WP 11 : Fears, unease and threat/risk society/risk management and an assessment of vulnerabilities of different social groups and acceptance and resistance to exceptionalism

This section's articles

• Report of «Insecurity & Otherness» Conference

  11 June 2007, by Lianos Michalis
  Keynote lectures were given by Robert Castel, Jock Young and Jacques Donzelot. The interdisciplinary approach of the conference and the diversity of a dense programme covered a very wide spectrum on the critique of the hegemony of the link that is being made between insecurity and otherness. Critiques of sociotechnological dispositifs, international institutional cooperation, public opinion, media representations, models of governance were combined with socioeconomic critiques of late modernity as an inherently insecure condition.

• Conference : Insecurity and Otherness

  9 May 2007, by Lianos Michalis
  This is an international conference that will focus on the hegemony of insecurity in the multicultural society. Although most official institutional discourses will strongly reject any allegation linking insecurity to otherness, contemporary dangerisation culture persistently refers to the negative influence and potential of several religious and cultural minorities. Fear of crime and fear of unemployment lead a set of less conspicuous but often stronger concerns, such as the fear of specific minorities «swamping» schools and neighbourhoods or the dystopia of outright demographic, religious and cultural ascendancy over national societies.

• Converging institutions. Shaping the relationships between nanotechnologies, economy and society

  22 January 2007, by Ott Ingrid, Papilloud Christian
  This paper develops the concept of converging institutions and applies it to nanotechnologies. Starting point are economic and sociological perspectives. We focus on the entire innovation process of nanotechnologies beginning with research and development over diffusion via downstream sectors until implementation in final goods. The concept is applied to the nano–cluster in the metropolitan region of Grenoble and a possible converging institution is identified.

• Bibliographie sur la vulnérabilité sociale et le risque

  18 January 2006, by Langlois Annie
  Une recension d’ouvrages, d’articles de revues sur le thème de la vulnérabilité sociale et du risque

• Le profilage génétique des populations dans les domaines sanitaires et policiers : étude sur la constitution des banques de données génétiques.

  19 April 2005, by Guerinet Pierre, Klein Floréal
  Depuis une dizaine d’années, nous assistons à l’extension du domaine d’application de la génétique dans les pratiques sociales. Les recherches en génétique humaine d’abord réservées aux maladies dites héréditaires se voient aujourd’hui généralisées à un nombre toujours croissant de maladies courantes (la recherche sur les prédispositions génétiques au diabète, à l’asthme, à l’obésité, la schizophrénie...). De même le fichage policier initialement crée pour enregistrer les profils génétiques des délinquants sexuels est progressivement étendu à l’ensemble des populations criminelles ainsi qu’aux simples suspects et aux victimes.

• Security, Liberty and Vulnerability in The Risk Society: a Cross-Cutting Work Package

  9 March 2005, by Lianos Michalis
  This is the 11th Work Package of the «Challenge» Integrated Project and has two major specificities. Firstly, it is exclusively directed towards social theory and, in particular, towards building a conceptual framework that converses with the sociotheoretical enquiries that underlie the project. Secondly, it has a ‘phase difference’ with project work as it seeks to take into consideration the findings of other Work Packages (WPs). The main ambition of the work to be carried out is to explore 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). This is largely uncharted territory for the social sciences in general and sociology in particular and involves drawing 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.

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

  30 November 2004, by Lianos Michalis
  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