio ha richiesto una faticosa presa d’atto dei limiti del razionalismo nella risoluzione o nella mediazione di conflitti sociali - talvolta drammatici - legati all’emergere dei “nuovi” rischi, soprattutto quelli legati all’energia nucleare, all’inquinamento e alla salute. Il verificarsi di numerosi eventi catastrofici di vasta portata, come l’incendio dell’impianto nucleare di Sellafield nel 1957, le malformazioni dei neonati dovute al Talidomide agli inizi degli anni sessanta, le terribili conseguenze dell’inquinamento da metilmercurio nella baia di Minamata in Giappone alla fine dello stesso decennio, l’evacuazione della cittadina di Love Canal a causa dell’inquinamento da rifiuti tossici, ma soprattutto gli incidenti nucleari di Three Mile Island nel 1979 e di Chernobyl nel 1986 hanno creato un clima di vasta e giustificata preoccupazione da parte del pubblico, che spesso si è accompagnata ad una crescente ostilità verso la scienza e la tecnologia, sempre più considerate come fonti di rischi incalcolabili, irreversibili e catastrofici. Inoltre, catastrofi come quella del Vajont nel 1964, o il terremoto di Tangshan del 1976, lo Tsunami dell’oceano Indiano del 2004, l’Uragano Katrina del 2005 e il terremoto in Giappone del 2011 hanno evidenziato come l’ampiezza del danno fosse in molti casi legata a decisioni umane sbagliate, rendendo molto più sfumata e convenzionale la distinzione rischi antropici e rischi naturali. In un contesto come questo la necessità di fornire risposte organiche e coerenti ai rischi ha reso necessaria l’integrazione di più discipline, sia in termini di multidisciplinarietà (in cui ciascuna disciplina si occupa di un particolare aspetto del problema in cooperazione con le altre), che di transdisciplinarietà (che integra in un unico approccio elementi teorici e metodologici dei diversi saperi disciplinari) [Horlick Jones & Sime, 2004].1 Questo dialogo, che presuppone una riflessione sui fondamenti epistemologici delle diverse discipline e il tentativo di integrare concetti e definizioni, è di fondamentale importanza per valutare e informare le decisioni politiche sui rischi [Althaus, 2005], così come la necessità di riconciliare le culture scientifiche tipiche delle “hard science” (ingegneria, fisica, epidemiologia) a quelle delle scienze sociali (antropologia, sociologia, psicologia) [Jasanoff, 1993]. È in questo contesto che si inizia a parlare di risk studies: questo termine, che inizia ad apparire agli inizi degli anni ottanta, associato alle ricerche sull’ubicazione di siti nucleari, è stato usato agli inizi degli anni novanta per identificare uno specifico campo teorico - disciplinare volto all’analisi dei problemi sociali, politici, economici e giuridici associati ai rischi [Krimsky, 1992]. I risk studies, che oggi si caratterizzano come campo multidisciplinare e autonomo che integra saperi diversi, nascono per l’appunto come risposta all’emergere della percezione del rischio come problema sociale [Burgess, 2016], concretizzandosi negli Stati Uniti nella nascita di diversi gruppi di ricerca con una forte vocazione multidisciplinare. Il primo di questi gruppi è il Disaster Research Center dell’Università del Delaware (prima in Ohio) fondato da Enrico L. Quarantelli e Russel Dynes nel 1963, seguito nel 1976 dal Natural Hazard Research and Application Information Center dell’Università del Colorado di Katrin Tierney e Dennis Mileti (autori tra l’altro di diverse ricerche 1 Morin definisce la transdisciplinarietà come condivisione di oggetti di ricerca, di obiettivi e di strumenti propri a diverse discipline, resa possibile dalla trasversalità di schemi cognitivi [Morin 2000: 123]. LE SCIENZE SOCIALI E I RISK STUDIES: temi, problemi, metodi 8 sulla percezione del rischio sismico). Sempre nel 1976 viene creato il Decision Research group, presso l’Università dell’Oregon, per decenni diretto da Paul Slovic e divenuto famoso per le ricerche psicometriche, cui fa seguito tra la fine degli anni settanta e i primi ottanta il gruppo della Clark University di Worcester nel Massachussets, con la partecipazione di Roger e Jeannette Kasperson, Nick Pidgeon, Ortwin Renn, divenuto famoso per la teoria dell’amplificazione sociale del rischio, e il gruppo della Carnegie Mellon University, di Baruch Fischhoff, Granger Morgan, Ann Bostrom e Cynthia J. Atman che, oltre a produrre una considerevole mole di lavori sulle decisioni in contesti di rischio elaboreranno anche l’approccio dei modelli mentali. Nel 1976/77, dopo il terremoto in Friuli nasce a Udine un primo nucleo di sociologi del disastro, che faceva capo a Bernardo Cattarinussi, Raimondo Strassoldo e Annamaria Boileau, con stretti legami accademici con il Disaster Center di Quarantelli e Dynes. Questi gruppi, dalla forte matrice multi e transdisciplinare, hanno sviluppato negli anni rilevanti rapporti di collaborazione e consulenza con vari enti governativi, fino a costituire il modello di riferimento per numerosi centri di studi non solo negli Stati Uniti ma anche nel Regno Unito e nei paesi del nord Europa, tra i quali si possono ricordare King’s Centre for Risk Management presso il King’s College di Londra; Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation alla London School of Economics di Londra; Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience all’Università di Durham; ETH Risk Center di Zurigo; ZIRIUS, Stuttgart Research Center for Interdisciplinary Risk and Innovation Studies a Stoccarda. Il lavoro di questi gruppi di ricerca, insieme a quello di molti altri studiosi, si è spesso intrecciato con la necessità dei governi di elaborare efficaci politiche per la mitigazione del rischio: è sempre in questo contesto che nasce il concetto di Risk Governance, che fa riferimento all’insieme di azioni, processi, tradizioni e istituzioni attraverso cui si esercita l’autorità e si prendono e attuano decisioni, con l’obiettivo di allocare al meglio le risorse disponibili e massimizzare i benefici, non solo economici, legati all’esposizione a determinati rischi, in particolare a quelli legati ai grandi progetti e all’innovazione tecnologica o industriale [Aven e Renn, 2010]. In particolare, le scienze sociali hanno contribuito a chiarire l’impossibilità di una netta separazione tra fatti e valori nell’ambito del risk policing, evidenziando come sia le teorie che le pratiche facciano sempre implicitamente o esplicitamente riferimento a qualche definizione di ciò che è giusto e desiderabile. Come scriveva Sheila Jasanoff “i modi in cui noi conosciamo e rappresentiamo il mondo (sia naturale che sociale) sono inseparabili dai modi con cui scegliamo di viverci” [Jasanoff, 2004: 2].