UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN IS DISASTER RISK ‘SCIENCE’ PERFORMATIVE? ETHNOGRAPHIC THOUGHTS ON CALCULATED UNCERTAINTIES Kristoffer Albris PhD Fellow Department.

Præsentationer af emnet: "UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN IS DISASTER RISK ‘SCIENCE’ PERFORMATIVE? ETHNOGRAPHIC THOUGHTS ON CALCULATED UNCERTAINTIES Kristoffer Albris PhD Fellow Department."— Præsentationens transcript:

1 UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN IS DISASTER RISK ‘SCIENCE’ PERFORMATIVE? ETHNOGRAPHIC THOUGHTS ON CALCULATED UNCERTAINTIES Kristoffer Albris PhD Fellow Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Changing Disasters Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research Cultures of Disaster, Oslo, November 6 th, 2013.

2 DISASTER RISK AS THE ANALYTICAL OBJECT DISASTER PHENOMENA The process of some event happening defined as a disaster, given some destructive and all encompassing consequences. DISASTER RISK The calculation and assessment of someone or something being in harms way

3 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod RISKS ARE POSTERIORI KNOWN DANGERS “The optimism led to an underestimation of the real risks and therefore to a low 'payment' to deal with what would later prove to be a great risk to many types of assets. The crisis, and especially the extent of its impact, was thus generally not foreseen by the relevant authorities and central banks, either in Denmark or abroad.” Danish Newspaper, Politiken, September 18th 2013.

4 OVERVIEW 1.Approaches to understanding risk as an object of analysis 2.Performativity theory in economic sociology 3.Fieldwork and empirical data 4.Ethnographic examples on the making of disaster risks 5.Conclusions for discussion

5 RISKS AND THE POST-POLITICAL The obsession with risk is one of the defining characteristics of late modernity (Giddens 1991; Beck 1986) Steve Rayner and Michael Power: - Risk thinking has emerged as a vital concept in public discourse at some point in the 1970’s. - A political discourse of values is pushed aside by a discourse of valuation. The business of politics and governing is reduced to one of risk management. - Professional expert knowledge has increasingly become the instrument that permits governments to impede values and judgements on citizens in the name of scientific risk management.

6 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod THE SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION OF RISK Understanding how perceptions of risk exist in society requires an understanding of the complex processes by which they travel and change between contexts. Pidgeon et al. (1988) (and others) have developed intrinsic models that illustrate how risk perceptions are constructed and amplified by publics. However, they downplay the importance of expert risk assessments, as not contributing significantly to public risk perceptions.

7 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod PROMOTING RISK Robert A. Stallings, 1995. Analysis of the California earthquake threat. Turning from the earthquake to the hazard as an analytical object. How does a hazard become determined and promoted as a risk? How is the risk of earthquakes circulated and amplified as a social problem between experts, authorities and the public?

8 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod POSTMODERN RISK ANALYSIS Roy Rappaport (1988): ”There is no such thing as a pure, objective assessment [of risk], that is, one free of ”social amplification” (…)” ”Social amplification does not commence with the transmission of alarm signals concerning risks already percieved but with the recognition of the dangers in the first place.”

9 PERFORMATIVITY IN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY

10 THE PERFORMATIVITY OF ECONOMICS Economics is itself a part of the infrastructure of modern financial markets. Economics, taken in the broad sense of the term, performs, shapes and formats the economy. Here economics refers to any activity with the purpose of understanding, analyzing and equipping markets. Distinction here must necessarily be drawn between academic forms of economic intellectual activity and non-academic. But the point is that even academic economics cannot free itself of the performative impact on financial systems.

11 MODELS AS ENGINES, NOT CAMERAS ”Financial economics did more than analyze markets; it altered them. It was an engine in a sense not intended by Friedman: an active force transforming its environment, not a camera passively recording it.” (Mackenzie 2006: 12). This approach marks a shift away from understanding economics as aexternal field of knowledge that merely describe markets. Instead, economics is itself a part of the infrastructures of markets, and co-shape the cultural, social and technical conditions that make them possible.

12 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod Risk thinking has indeed become ubiquotoues. But this does not mean the end of politics. The practice of making risk assessments is itself a political activity. It relies on choices, compromises and judgements by individuals. The risk management of everything Yes but only if we do not distinguish between expert risk assessment and ”social” assessments The recognition of a danger is the first step towards the making of risks The social amplification of risk Shift to see the disaster hazard and risk as a social problem ipso facto. But only if we do not use the term ‘social’ to demarcate a distinct domain of life (i.e. Latour 2005). To see a risk as a social problem, does not explain how it affects people. The promotion of risk Disaster risk science does indeed perform (i.e. shape and drive forward) the very objects and processes they purport to assess and describe. But, different from economic science, the performativity of disaster risk science lies not in the simultaneously constitution of its object and description, but on the idea that impact and frequency of disasters can be calculated scientifically. Performativity theory

13 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod THE MAKING OF RISKS I would argue, that we need a better understanding of how (disaster) risks are actually assessed, calculated, formulated, processed – ultimately ”made” – by experts. To explore this, we need to follow disaster risk modellers and mappers closely to understand the choices they make whilst performing this work. Then we can proceed to question what the making of risks does, after they have been construed.

14 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod FIELDWORK AND EMPIRICAL BACKGROUND Fieldwork in Fiji, June to February 2011. Focus on regional organizations and institutions who are involved with different aspects of disaster risk analysis and risk reduction projects. Question: what conditions are necessary for the development of manageable futures in relation to disasters in the Pacific by experts?

15 Tekst starter uden punktopstilling For at få punkt- opstilling på teksten, brug forøg indrykning For at få venstre- stillet tekst uden punktopstilling, brug formindsk indrykning Overskrift her For at ændre ”Enhedens navn” og ”Sted og dato”: Klik i menulinjen, vælg ”Indsæt” > ”Sidehoved / Sidefod”. Indføj ”Sted og dato” i feltet for dato og ”Enhedens navn” i Sidefod PREDICTION DEVICES

16 ”A MAP TALKS” “Like a picture says more than a thousand words, so a map says more than all the data in the world. People in the higher parts of the government who are not occupied with the technology, they wont understand all the background research and the data collection. It is better just to give them a map. If you give them 4000 pages, they don’t care. A map is not just a tool, its also a symbolic marketing function to sell your research. That is why GIS is coming so fast on all around the world right now. Politicians want the simple things, and that is what a map is. If you can tell them what and where is going to get flooded, when and how much, through a map, then that’s what they want.” Flood modeling specialist, Suva, Fiji.

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18 ANTICIPATION ECONOMICS ”The general approach is science first, then economics. So if you do science, you can understand the implications of an event. Lots of scientists are really nice, but they can be extremely boring, and they don’t often see that decision makers worry about money first and foremost.” (Natural Resource Management Economist)

19 RISK AWARENESS

20 THE ONTOLOGY OF RISK Disaster Risk Expertise defines and quantifyes the specific risks of natural hazards in relation to humans, technology infrastructure and ecological systems: who and what is vulnerable, resilient, exposed? ULTIMATELY, WHO IS AT RISK AND TO WHICH EXTENT? Risks in this sense are not ‘out there’ as a stable ontological category. Rather, specific risks are formed out of detailed calculations and probability assessments. Risks are always percieved.

21 CONCLUSIONS FOR DISCUSSION Disaster risk science not only models and describes the probability of dangers. They actively drive the constitution óf those dangers forward by casting them as risks, Risks are created, extended and amplified, ipso facto, through the process of analyzing them. If disaster risk assessments were able to account for a complete and accurate picture of the frequency, impact and extent of natural hazards, then it would be a different story. As such, depictions, models and damage assessments of disaster risks, not only act as cameras that describe what is going on. They constitute them by performing them. Furthermore, they spread out into society through risk awareness programmes.