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Recent research
Since 1995, my work has focused on the different manifestations
of contemporary risk consciousness. In 1995, I published a
study on the international contraceptive pill panic of 1995,
titled The International Impact of a Pill Panic. The
varied response to this panic in different societies led me
to ask questions about why some cultures have a more developed
consciousness of risk than others. Most of my work in recent
years has been devoted to an exploration of the cultural developments
that influence the construction of contemporary risk consciousness.
At present, I am working on two interrelated texts, Disasters,
Terrorism and the Growth of a Market in Fear and Rumours,
which discuss the cultural context for these developments.
Both of these works are oriented towards investigating the
interaction between risk consciousness and perceptions of
fear, trust relations and the ambiguities of contemporary
morality.
Although my work is strongly influenced by the insights of
social constructionist sociology, my past training in field
work and history bring to the study of social problems a historical
and empirical dimension. Elements of this approach are outlined
in Population and Development (1997), The Silent
War (1998) and in particular in The Culture of Fear
(1997 - new revised edition 2002). These three texts examine
the problematisation of different forms of social anxieties
(race, population and risk) and have provided me with an opportunity
to elaborate a sociological approach that synthesises the
methods of historical inquiry with the insights of sociological
investigation. Paranoid Parenting (March 2001, Allen
Lane/ Penguin) develops this approach in relation to social
anxieties about childhood. Since September 11, I have been
exploring the way that the reaction to this event provides
insights into the contemporary consciousness of risk and also
the impact of this episode has influenced the public perception
of risk. A preliminary study, Refusing
to be Terrorised; The Management of Risk After September 11,
published by Lloyds/Global Futures, attempts to develop an
analytic framework for making sense of this dreaded form of
risk.
Alongside my study of risk consciousness, I have explored
the cultural influences that have encouraged society to become
risk-averse and to feel a heightened sense of vulnerability.
The defining feature of people is increasingly represented
as their vulnerability and it is frequently suggested we live
in an age where people's mental health and emotions are permanently
under siege. The cultural influences that promote a new version
of diminished subjectivity constitutes the subject of my recently
published book, Therapy Culture - Cultivating Vulnerability
In An Anxious Age. Along with colleagues committed to
the more robust version of personhood associated with the
humanist tradition, I am engaged in a cultural critique of
attempts to medicalise people's experiences and behaviour.
Planned research
The main research problem underpinning my work is the relationship
between the diminishing of cultural authority and society's
capacity to manage risk and change. Cultural changes in the
conceptualisation of the authoritative and the factual in
social life have important implications for the perception
of risk and relations of trust. One of the ways in which the
weakening of cultural authority expresses itself is through
the rise in the status of competing sources of knowledge.
So-called knowledge intermediaries - alternative research
organisations, advocacy groups, NGOs, think tanks, internet-based
research groups - play an important role in influencing public
perception. As alternative sources of 'knowledge' and opinion,
intermediaries often compete with the official versions of
events. Often acting as 'risk-amplifiers' and sometimes as
'risk-minimisers', intermediaries make a significant contribution
to the construction of the public's consciousness of a specific
risk.
My aim is to initiate a major research project studying the
role of intermediaries in the constitution of alternative
knowledge in relation to the framing of disaster episodes.
To this end I will be examining the role and impact of such
intermediaries in the representation of risk related episodes
and controversies e.g. the foot and mouth out break, controversy
over MMR, the war on terrorism and the recent UK floods. Through
the investigation of a series of case studies we hope to formulate
an analytical framework for making sense of the relationship
between alternative knowledge intermediaries and official
authority in the cultural framing of risk. This research will
also contribute towards my long term objective, which is to
publish a theoretically informed study on the subject of the
sociology of rumour and dissident knowledge.
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