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CfP - RN Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty - ESA Conference, 3-6 September 
2007 in Glasgow, UK
From: » Ragna Zeiss

CfP - RN Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty - ESA Conference, 3-6 September 
2007 in Glasgow, UK Call for Papers

for the sessions of the Research Network ‘Sociology of Risk and 
Uncertainty’
at the 8th conference of the European Sociological Association ‘Conflict, 
Citizenship and Civil Society’, 3-6 September 2007 in Glasgow, UK 
(http://www.esa8thconference.com/)

* Deadline 15th February 2007 *

Risk and uncertainty are important issues in a growing amount of societal 
areas and social research. The management and negotiation of risk, its 
socio-cultural production in media coverage and discourses and the 
conflicts on its (unequal) allocation are focal themes in the sociology of 
risk and uncertainty. As there is a growing interest in how sociological 
macro phenomena are linked to everyday life, the call for papers of the 
research network covers a wide range of topics. It reaches from strategies 
to govern the risk society and the discoursive construction of risk and 
uncertainty via issues of health and illness to the ongoing reproduction 
of social inequalities. There is an additional focus on individual’s 
experience and management of risk and uncertainty. The various links of 
risk and suffering are addressed as well as the phenomena of voluntary 
(high) risk taking. In a shared session with the RN Biographical 
Perspectives on European Societies the different forms of the management 
of risk and uncertainty during the course of their life as well as the 
impact of one’s biography on the experience of risk and uncertainty will 
be examined.

Session topics

. Governing the Risk Society
Chair: Peter Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, P.F.Taylor-
[log in to unmask]

The emergence of the risk approach to managing uncertainty and the 
implications for governance across public and private sectors and personal 
life have been extensively analysed. This section invites papers which 
draw on these themes, and those which consider current developments, 
including but not limited to:
- Risk and Citizenship;
- Risk and Trust
- New Public Policies and Risk
- Risk and New Forms of Management


. Health, Risk and European Societies

Chair: Andy Alaszewski, Centre for Health Service Studies (CHSS), 
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, [log in to unmask]

Health forms a major site for the articulation and construction of risk in 
late modern society. Failures to effectively identify and manage risk 
often result in major health problems even disasters while the uncertainty 
associated with health threats are a major factor in shaping individual 
and collective behaviour. We invite papers which address different 
dimensions of health and risk from issues of human agency, through the 
institutional structuring of risk to the societal construction of risk and 
uncertainty.


. Risk Discourses and the Media
Chair: N.N.

The media doubtless play an important role to disseminate knowledge about 
the world, which risks and uncertainties we have to expect and which 
worries and concerns torture us in everyday life. Nevertheless, the media 
only partly influence people’s risk perception. The session aims to 
examine how media discourses (e.g. on GM-food, bird flue, divorce, youth, 
crime) construct risk and uncertainty and how media and the public are 
connected.


. Terrorism, Risk and Uncertainty
Chair: Gabe Mythen, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, 
[log in to unmask]

Following on from high profile terrorist attacks in the United States, 
Spain and the UK, terrorism has become a crucial and contested problem in 
Western nations. Political debates have centred on the nature, 
communication and management of the terrorist threat. Meanwhile, academics 
have sought to understand the thorny issues that cluster around terrorism 
with recourse to extant risk theories. This theme seeks to make sense of 
current events by engaging with the risks and uncertainties that emerge 
around the terrorist threat, including its representation, mediation, 
interpretation and regulation. Submissions are invited for papers which 
engage with one or more of the following themes:
- Terrorism and Changing Modes of Risk Assessment
- Media Representations of Terrorism
- Terrorism and the Politics of Fear
- Security, Surveillance and Terrorism
- Terrorism, Law and Uncertainty
- Terrorism, Crime and Governance


. Risk, Uncertainty and Social Inequalities
Chair: Anwen Jones, University of York, UK, [log in to unmask]

Beck’s thesis on the risk society (1991) stated a change in societal 
reproduction mode from a society mainly driven by class differences to a 
society mainly driven by risk. Even though this assumption was 
continuously criticized there is still a lack of newer studies of the 
reproduction of social inequalities in the risk society and how risk and 
inequalities interact, whether they mutually amplify or weaken 
inequalities. Papers are invited which contribute to the understanding of 
the societal reproduction of social inequalities in the risk society.


. Risk, Uncertainty, and Social Suffering
Chair: Marja-Liisa Honkasalo, University of Helsinki, Finland (marja-
[log in to unmask])

Social suffering as a theoretical and methodological approach has recently 
been widely discussed within the domain of social sciences. Social 
suffering is approached from various perspectives; it is defined as a 
social category that connects different kinds of human problems, including 
pain, illness experience, political violence, and other trials for people 
to undergo or endure. Some scholars consider social suffering as lived 
experience, and as something that hinders the most meaningful in one’s 
life. Still others, like Bourdieu, with his concept of misère considers 
sufferings in a plural and emphasizes human agency and praxis in shifting 
and multiple contexts of everyday life. The session aims to discussing the 
problems of risk in the context of social suffering, thus giving it a 
broader perspective upon the lived experience of uncertainty, contingency, 
and agency.


. Voluntary Risk Taking
Chair: Stephen Lyng, Carthage College, USA, [log in to unmask]

In the context of risk, research often focuses on the individual’s 
prevention of or coping with undesired events. The reasons and forms of 
why people seek risks and uncertainties are less well examined even though 
voluntary risk taking is an essential part of our life (Lupton/Tulloch 
2002; Lyng 2005). Voluntary risk taking is addressed in a range of areas 
as crime, leisure time, sex, sports, work, drug use etc. The session aims 
to pool forms of voluntary risk taking in European societies.


Shared sessions with other research networks:

. Biography, Risk, and Uncertainty
(with RN ‘Biographical Perspectives on European Societies’)
Chair: Jens O. Zinn, [log in to unmask] and Robin Humphrey, 
[log in to unmask]

Biographical research and risk research are two rising stars of 
sociological and interdisciplinary research which converge in many 
respects. In risk research the pressing question on the factors how people 
perceive and respond to risk recently developed greater interest into 
narrative and biographical research since risk perceptions research, the 
psychometric paradigm and rational action approaches showed significant 
weaknesses. How current activities and orientations are embedded in the 
accumulation of experiences during the course of one’s life is the central 
focus of biographical research. In this perspective risk perception and 
coping with risk is part of the overall management of one’s life and its 
miseries and therefore only understandable against the background of one’s 
biography embedded in a socio-historical context. Papers are welcome which 
examine people’s everyday management of risks in a biographical 
perspective.


Please submit your abstracts via the conference homepage 
http://www.esa8thconference.com/abstractsubmission/index.php
by 15th February 2007.

Yours,
Jens Zinn

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