Can Policy Be Risk‐Based? The Cultural Theory of Risk and the Case of Livestock Disease Containment

Dominic Duckett,A Louise Heathwaite,Rob M Christley,Maggie Mort,Ruth Alcock,Sophia M Latham,Zoe Austin,Jonathan M Wastling,Brian Wynne,Philip Haygarth

doi:10.1111/soru.12064

Dominic Duckett, A Louise Heathwaite + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12064

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Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the nature of calls for risk‐based policy present in expert discourse from a cultural theory perspective. Semi‐structured interviews with professionals engaged in the research and management of livestock disease control provide the data for a reading proposing that the real basis of policy relating to socio‐technical hazards is deeply political and cannot be purified through ‘escape routes’ to objectivity. Scientists and risk managers are shown calling, on the one hand, for risk‐based policy approaches while on the other acknowledging a range of policy drivers outside the scope of conventional quantitative risk analysis including group interests, eventualities such as outbreaks, historical antecedents, emergent scientific advances and other contingencies. Calls for risk‐based policy are presented, following cultural theory, as ideals connected to a reductionist epistemology and serving particular professional interests over others rather than as realistic proposals for a paradigm shift.

Highlights

The cultural theory of risk argues that we should be thankful for a society in which the discourse on risk is highly politicised because this demonstrates a healthy, free debate on values (Douglas 1992a)
The analysis presented here supports a more nuanced claim and one that has a strong tradition in sociology, that even people well-versed in scientific methodologies, familiar with the latest research in their field and calling for risk-based policy themselves in many instances, are, in practice, constructing their risk facts in the same kinds of non-probabilistic and political terms as the general population or as diverse cultures (Douglas 1992a)
The notion that policy ought to be founded upon probabilistic risk is, for cultural theory, misconceived

Summary

Introduction

The cultural theory of risk (or cultural theory) argues that we should be thankful for a society in which the discourse on risk is highly politicised because this demonstrates a healthy, free debate on values (Douglas 1992a). Quests for depoliticised, objective footings on which to found conceptions of risk, Douglas continues, neglect the profound significance of culture yet appeal to experts seeking to escape the messy, contested realities of the social world by bracketing them off in the quest for less troublesome probabilistic approaches. Following Durkheim, Douglas (1992a) argues that any comprehensive theory of social action must face up.

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