Risks and Catastrophes in Society, Governance and Law: Developing an Epistemological Framework
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Sari Kouvo
Department of Law, Gothenburg University Sweden
sari.kouvo@law.gu.se
Author(s):
The paper “Risks and Catastrophes in Society, Governance and Law: Developing an Epistemological Framework” makes use of Ulrich Beck’s theories about the world risk society for the study of contemporary crisis-prone societies and their governance. According to Beck, there is no progress without negative consequences in a risk society, and we are getting increasingly used to less than optimal tradeoffs: freedom is traded for security, equality is traded for prosperity (for some) and so forth. In the current era of world risk societies, most risks are in one way of the other global and man-made. While the risks are real, they are also discursive. That is, because of the complexity and scope of contemporary risks (e.g., climate change and terrorism), their governance, including through law, will inevitably always include elements of politization and opportunism. Beck also argues that social sciences – his own discipline – are not adapted to researching world risk societies, as social sciences remains locked in national frames and/or fail to grasp the complexity of current risks, catastrophes and their impact on all levels of society.
Beck’s theorising about the world risk society has been extensively debated and used in social sciences at large, but less so by scholars focusing on management of threats, insecurities and crisis. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of making use of Beck’s “world risk society” lens for studying governance, including legal governance of contemporary crisis. The argument put forth in the paper is that the world risk society lens is particularly useful for researching and explaining how societies, institutions, governance and law change before, during and after crisis. The world risk society approach helps us move beyond distinctions between normal/exceptional, before/after, national/global and focus on the incremental changes in society, governance and law that crisis results in.
This paper is prepared within the framework of the research group Law, Society and the Extraordinary at the Department of Law at Gothenburg University. The research is done within a MSB-financed project on crisis and law. It is ideally presented within the panel on epistemology and crisis, alternatively within the panel on law and crisis.
On the Epistemology of Crises and Disasters