Lee Clarke
Risk, Danger, and Society
Fall 1994
Soc 491 & 511
A-256 Lucy Stone Hall
Thursday 1:10 - 3:50
A-351 Lucy Stone Hall
Livingston Campus
O: 445-5741
F: 445-0974

This course is about the major ideas in what is presently called the sociology of risk. The demands of syllabus writing cause me to attribute more coherence to this "field" than actually obtains. That said, coherence is forced rather than inhere nt in most courses, so that won't hold us up. Besides, the categories in this syllabus are broadly meaningful.

Several themes transect the readings: notions of acceptability (cartoon 1), what makes social systems break down (cartoon 2), how to think most meaningfully about decisions, individuals, culture, and social action (hence how to theorize), and, simply, wha t makes people do what they do. These themes, along with others, will arise as we talk about the material. You'll notice the reading is heavy, so it's best to keep up.


And the material is quite broad, drawn from several disciplines within fields and across several fields. This is one of the things that makes "risk" fun to read, research, and write about, but it can also make you crazy. That is, reading lots of things from lots of different places is intellectually broadening in a way that becomes increasingly difficult to sustain as your career proceeds. At the same time, if your goal is to deepen sociological knowledge then works outside the genre can be maddening. The distance between the dilettante and the polymath, often hidden behind claims to inter-disciplinary commitment, is largely one of will and application. I'm sure we can keep the sociological issues in the foreground.


This is a talk class. I do not lecture. So you have to participate regularly (regularly=daily) in class discussion. This means preparation is key, since it's not possible to participate intelligently if you don't know what you're talking about. To facilit ate all this talk, I want some one or two people to assume responsibility for leading discussion. This isn't a heavy requirement: 1) to write a page of questions that you think should be covered to adequately treat a topic, 2) reproduce the page for every one in the class, and 3) try to keep the seminar on track. We'll arrange these the first day of class.


In addition to participation, I want you to write two critical papers and a final paper. Information about the writing is at the end of this syllabus, as is a schedule of due dates and reading timing.


Oh yes, I will not countenance, am constitutionally INCAPABLE of conceiving, am resolutely oPpOsEd to, incompletes.


Stuff to buy:


Pequod Packet, which contains all the articles and chapters listed below.


All the books, though not the articles, are on reserve at the Kilmer Library.

Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky
Risk and Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982

Mary Douglas
Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 1985.

Kai Erikson
A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community, New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Phil Brown and E.J. Mikkelsen
No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

R. D. Bullard,
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder: Westview Press. 1990.

Charles Perrow
Normal Accidents: Living With High Risk Technologies, NY: Basic Books, 1984.

rationality issues

the promise of rationality

Ralph L. Keeney and Howard Raiffa
Chapter 1, The problem, Pp. 1-26; Skim: Chapter 8, Airport Development for Mexico City, Pp. 436-470, in Decisions with Multiple Objectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Bernard Cohen
Criteria for technology acceptability, Risk Analysis, 1985, 5(1):1-3.

Chauncy Starr
Social benefit versus technological risk, Science 1969, 165 (September 19):1232

Aaron Wildavsky -- * THIS IS A CRITICAL PAPER READING *
No risk is the greatest risk of all, American Scientist, 1979, 67:32-37.

Roger E. Kasperson, Ortwin Renn, Paul Slovic, Halina S. Brown, Jacque Emel, Robert Goble, Jeanne X. Kasperson, and Samuel Ratick
The social amplification of risk: a conceptual framework, Risk Analysis, 1988, 8(2):177-187.

excursus on theory & rationality

Jon Elster
When rationality fails, Pp. 19-51 in The Limits of Rationality, Karen Schweers Cook and Margaret Levi, Editors, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Jon Elster
Problematic rationality: some unresolved problems in the theory of rational behavior, Pp. 112-156 in Ulysses and The Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 (revised edition).

Terry Moe
On the scientific status of rational models, American Journal of Political Science, 1979, 23(1):215-243.

psychometrics & risk perception

Sarah Lichtenstein and Paul Slovic
Reversals of preference between bids and choices in gambling decisions, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1971, 89:46-55.

Paul Slovic and Sarah Lichtenstein
Preference reversals: a broader perspective, American Economic Review, 1983, 73(4):596-605.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice, Science, 1981, 211(January 30):453-458.

Richard H. Thaler
Illusions and mirages in public policy, The Public Interest, 1983, 73:60-74.

Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic, Sarah Lichtenstein, Stephen Read, and Barbara Combs
How safe is safe enough? a psychometric study of attitudes toward technological risks and benefits, Policy Sciences, 1978, 9:127-152.

Actually, nobody's rational
Allan C. Mazur
Disputes between experts, Minerva, 1973, 11(2):243-262.

Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein
Rating the risks: the structure of expert and lay perceptions. Environment 1979, 21(3):14-20.

James G. March and Zur Shapira
Managerial perspectives on risk and risk taking. Management Science, 1987, 33(11):1404-18.

William R. Freudenburg
Perceived risk, real risk: social science and the art of probabilistic risk assessment. Science 1988. 242 (October 7):44-49.

Carol A. Heimer
Social structure, psychology, and the estimation of risk, Annual Review of Sociology, 1988, 14:491-519.

Carol A. Heimer
Your baby's fine, just fine: uncertainty and the supply of information in neonatal intensive care units. Pp. 161-88. In Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk. edited by James F. Short, Jr. and Lee Clarke, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992.

Scott Plous
Biases in the assimilation of technological breakdowns: do accidents make us safer? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1991, 21(13):1058-1082.

maybe it's not risk perception at all

Lee Clarke
Explaining choices among technological risks, Social Problems, 1988, 35(1):501-514.

Steve Rayner and Robin Cantor
How fair is safe enough? the cultural approach to social technology choice, Risk Analysis, 1987, 7(1):3-9.

William R. Freudenburg and Susan K. Pastor
Public responses to technological risks: toward a sociological perspective, Sociological Quarterly, 1992, 33(3):389-412.

William R. Freudenburg
Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions. Social Forces , 1993, 71(4):909-932.

Constructionism

Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker
The social construction of facts and artifacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other, Social Studies of Science, 1988, 18:147-167.

Helga Nowotny
Scientific purity and nuclear danger, Pp. 243-264 in The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart, and Richard Whitley (eds), Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co 1977.

Alvin M. Weinberg
Science and trans-science, Minerva, 1972, 10:209-222.

Robert A. Stallings
Media discourse and the social construction of risk. Social Problems, 1990, 37(1):80-95.

Steve Hilgartner
The social construction of risk objects: or, how to pry open networks of risk. Pp. 39-53. In Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk. edited by James F. Short, Jr. and Lee Clarke, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992

Lee Clarke
Pp. 157-182, Ch. 8 in Acceptable Risk? Making Decisions in a Toxic Environment, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Kenneth Hewitt
The idea of calamity in a technocratic age. Pp. 3-32. In Interpretations of Calamity, Kenneth Hewitt, Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Langdon Winner
Do artifacts have politics?, Pp. 19-39 in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Baruch Fischhoff
Cost benefit analysis and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Policy Sciences, 1977, 8, pp. 177-202.

culture

take one

Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky
Risk and Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

Miriam Lee Kaprow
Manufacturing danger: fear and pollution in industrial society, American Anthropologist, 1985, 87:342-356.

Joseph R. Gusfield
Introduction: the culture of public problems, Pp. 1-26 in The Culture of Public Problems: Drinkig-Driving and The Symbolic Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Take Two

James F. Short, Jr.
The social fabric at risk: toward the social transformation of risk analysis, American Sociological Review, 1984, 49:711-725.

Mary Douglas
Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 1985.

Steve Rayner
Cultural theory and risk analysis, Ch. 4, Pp. 83-115 in Social Theories of Risk, edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding, Westport, CT: 1992.
community and meaning
Kai Erikson
A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community, New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Stephen R. Couch and J. Stephen Kroll-Smith
The chronic technical disaster, Social Science Quarterly, 1985, 66(3):564-575.

social movements

Phil Brown and E.J. Mikkelsen
No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

J. Craig Jenkins
Resource mobilization theory and the study of social movements, Annual Review of Sociology, 1983, 9:527-553.

James M. Jasper
The political life cycle of technological controversies, Social Forces, 1988, 68(2):357-377.

stratification
R. D. Bullard
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder: Westview Press. 1990.

Paul Mohai and Bunyan Bryant
Environmental racism: reviewing the evidence, Pp. 163-176 in Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards. Edited by Bryant, B., Mohai, P. 1992, Boulder: Westview Press.

Aaron Wildavksy
Richer is sicker versus richer is safer, Pp. 59-75 in Searching For Safety, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1988.

Allan Schnaiberg
Redistributive goals versus distributive politics: social equity limits in environmental and appropriate technology movements, Sociological Inquiry 1983, 53:200-219.

system failures

causes-1

Charles Perrow
Normal Accidents, NY: Basic Books, 1984.

Causes-2

Barry Turner
The organizational and interorganizational development of disasters, Administrative Science Quarterly, Sept. 1976, 21:378-396.

Robert P.Gephart, Jr.
Making sense of organizational based environmental disasters, Journal of Management, 1984, 10(2):205-255.

William F. Starbuck and Frances J. Milliken
Challenger: fine-tuning the odds until something breaks, Journal of Management Studies, 1988, 24(4):319-340.

Diane Vaughan
Autonomy, interdependence, and social control: NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1990,35(2):225-257

Lee Clarke
The disqualification heuristic: when do organizations misperceive risk? Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 1993, Vol. 5:289-312, JAI Press.

High Reliability Organizations

Karlene H. Roberts
Some characteristics of one type of high reliability organization, Organization Science, 1990 1(2):160-76.

Todd R. La Porte and Paula M. Consolini
Working in practice but not in theory: theoretical challenges of high-reliability organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 1991, 1:19-47.

Karl Weick
Organizational culture as a source of high reliability, California Management Review, 1987, 29(2):112-127.

Karl Weick
The vulnerable system: an analysis of the Tenerife air disaster, Academy of Management Review, 1990,

Scott Sagan
Redundancy and reliability: the 1968 Thule bomber accident, Ch. 4, Pp. 156-203 in The Limits of Safety, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

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