Risk Discourse And Responsibility

The widespread view that risk is highly relevant in late modern societies has also meant that the very study of risk has become central in many areas of social studies. The key aim of this book is to establish Risk Discourse as a field of research of its own in language studies. Risk Discourse is introduced as a field that not only targets elements of risk, safety and security, but crucially requires aspects of responsibility for in-depth analysis. Providing a rich illustration of ways in which risk and responsibility can serve as analytical tools, the volume brings together scholars from different disciplines within the study of language. An Introduction and an Epilogue highlight the intricate relationship between risk and responsibility. Part 1 deals with expert and lay perspectives on risk; Part 2 with emerging genres for risk discourse; Part 3 with risk and technology and Part 4 with ways of managing risk. The topics covered – such as COVID-19, nuclear energy, machine translation, terrorism – are socially pertinent and timely.

This book explores ethical interpretations of biotechnology and examines whether sufficient consensus exists or is emerging to enable this technology to occupy a stable role in the techno-economic, social, and cultural order. It employs a wide range of social theories to evaluate risks.

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributors of this book present conversations between leading scholars from Israel and Germany based on an empirical bioethical perspective, analyses about the reshaping of 'life' by biomedicine, and philosophical reflections on socio-cultural claims and epistemic horizons of responsibilities. Practices and discussions of reproductive medicine transform the concepts of responsibility and irresponsibility.

This volume brings together analyses of governmentality from different angles in order to explore the multiple forms, practices, modes, programmes and rationalities of the ‘conduct of conduct’ today. Following the publication of Foucault’s annual lecture series at the Collège de France, scholars have attempted to critically rethink Foucault’s ideas. This is the first volume that attempts to revisit and expand studies of governmentality by connecting it to the theories and methods of discourse analysis. The volume draws on different theoretical stances and methodological approaches including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, dialogic analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach, corpus analysis and French discourse analysis. The volume is relevant to students and scholars in the fields of critical discourse studies, conversation analysis, international studies, environmental studies, political science, public policy and organisation studies.

We live in world increasingly shaped by risk, a fact underscored by recent events in the financial markets, science and technology, environmental policy and biosecurity, law enforcement and criminal justice. Risk assessment has become a central concern of governments, organisations and the professions, and the communication of risk is a crucial part of professional work. Exploring how risk is discursively constructed across these domains is therefore central to our understanding of how professional practice affects people's lives. Communicating Risk takes up this challenge, with contributions from leading researchers and practitioners that examine key issues of risk communication across diverse professional domains.

In this reappraisal of public health and health promotion in contemporary societies, Deborah Lupton explores public health and health promotion using contemporary sociocultural and political theory, particularly that building on Foucault's writings on subjectivity, embodiment and power relations. The author examines the implications of the new social theories for the study of health promotion and health communication to analyze the symbolic nature of public health practices, and explores their underlying meanings and assumptions.

This book explores the connections between risk and responsibilisation in official communication to the public about the global risks of the pandemic and climate change. Our media spheres in the 2020s have been saturated with information about what we should or should not be doing to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Although the ability of risk communication to ‘responsibilise’ the public is central to its functioning in our societies, this aspect has so far been under-investigated in academia. To address this lacuna, Antoinette Fage-Butler develops a discursive approach to risk communication that focuses on the values that are communicated in risk messages. Examples of official risk communication about the pandemic and climate change from national and transnational contexts are analysed and compared, leading to new empirical findings and theoretical insights about the nature of risk and responsibilisation. Fage-Butler also builds on recent stirrings in the evolving field of risk communication that highlight the importance of cultural and value-related factors. Overall, this book will equip researchers with an approach to risk communication that reflects the complexity of today’s global risk challenges. Risk and Responsibilisation in Public Communication will be of great interest to students and scholars of risk communication, public health and environmental studies.

By closely analysing the contributions of such theorists as More, Hobbes, Vico, Montesquieu, Ferguson and Millar to the emergence of sociology in its original form, Piet Strydom follows the discursive construction of sociology in the context of the society-wide early modern practical discourse about violence and rights. Parallels with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourse on poverty and justice and the contemporary discourse of risk and responsibility allow the author to reflect not only on the generation of knowledge through discourse but also on the role that sociology itself plays in this process.