Download The social construction of the risk

Scientific Bulletin
Federal Agency for Nuclear Control
Brussels, 2004
The social construction of the risk
Dominique Van Nuffelen
Federal Agency for Nuclear Control – Belgium
Adviser to the General Management
Communication
« Philosophy is not bound to a pre-established position,
but is free to join in everywhere ».
L. JERPHAGNON ; J.-L. DUMAS, Histoire de la pensée,
Vol. III, Paris, Ed. Tallandier, 1990, p. 277.
In scientific literature, risk perception is mentioned more often than risk construction.
That is because, it has to be recognised, the psychometric model of the risks perceived is still
widely used nowadays. Yet this is contested. The two principal rivalling paradigms are the
cultural theory and the social amplification of the risk. But certain researchers are no longer
satisfied with the latter ones. Thus they continue their research, outside the established schools,
and sometimes, in the wake of a different research, they find new and unexpected tracks. « It is
because he does not find what he is looking for that the philosopher, in this very research, finds
what he was not looking for » (1).
The psychometric model has a tendency to content itself with the postulate according to
which the risks would only be psychologically perceived by isolated individuals independent of
all social or cultural form. In that case, it would suffice to correct misperceptions by means of
adapted information or educations, i.e. in conformity with the experts’ declarations. Only, these
last ones are not deprived of presuppositions and, present, in any case, besides uncertainties,
incoherences and contradictions. Under these conditions, it is difficult to define the standard
from which the perceptions will be evaluated… The two other models are, on the contrary,
based on the idea that individuals are never to be separated arbitrarily from their social and
cultural background. From this point of view there are no false or true individual perceptions
but social or cultural biases that condition them. Consequently, it is in factors external to the
individuals that the causes of their risk selections and definitions have to be found... In short,
everything takes place as if there were either a psychological determinism or a sociological
determinism, authorising the one as well as the other a reification and a metrology sufficient in
themselves in order to attain the epistemological status of the science of mankind.
It seems obvious enough that psychological as well as sociological factors play a part in
the way in which individuals apprehend risks. What seems less obvious, is the determining
nature of these factors: is man but the product of a – infrapsychic, psychic, social or cultural, or
1
whatever – system that moulds him ? Is man not rather an actor in the world in which he lives?
Does the risk impose itself upon him as a transcendental fact ? Or, is the risk a creation of man’s
thought ? And what about the problem of the Being ? Homo sapiens sapiens is he object or
subject ? Etc. These questions which revive an ancient philosophical disputatio, are not so easy
to solve and can hardly be disposed of just like that. However, we can already intuitively feel
that the most elegant hypothesis excludes the extremes: it is undoubtedly in the happy medium
between determinism and indeterminism that the key to the problem will be found…
And, likewise, the happy medium between objectivism and subjectivism. What is a
risk? What is a perceived risk ? And, subsequently, how can we make a choice? « The objective
thought ignores the subject of the perception. It is because it chooses a ready-made world as the
centre of all possible events, and treats perception as one of these events. E.g. the empiricist
philosopher considers a subject X engaged in perceiving and is trying to describe what
happens: there are sensations which are states or ways of being of the subject and, as such,
actual mental things. The perceiving subject is the scene of these things and the philosopher
describes the sensations and their substratum as one describes the fauna of a distant country, without noticing that he himself perceives, that he is a perceiving subject and that the
perception as he lives it contradicts everything he says about perception in general » (2).
What we call the risk – as what we call reality – may therefore not simply be reduced,
neither to an objectified subjective perception, nor to a holism open to objectification and empty
of all subjectivity. De facto, the notion of risk poses, in a blatant way, the problem of
knowledge. What radically modifies the angle of approach, because, indeed, « the theoretician
of knowledge then wonders how this elaboration which has led to knowledge, is performed,
through what prisms reality has passed before becoming an object to the subject who knows.
Finally he needs to convince himself of the fact that this has essentially to deal with his
representations, that there is no knowledge without the rendering of signs in order to interpret
reality and that, consequently, the production mechanism of these representations and of these
signs can only provide the keys to the comprehension of the capability of man to incorporate
what is not him » (3).
These representations and these signs do not come from nowhere, spontaneously
generated as it were, and, necessarily have to pre-exist before the subject. They originate from
inter-subjectivity, from relations woven between people, their artefacts, their history, their
culture. In other words, they are the product of a process of social construction of reality. « I
apprehend the reality of daily life as a well-ordered reality. Its phenomena are prearranged in
motives that seem to be independent of the perception I have of them and that impose
themselves upon this last one. The reality of daily life seems itself objectified, i.e. composed of a
well-ordered entity of objects that have been designated as such before I even appeared on the
scene […]. Subsequently, the reality of daily life presents itself to me as an inter-subjective
world, a world I share with the others » (4)… What brings me to formulate the following
working hypothesis: the social construction of the risk is the fact that all individuals taken in a
given field of the social space, by means of particular dispositions of the habitus that are
acquired, find themselves predisposed to conceive and treat the risks in one way rather than in
another.
The field is a place in which social stakes play a part, i.e. a structured space of social
positions. These are determined through the distribution of different species of the capital:
economical capital (material wealth), cultural capital (knowledge, competences), symbolic
capital (titles, diplomas) and social capital (relations, company). One species of capital may be
2
converted into another (e.g. educational qualifications into a lucrative job). That way, the
individuals of one field are trying to maintain or modify the distribution of the species of capital
which are valorised there. The field constitutes thus a market, i.e. a place of conflict for the
individuals who are part of it. Accordingly, the social stakes of an individual taken in a given
field consist in maintaining or in raising the position he occupies. As such, the social stakes of a
given field consist in maintaining or in raising its position with regard to other fields of the
social space… Every field has to be perceived as a dynamical situation « in which forces do not
manifest themselves but in relation with certain dispositions: this way the same practices may
receive opposite senses and values in different fields, in different states or opposite sectors of
the same field » (5).
Thus the fields are characterised by distinct forms of the capital engaged; i.e. distinctive
proprieties. The fact of belonging to one field supposes indeed the adhesion to all of the
presuppositions and fundamental beliefs that define it: the illusio. The individuals of one given
field share a certain number of constitutive presuppositions of the field. It is important that the
member of a given field gets caught up in the game, that he is convinced of the interest of the
game, that he believes in the game he is playing. It is important that he respects the rules of the
game, the norms that apply: the doxa. Entering a new field supposes thus abandoning the
presuppositions and the beliefs of the common sense on behalf of the adhesion to the illusio and
the doxa that constitute the new field. The consequence is that to every field, a proper way of
looking at the universe corresponds, creating the objects that are worth paying attention to (and
thus also those that are not) and the principles of comprehension and explanation that suit them.
Consequently, one and the same reality is the object of diverse social representations.
The habitus is the collection of dispositions that are acquired by the individual of a
given field, these dispositions being as much cognitive (opinions, schemes of thought, beliefs,
etc.) as practical (ways of speaking, walking, dressing, etc.). They make the individual act and
react in a certain way: they generate ways of thinking and of behaving that are regular, without
being consciously coordinated, or governed by any rule. The habitus thus gives the individual a
sense of the action and of the behaviour which are opportune in the course of his daily
existence. It orients his actions and his inclinations without strictly determining them. It gives
him the sense of the game, a sense of what is appropriate or not in certain circumstances, a
practical sense.
The habitus is progressively acquired in the course of various socialisations (primary
socialisations, secondary socialisations, resocialisations…). It is thus always transmitted out of
an existing social order and reflects the social conditions that have produced it. Interiorised by
the individual, it constitutes thus a structured structure. But within the same movement it is also
a structuring structure: indeed, as soon as the dispositions of the established order are
incorporated, the individual has the possibility to influence them, to transform them (however,
within certain limits determined by the field). The individual becomes thus an actor partaking in
the social construction of reality. The habitus « returns to the agent a generating and unifying,
constructing and classifying power, while recalling that this capacity of constructing the social
reality, which itself is socially constructed, is not that of a transcendental subject but that of a
socialised body investing in practice socially constructed organizing principles that are
acquired in the course of a situated and dated social experience » (6).
In the sociological existence, the risk is thus the affair of different fields, ranging from
the most to the least specialised. The risk has its experts, who naturally have their laymen.
Experts’ and laymen fields stake the habitus of the risk in a mutually exclusive way. The
3
experts’ fields are, essentially, scientific or technical fields, often interwoven with other
specialised fields (academic, political, economical, administrative, etc). The laymen fields
correspond exactly with all the rest of the social space. The first ones are the scholastic fields,
carriers of a risk experience; the second ones, the extra-scholastic fields, which do not carry
none, at least socially accepted by the first ones.
The scholastic field has this particularity that it maintains an almost impermeable
frontier between itself and every one of the extra-scholastic fields. The demarcation line which
separates experts and laymen is typically the result of the distinctive relations that a scholastic
field maintains with an extra-scholastic field, in other words: what distinguishes a specific
habitus, i.e. a learned habitus, from a non-specific habitus, i.e. the common sense. The scholastic
fields stake specific habitus: in order to be recognised as a scientific engaged in science, an
artist engaged in art, a philosopher engaged in philosophy or a religious engaged in religion,
what do I know, and particularly so that this recognition is granted by the respective peers of
each of the considered fields; it is essential that the recipient obeys to the norms imposed and
established in and by the considered field. If it were different, it would never be recognised as a
legitimate member.
The representations of the different fields are, at least partially, irreducible one by the
other. The social space is characterised by mutual exclusion, exclusion on the principle of
distinctive relations in which the fields are mutually engaged and which are maintained through
their respective habitus. There where this exclusion is most clearly manifested, is in the
relations between scholastic fields and extra-scholastic fields, by definition mutually exclusive
one of the other. Hence the inevitable “communication problems” between experts and laymen.
I might even be inclined to assume that the norm, between two fields which are very distant
from one-another, is incommunicability. The more a scholastic field considers a field which is
far removed from it, the more there is scholastic distortion. Every time an expert enters into a
relation with a layman, he is not so much confronted with a different “level of knowledge” than
he is with a different way of constructing reality: it is a strange habitus presenting itself to him.
The individual constructs the risk socially depending on the habitus which predisposes
him and which is oriented by the field in which he is incorporated. Consequently, the way in
which an individual apprehends a risk depends on his position within the field to which he
belongs and the particular habitus of that field. The selection, the definition and the hierarchical
organisation of the risks suppose, within a given field, that the selection, definition and
hierarchical classification criteria are defined. These are given by the habitus characteristic to
the considered field. This explains that the information which is diffused by a given field
encounters stronger or less stronger resistance in other fields: if the preventive information often
fails to modify the practices of the individuals, it is because it misses to encounter the
dispositions of the habitus of the social target groups.
As long as the practices remain the product of a mutually compatible habitus and field,
there are not too many problems: they are in conformity, to a variable degree, with the
expectations. But this conformity is violated as soon as the present fields carry incompatible
habitus. The cognitive and practical dispositions of the habitus originate from the social
conditions inherent to the different social groups. The social classes situated at the bottom of the
social stratification are very often those who are most exposed to risks but at the same time, also
those least armed to face them. In those classes, one simply has not got the fortune of being able
to be preoccupied with the risks preoccupying the superior classes.
4
The difficulty of risk communication consists thus in adopting the habitus of the
profane. This supposes, actually, a constant effort of reflexivity. Reflexivity is looking at one’s
own ways of observation, theoretical as well as methodological, encompassing within one and
the same dialectical correlation, the observed object and the observing subject. Particularly in
social sciences, reflexivity constitutes a permanent necessity. To investigate the Other supposes
a will to communicate, hence ethics, in other words a threshold for scientific investigation.
Because « being in direct correlation with others, is not thematising others and considering
them in the same way as one considers an object […]. In reality the fact of being is what is most
private[…]. Thus, solitude appears here as the isolation marking the event itself of being. The
social is beyond the ontology » (7).
The anthropological observation, placing the observer in relation with the object, is thus
exactly the opposite of the bureaucratic project consisting in aligning anonymous statistics
mechanically drawn from questionnaires addressed to “average people”. The opinion poll is,
most often indeed, only the projection in an extra-scholastic field of the scholastic habitus of the
researcher: « with this I am saying that it is not the thought of others that is inaccessible to those
who ask them questions, but that it is often the questions that impose their language and their
economy to the answers » (8).
An anthropology of risk is in reality only possible if the scientific methodology of the
researcher, by a play of mirrors, is constantly reflected by a philosophical methodology
interpreting and reflecting his own image. Irreducible to the reductionisms of the psychometric
perception model, of the cultural theory and the social amplification, it constantly questions the
theory of knowledge and ethics. It makes man at the same time a constructed object and a
constructing subject. The risk is apprehended by man through the rendering of a social
construction: man partakes of the social construction of the risk while at the same time he
partakes in this construction. « All of our knowledge of the world, whether expressed in
everyday thought or in scientific thought, comprises constructions […]. This does not mean
that, in daily life, or in science, we are incapable of seizing the reality of the world. This simply
means that we only seize certain aspects of it, particularly those which are relevant to us, either
to manage our own life, or from the point of view of the corpus of rules of thinking procedures
which are accepted as they are and named scientific method » (9).
References
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
AUBENQUE, P., Le problème de l’Etre chez Aristote, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1966, p. 508.
MERLEAU-PONTY, M., Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Editions Gallimard, 1945, p. 240.
BESNIER, J.-M., Les théories de la connaissance, Paris, Flammarion, 1996, p. 15.
BERGER, P. ; LUCKMANN, T., La construction sociale de la réalité, Paris, Méridiens Klincksieck, 1986, pp.
35-36.
BOURDIEU, P., La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1979, p. 103.
BOURDIEU, P., Méditations pascaliennes, Paris, Seuil, 1997, p. 164.
LEVINAS, E., Ethique et infini, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1982, p. 50.
AUGE, M., Le sens des autres. Actualité de l’anthropologie, Paris, Fayard, 1994, p. 28.
SCHUTZ, A., Le chercheur et le quotidien. Phénoménologie des sciences sociales, Paris, Méridiens
Klincksieck, 1987, pp. 9-10.
5