Fears, unease and threat/Risk society/Risk management and an assessment of vulnerabilities of different social groups and acceptance and resistance to exceptionalism

Objectives

To ascertain the state-of-the art regarding social science knowledge on the combined effect of uncertainties and insecurities in different European societies and in different spheres of activity and perception (ranging from employment to crime and from migration to war).

To develop a conceptual framework in order to address in the main research phase the production and influence of insecurities in these spheres, in different social, economic, political and cultural settings.

To launch the main phase research on the relative influence of different fears, uncertainties, and insecurities; in particular to set sound foundations for the main phase, which will explore the dynamic combination and reciprocal accentuation of seemingly unrelated insecurities.

To present well-informed hypotheses on the highly complex and crucial link between experience in the risk society and contemporary shifts in approaching security and liberty under the influence of that experience.

To take full account of research conducted in other Workpackages of this Integrated Project when achieving the previous objective and contribute data and analysis to the observatory.

Description of work

a) Inquiry: The main role of this WP is that of a two-way interface between work in the IP and the more general problématiques of socio-economic change and wide-spread social insecurity. The WP will use analysis of empirical data and literature, produced both within and outside the IP, in order to draw the link between the broader socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural context, in which research that is conducted in all other workpackages takes its full meaning. The overarching question for this phase will be to bring to light the link that governs the awareness of the following two seemingly unrelated dangers :
 the dangers that increasingly make the relation between security and liberty appear to European citizens as a trade-off, i.e. as two mutually exclusive conditions of being ;
 the biographical dangers that destabilise and stress contemporary European societies. This will be done via the extensive analysis of data and literature, as described below.

b) Analysis: In the first 18 months, the work will focus on analysing existing bibliography and empirical research in order to introduce what may justifiably be seen as a highly original perspective; this work will fully exploit qualitative and quantitative work conducted under the UIE project (HPSE- 1999-00006) but will not of course be limited to the exploitation of that work. A continuous model of analysis will at the same time process existing data and literature outside the IP, and synthesise methods, data and findings form the IP’s other WPs in order to set the foundation for the seamless analytical and conceptual framework between work conducted within the IP and external work in contiguous or relevant areas. A working paper will be circulated among the IP participants in order to propose the basic categories of that framework and to get broad initial feedback on it. This process will continue with cycles of «successive approximation» until the construction of an adequate interface that does justice to existing data, chosen methods and broader debates in which the IP’s work belongs.

Access to qualitative and quantitative data will be obtained through large databases (e.g. the UK Data Archive, NOS, GESIS, etc.) and a continuous feedback link with the other partners will supply both data and analytical input. Extensive communication needs, to obtain high added value input from colleagues within and outside the IP, will be addressed by a combination of means ranging from phone and video conferencing to exchange visits. The analysis will lead to a basic proposition on the relative importance of different types of fears and concerns and on the impact that major fears could have on the redefinition of liberty in terms of safety, and, accordingly, in terms of controlling and neutralising suspected dangerous Others.

c)Conceptual Premises: Despite the undoubted influence of the ‘risk society’ thesis, there has been no published research on the interconnection of different perceptions of danger. However, insecurity is an important theme not because there are more dangers today than they used to be in the past, but because fear and preoccupation currently govern the spectrum of contemporary public conscience. In the risk society, the central question to ask is how different preoccupations come together in the mind of an increasingly isolated individual, and what effect these preoccupations have on each other and on their bearer. Albeit complex, this question is indispensable in order to comprehend phenomena that are related to the management of various threats, and to the understanding of individual and collective well-being in terms of building effective defences against those threats.

It is a major objective of this Integrated Project to critically approach established representations of the relation between security and liberty as a trade-off and to explore ‘exceptionalism’ and its justifications. Public sympathy, acceptance, or tolerance towards these polarised representations is essentially embedded in familiar feelings of vulnerability and the projections of these feelings onto ‘tough’ public policies, mainly against dangerous Others. This means that it is impossible to fully come to terms with the current predilection for the notions of threat, crisis, and emergency, if we do not understand why the public is largely willing to take these notions for granted. In this context, the reasonable methodological and theoretical step to take is to explore how these notions resonate in other parts of public risk awareness and how they emerge reinforced from this resonance.

The examination and analysis of empirical data, and literature (existing and originally produced by the IP) will support a critical theoretical framework on the link between the combined effect of risk awareness and the following two important tendencies: i) the very intensive competition between individuals in many fields at the same time (ranging from professional satisfaction to life-style choices); ii) the galloping regression into the private and intimate sphere.

d)Perspective and Future Inquiries: The medium term perspective of the work is to integrate the problématiques and the early findings of other WPs via the work conducted in this WP into a consistent conceptual framework. The purpose of that framework will be to produce plausible, sophisticated and critical hypotheses on the link between generalised vulnerability and the primarily defensive understanding of individual liberties. The importance of these hypotheses will be to launch the main research phase, which will explore three clear and very significant questions. Namely, is the exceptionalism that traverses current European perceptions and policies on individual liberties an effect of the proliferation of uncertainty and insecurity in most areas of human activity? If this is so, what remedies can be found to reverse this trend and return us to a positive, aspirational and inclusive perception and implementation of individual and social freedom? What is and what should be the role of political governance in promoting this reversal?

e) Staff: The entire work will be either personally conducted or closely supervised by Michalis Lianos, the director of CEIST. Supervised work will be conducted on condition of recruiting one or more research assistants who can adequately undertake work of high empirical expertise, intense theoretical complexity and broad inter-cultural research communication.