Sociology 3363F/G Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Public Safety Canada, Reductionism, Agnosticism
17 Dec 2017
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Reading 1: governing terrorism through risk: taking precautions, (un)knowing the future. Beck has claimed that september 11 drove home the lesson that we now live in a risk society", a society in which there are uncontrollable and unpredictable dangers against which insurance is impossible. We conceptualize risk as a dispositif for governing social problems. First, beck"s theory of risk society and its problematic appropriation in security studies will be revisited. Second, we shall discuss an analysis of risk that privileges heterogeneity over homogeneity, constructivism over realism, and contingency over determinism. Third, the deployment of the dispositif of precautionary risk in the war on terror will be explored. On the one hand, risks in risk society have become impossible to predict, either because of their low statistical probability or because they are non-recurring. On the other hand, these low- probability risks have hazardous effects that cannot be compensated for through existing schemes of (financial) compensation.
