School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemEditorial: The Sociology of Vaccines.(F1000 Research Ltd, 2022)In this editorial, we identify the key questions requiring further exploration in the sociology of vaccines. In doing so, we discuss the socio-structural forces shaping views towards knowledge about and access to vaccination, trust in vaccines and regulators/decision makers, the associated problem of financial interests in vaccine development and regulation, and global vaccine inequalities. Across the breadth of these issues, we additionally identify a range of theoretical perspectives and conceptual directions that sociologists might utilise when producing innovative empirical, methodological and theoretical research on vaccination relating to risk and uncertainty, conflicts of interest, power and inequality.
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ItemRisk, Power, and Inequality in the 21st Century(Wiley, 2018-12-01)
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ItemConclusions: Towards a sociology of pandemics and beyond(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2021-07)This conclusion revisits the COVID-19 pandemic from the broader perspective of a changing global world. It raises questions regarding the opportunities for global learning under conditions of global divisions and competition and includes learning from the Other, governing within a changing public sphere, and challenging national cultural practices. Moreover, it exemplifies how the society-nature-technology nexus has become crucial for understanding and reconstructing the dynamics of the coronavirus crisis such as the assemblages of geographical conditions, technological means and the governing of ignorance, the occurrence of hotspots as well as living under lockdown conditions. It finishes with some preliminary suggestions how reoccurring pandemics might contribute to long-term changes in human attitudes and behaviour towards the environment and a technologically shaped lifeworld.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe meaning of risk-taking - key concepts and dimensions(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2019-01-02)Dealing with and taking risks are central issues of current societies which had been characterised by heightened debates and conflicts about risk (Beck, Giddens). Even though there is good knowledge available, policies and strategies to reduce people’s risk-taking are often less successful than expected. Experts are puzzled about common people not following good advice presuming people’s lack of understanding. While this might be true in many cases a growing body of research shows, rather than being merely ignorant or misinformed, people often have good knowledge when taking risks. A growing body of research provides knowledge about the complexities, dynamics and contradictions of people’s risk-taking. However, there have been little attempts to systematise this body of knowledge. This article contributes to such an enterprise. It suggests distinguishing between different motives for risk-taking, different levels of control and a number of ways how reflexivity about risk is rooted in the social realm. It also explores how risk-taking is part of developing and protecting a valued identity. The article concludes, across different domains there is good evidence for how structural and cultural forces combine and shape risk-taking while people take risks to develop a valued identity and to protect it. Advancing expert’s understanding of risk-taking and change people’s risk-taking require considering and approaching the larger social contexts and individual risk practices in everyday life.
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ItemNo Preview Available"In-between' and other reasonable ways to deal with risk and uncertainty: A review article(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2016-10-01)How people deal with risk and uncertainty has fuelled public and academic debate in recent decades. Researchers have shown that common distinctions between rational and 'irrational' strategies underestimate the complexity of how people approach an uncertain future. I suggested in 2008 that strategies in-between do not follow standards of instrumental rationality nor they are 'irrational' but follow their own logic which works well under particular circumstances. Strategies such as trust, intuition and emotion are an important part of the mix when people deal with risk and uncertainty. In this article, I develop my original argument. It explores in-between strategies to deal with possible undesired outcomes of decisions. I examine 'non-rational strategies' and in particular the notions of active, passive and reflexive hope. Furthermore, I argue that my original typology should be seen as a triangular of reasonable strategies which work well under specific circumstances. Finally, I highlight a number of different ways in which these strategies combine.
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ItemLiving in the Anthropocene: towards a risk-taking society(Australian National University, 2016-10-01)Social debates about nature are changing. Understandings of nature as largely independent of human activity and available for exploitation have given way to concerns about its protection, and have further shifted towards strategies focused on actively managing and producing nature. This article aims to make sense of this shift using a risk framework. Originating from the modern notion of risk that amalgamates risk minimisation and risk-taking, it suggests that environmental decision-making is shifting from an emphasis on the prevention and minimisation of risk towards a focus on risk management and risk-taking. The article revisits debates about the Anthropocene as well as trends in environmental sociology and developments in economics to illustrate how the notion of ‘nature’ has changed. It reflects a growing trend of debates considering humans’ responsibility for their natural environment, as well as the need to shape it actively and see it as a problem of market design. In conclusion, it argues that these changes characterise the sprawl of social risk-taking into the natural environment. Still considered complex, dynamic and difficult to understand, the notion of ‘nature’ as increasingly shaped and produced by humanity is pushing humanity into an age of environmental risk-taking or a risk-taking society.
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ItemUnderstanding risk and old age in western society(Emerald, 2007-03-06)Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of “risk” in relation to old age. Ideas are explored linked with what has been termed as the “risk society” and the extent to which it has become part of the organizing ground of how we define and organise the “personal” and “social spaces” in which to grow old in western modernity. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical paper in three parts, including: an introduction to the relevance and breakdown in trust relations; a mapping out of the key assumptions of risk society; and examples drawn from social welfarism to consolidate an understanding of the contructedness of old age in late modernity. Findings Part of this reflexive response to understanding risk and old age is the importance of recognising self‐subjective dimensions of emotions, trust, biographical knowledge and resources. Originality/value This discussion provides a critical narrative to the importance and interrelatedness of the sociology of risk to the study of old age.
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ItemGender Inequalities and Risk During the 'Rush Hour' of Life(Cambridge University Press, 2013)Increasingly, social policies combine to intensify old risks and create new social risks with unequal consequences for men and women. These risks include those created by changing normative expectations and the resulting tensions between social policy, paid employment and family life. Policy reliance on highly aggregated standardised outcome data and generalised models of autonomous rational action result in policies that lack an understanding of the rationales that structure everyday life. Drawing on two Australian studies, we illustrate the importance of attending to the intersections and collisions of social change and normative policy frameworks from the perspective of individual ‘lived lives’.
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ItemBiography, Risk and Uncertainty—Is there Common Ground for Biographical Research and Risk Research?(Freie Universität Berlin, 2010)
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