Infrastructures of risk: a mapping approach towards controversies on risks

Authors: Gerald Beck; Cordula Kropp

Abstract
Anyone concerned about food risks related, for example, to acrylamide,
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or food supplements is confronted
with vast and complex landscapes of political debates, with various
uncertainties, contested responsibilities, competing knowledge and
ambivalent value-making. In risk assessment procedures, these fluid
complexities often get simplified to come to any evaluation at all. A
retrospective review of risk scandals, however, highlights that most
risks arise just from those connections in production, usage and
disposal which remained unseen or were even blinded out during previous
risk assessment. To better deal with these ‘unknown unknowns’, society
at large and decision-makers in particular need not only new strategies
to avoid manufactured uncertainties but also more comprehensive
knowledge tools and concepts to fully explore potential sources and
connections of hazards, risks and uncertainties. Facing this challenge
of risk governance, the paper discusses the potential of the
visualisation (‘mapping’) of risk controversies and introduces the
concept of ‘risk infrastructures’. The aim is to equip stakeholders,
laypersons and decision-makers with risk mappings which make visible how
competing knowledge claims, protagonists, institutional settings, facts
and values are related to each other. It will do so in referring to a
prototype software application of such a ‘re-assembling strategy’
(Actor-Network-Theory (ANT)) called ‘Risk Cartography’.

Keywords: risks; visualisation; mapping; risk governance; ANT

Beck, G.& Kropp, C., 2011. Infrastructures of risk: a mapping approach towards controversies on risks. Journal of Risk Research. Volume 14, Issue 1 January 2011 , pages 1 – 16. Available at: http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/13669877.2010.505348