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Tacit knowledge and risk perceptions: Tullow Oil and lay publics in Ghana's offshore oil region
Abstract
This study examines how local residents make sense of offshore oil production risks in Ghana's nascent petroleum industry. From a naturalistic-interpretive perspective, it is primarily based on in-depth interviews with community residents: 8 opinion leaders, 15 residents, and 1 journalist. Residents associate Tullow's oil activities with health concerns (e.g. conjunctivitis), environmental challenges (e.g. the emergence of decomposed seaweeds along the shore), and socio-economic concerns (e.g. loss of livelihoods, decline in fish harvest, and increased rent and cost of living). Focusing on how the local, practical knowledge of interviewees manifest in their sense of offshore oil risks, the study identifies two strategies-scapegoating and tacit knowing-underlying how residents construe offshore oil risks and benefits. Beyond its theoretical contribution to the social construction of risk process, the study illustrates the challenge the expert-lay publics dichotomy poses (and the potential bridging this dichotomy has) for corporate and societal risk management.
... Such discourse is undemocratic and favors technical as opposed to lay knowledge, placing experts and expert knowledge in "pole position to define agendas and impose binding premises a priori on [sustainability] discourse" (Ofori-Parku, 2018, p. 199). In line with the view that corporations serve the interests of whoever controls them (Dugger, 1989), whoever controls the meaning of sustainability and risks also controls the rational solution to the problem at hand (Ofori-Parku, 2018;Slovic, 1999). This argument that a priori definitions and decisions inform the public engagement and sustainability processes is akin to Foucault's notion of subjectification applied to corporate practices (see Banerjee, 2008). ...
... A key attribute of discourse analysis lies in its linking of texts to the context from which they emanate and are used (Mautner, 2009). In the Ghanaian context, local residents have been vocal about ecological and livelihood risks associated with offshore oil activities (Ackah-Baidoo, 2013;Ofori-Parku, 2018). As the CSF proposes, corporate sustainability is obligatory because businesses present both positive and negative implications for members of the communities in which and for whom they operate (Ofori-Parku, 2016a). ...
... This practice runs afoul the call in corporate environmental management to embrace culture and other intangibles (see Graham, 2004;Satterfield et al., 2013) and for risk management to adopt a more expansive view of risk analysis (Ofori-Parku, 2018). Although concerns about offshore oil production such as whale deaths, the growth and decomposition of floating seaweeds, and health problems (see Ackah-Baidoo, 2013) may be considered as lacking scientific evidence (see Ackah-Baidoo, 2013), this idea of 'insufficient evidence' exposes the inherently non-democratic, institution-biased approach to understanding societal risks (Beck, 1992). ...
Corporate social responsibility, and its other conceptual variants such as corporate sustainability, encourages businesses to act on a range of issues outside what the law and shareholders require. But what are the limits of the concept and its discursive practices in a globalizing world marked by accentuated asymmetrical power relations between businesses, and the communities they operate in and serve (especially corporations working in less powerful global peripheries), and the regulators who are expected to police them? This study uses the discourse-historical approach (DHA) and corporate sustainability framework (CSF) to analyze a British independent oil production firm’s Tullow—communication. It illustrates the utility of the DHA and the CSF for doing critical stakeholder and issues analysis from corporate communication texts. Second, it argues that corporate sustainability illustrates the power asymmetry between the global and local, corporations and community. Specifically, we observe how a petroleum firm uses sustainability discourse, as a form of hegemonic globalization, to perpetuate dominant tropes and conceptions about African local communities as homogeneous and lacking agency, commodifying the lived experiences of the locals in the process while entrenching the superiority of the firm’s own position as a ‘benevolent dictator.’ We also illustrate how particular mitigation and intensification discourse techniques are employed to uphold Tullow as a ‘do-good’ actor. The corporation’s discursive strategies have a cumulative effect of cementing the power asymmetry that already exists between the firm as an agent of a dominant center of global power and Ghanaian communities as less powerful interests in the globalization process. Suggestions for disrupting the hegemony are provided.
... Such discourse is undemocratic and favors technical as opposed to lay knowledge, placing experts and expert knowledge in "pole position to define agendas and impose binding premises a priori on [sustainability] discourse" (Ofori-Parku, 2018, p. 199). In line with the view that corporations serve the interests of whoever controls them (Dugger, 1989), whoever controls the meaning of sustainability and risks also controls the rational solution to the problem at hand (Ofori-Parku, 2018;Slovic, 1999). This argument that a priori definitions and decisions inform the public engagement and sustainability processes is akin to Foucault's notion of subjectification applied to corporate practices (see Banerjee, 2008). ...
... A key attribute of discourse analysis lies in its linking of texts to the context from which they emanate and are used (Mautner, 2009). In the Ghanaian context, local residents have been vocal about ecological and livelihood risks associated with offshore oil activities (Ackah-Baidoo, 2013;Ofori-Parku, 2018). As the CSF proposes, corporate sustainability is obligatory because businesses present both positive and negative implications for members of the communities in which and for whom they operate (Ofori-Parku, 2016a). ...
... This practice runs afoul the call in corporate environmental management to embrace culture and other intangibles (see Graham, 2004;Satterfield et al., 2013) and for risk management to adopt a more expansive view of risk analysis (Ofori-Parku, 2018). Although concerns about offshore oil production such as whale deaths, the growth and decomposition of floating seaweeds, and health problems (see Ackah-Baidoo, 2013) may be considered as lacking scientific evidence (see Ackah-Baidoo, 2013), this idea of 'insufficient evidence' exposes the inherently non-democratic, institution-biased approach to understanding societal risks (Beck, 1992). ...
Corporate social responsibility, and its other conceptual variants such as corporate sustainability, encourages businesses to act on a range of issues outside what the law and shareholders require. But what are the limits of the concept and its discursive practices in a globalizing world marked by accentuated asymmetrical power relations between businesses, and the communities they operate in and serve (especially corporations working in less powerful global peripheries), and the regulators who are expected to police them? This study uses the discourse-historical approach (DHA) and corporate sustainability framework (CSF) to analyze a British independent oil production firm’s—Tullow—communication. It illustrates the utility of the DHA and the CSF for doing critical stakeholder and issues analysis from corporate communication texts. Second, it argues that corporate sustainability illustrates the power asymmetry between the global and local, corporations and community. Specifically, we observe how a petroleum firm uses sustainability discourse, as a form of hegemonic globalization, to perpetuate dominant tropes and conceptions about African local communities as homogeneous and lacking agency, commodifying the lived experiences of the locals in the process while entrenching the superiority of the firm’s own position as a ‘benevolent dictator.’ We also illustrate how particular mitigation and intensification discourse techniques are employed to uphold Tullow as a ‘do-good’ actor. The corporation’s discursive strategies have a cumulative effect of cementing the power asymmetry that already exists between the firm as an agent of a dominant center of global power and Ghanaian communities as less powerful interests in the globalization process. Suggestions for disrupting the hegemony are provided.
... Conversely, a weak sense of community may lead to failed community-oriented ventures when imposed from outside [Garland, 1999]. These are key reasons for supporting a genuinely community-embedded approach to science communication [Ofori-Parku, 2018]. However, problem-solving programs can drift away from a community orientation when competing interests are involved. ...
Communities are rarely seen as the ideal level at which to focus science communication efforts, compared to the individual, psychological or mass, societal levels. Yet evidence from allied fields suggests building interpersonal relationships with specific communities over time is key to meaningful engagement, so orienting science communication towards communities is warranted. In this paper, we argue this case. We review previous studies, identifying three existing models of community-oriented science communication, which we label ‘neighbourly’, ‘problem-solving’ and ‘brokering’. We illustrate the effectiveness of the ‘problem-solving’ approach and the desirable ideal of ‘brokering’ using recent examples of community-oriented science communication from Australia.
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been highly controversial in China and beyond. The burgeoning of social media has created an online activist field where participants utilize networked framing practices to engage in connective actions related to GMO risks. However, a dynamic perspective on the co-production of GMO risk discourses has yet to be fully explored, and it is still under debate whether such a collective interpretation is fragmented. To address this gap, this study investigates the risk-invoked GMO controversy by longitudinally exploring the structural characteristics and discursive power structures in the networked framing of GMO risks on social media. This study examines 356,227 GMO risk posts from 2010 to 2020 on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. A longitudinal social network analysis and computational text-mining approach are used to construct representation networks among participants based on their joint sponsorship framing practices of GMO risks. The findings suggest that there is a multipolar discussion fragmentation in the networked framing of GMO risks. However, the temporal evidence shows that the risk discussion has become increasingly interconnected and less structurally fragmented over time. In addition, this study highlights the unequal distribution of discursive power among participants; nevertheless, the analysis reveals that this inequality has shown signs of easing over the study period. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the GMO controversy from a risk perspective and sheds light on the dynamics of networked framing practices and discursive power structures on social media.
This research uses a discursive psychology and social constructionist approach to examine how organic food patrons think about, experience, and make sense of the organic label as a “boundary concept.” Based on data from 30 in-depth interviews with self-identified organic food consumers, emic and etic coding of consumer narratives reveals the socially constitutive nature of organic food practices. Despite organic food consumers’ understanding of what organic means, their meaning-making process derives from a certain kind of nostalgia for their childhood meal experience and upbringing, family values, because “it tastes better,” and “just feels right.” While consumer knowledge aligns with the analytical sensemaking system, the second group of factors is associated with the experiential system. Hence, leveraging nostalgia appeals in organic food advertising holds promise for mainstreaming organic food consumption practices in marketing contexts such as the U.S., where environmental attitudes are associated with political ideologies and thus polarizing.
Tacit knowledge is an important factor for enterprises and institutions to enhance their knowledge innovation and value-added capabilities, and it is also a basic link to enhance organizational learning capabilities. With the development of technology, the dissemination of tacit knowledge has increasingly shown complex and dynamic trends. In order to make the tacit knowledge in the enterprise better circulate and generate greater economic value, therefore, this paper proposes a study on the diffusion map of tacit knowledge based on multivariate statistics and 3D visualization analysis. First of all, this paper analyzes the internal relationship between organizational learning and organizational tacit knowledge integration and organizational tacit knowledge innovation, and combines multiple statistical methods to propose an organizational tacit knowledge integration method based on tacit knowledge management. Secondly, we combine 3D visualization and generative confrontation network methods to analyze the data of tacit knowledge dissemination, and visualize the distribution of knowledge dissemination in three dimensions. In the simulation experiment test, this paper reveals that the spreading efficiency of tacit knowledge in the network is affected by related factors. Through this model, we hope to explore the behavioral laws of different types of nodes in the network and propose effective countermeasures to improve the efficiency of knowledge dissemination.
Media are an indispensable partner in health communication, but there is often concern about how the media cover health and science issues. These critiques tend to be based on analyses of news content that don’t consider the production process of the content. Using a media sociology framework, the article examines the news production process of the Ebola outbreak from the perspective of Ghanaian journalists. The study finds that existing and new routines influenced what the media produced. This study reiterates the call for public health to work closely with the media and to provide translated health information in multilingual low-literate societies.
Scientists Making a Difference is a fascinating collection of first-person narratives from the top psychological scientists of the modern era. These readable essays highlight the most important contributions to theory and research in psychological science, show how the greatest psychological scientists formulate and think about their work, and illustrate how their ideas develop over time. In particular, the authors address what they consider their most important scientific contribution, how they got the idea, how the idea matters for the world beyond academic psychology, and what they would like to see as the next steps in research. The contributors, who were chosen from an objectively compiled list of the most eminent psychological scientists, provide a broad range of insightful perspectives. This book is essential reading for students, researchers and professionals interested in learning about the development of the biggest ideas in modern psychological science, described firsthand by the scientists themselves.
We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming
(AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts
from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We
find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7%
rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among
abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that
humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited
authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage
of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers
expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings
and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a
position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the
number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of
the published research.
The main cloud of radioactive contamination from Chernobyl passed over the United Kingdom on May 2-3, 1986. Rainfall was the major factor affecting local deposition of radioactivity, especially radioactive cesium. Sheep were being contaminated by ingesting grass contaminated with radioactive cesium. British government officials first reacted to this deposition by ignoring and denying the facts and then by recommending impractical solutions stemming from their ignorance of hill sheep farming. This study illustrates the need for improved, two-way communication between scientists and the involved public, particularly during national emergencies.
Undergraduates expressed their attitudes about a product after being exposed to a magazme ad under conditions of either high or low product involvement. The ad contained either strong or weak arguments for the product and featured either prominent sports celebrities or average citizens as endorsers. The manipulation of argument quality had a greater impact on attitudes under high than low involve- ment, but the manipulation of product endorser had a greater impact under low than high involvement. These results are consistent with the view that there are two relatively distinct routes to persuasion.
Qualitative research explores complex phenomena encountered by clinicians, health care providers, policy makers and consumers. Although partial checklists are available, no consolidated reporting framework exists for any type of qualitative design.
To develop a checklist for explicit and comprehensive reporting of qualitative studies (in depth interviews and focus groups).
We performed a comprehensive search in Cochrane and Campbell Protocols, Medline, CINAHL, systematic reviews of qualitative studies, author or reviewer guidelines of major medical journals and reference lists of relevant publications for existing checklists used to assess qualitative studies. Seventy-six items from 22 checklists were compiled into a comprehensive list. All items were grouped into three domains: (i) research team and reflexivity, (ii) study design and (iii) data analysis and reporting. Duplicate items and those that were ambiguous, too broadly defined and impractical to assess were removed.
Items most frequently included in the checklists related to sampling method, setting for data collection, method of data collection, respondent validation of findings, method of recording data, description of the derivation of themes and inclusion of supporting quotations. We grouped all items into three domains: (i) research team and reflexivity, (ii) study design and (iii) data analysis and reporting.
The criteria included in COREQ, a 32-item checklist, can help researchers to report important aspects of the research team, study methods, context of the study, findings, analysis and interpretations.
The past several decades have seen a shift in environmental and risk communication that emphasizes harnessing local knowledge to enhance environmental advocacy. As a result, one would expect local advocacy organizations to manifest this shift. Using Friends of the Nation (FoN; a Ghanaian local advocacy organization) as a case study, this research examines how FoN is constructing offshore oil production risks. The study found that FoN uses “whale deaths” as an exemplar of ecological risks associated with offshore oil production, even though in Ghanaian folk culture coastal communities view whale deaths as signs of bumper fish harvest. The article argues that the disconnect between the dominant frame and local meaning system could be explained in terms of FoN’s policymakers-facing as opposed (or in addition) to community residents-facing engagement approach. Recommendations for environmental advocacy are discussed.
The general view of descriptive research as a lower level form of inquiry has influenced some researchers conducting qualitative research to claim methods they are really not using and not to claim the method they are using: namely, qualitative description. Qualitative descriptive studies have as their goal a comprehensive summary of events in the everyday terms of those events. Researchers conducting qualitative descriptive studies stay close to their data and to the surface of words and events. Qualitative descriptive designs typically are an eclectic but reasonable combination of sampling, and data collection, analysis, and re-presentation techniques. Qualitative descriptive study is the method of choice when straight descriptions of phenomena are desired.
Do We have a Commonly Shared Definition of Crisis?Can We Approach Crises (Academic Study and Professional Best Practice) Without Suffering a Managerial Bias?Can We Segment and Appropriately Research and Develop Crisis Planning in Three Phases?Can We Develop Theory, Research, and Best Practices that Involve Process and Meaning?Do We Have a Unique and Independent Crisis Literature and Crisis Theories, or Are They Derivative of Management Theory or Public Relations Theory?What's the Wisdom of Seeing and Building on the Interconnections between Crisis, Risk, and Issues?What Outcomes are Used to Measure the Success or Failure of Crisis Response?Concluding Thoughts and Final ChallengesReferences
One of C.S. Peirce’s most misunderstood ideas is his notion of abduction, the process of generating and selecting hypotheses to test. Contemporary philosophers of science have falsely cited Peirce’s idea of abduction as a conceptual precursor to the modern notion of inference to the best explanation, a mode of inference used to decide which of competing explanations of a phenomenon to regard as true. Here, I examine how the misunderstanding originated by exploring influential discussions of inference to the best explanation in the works of Gilbert Harman, Bas van Fraassen, Paul Thagard, and Peter Lipton. While all these authors either failed to cite, or incorrectly cited, Peirce, I show that Thagard has noted a sense in which Peirce’s early work provides a precursor to the modern notion of inference to the best explanation. However, a careful reading of Peirce shows that “abduction” has never been a proper synonym for “inference to the best explanation.” So Peirce is not to blame for the misunderstanding. I conclude by defending the philosophic importance of abduction and demonstrating how applying Peirce’s criteria for good abduction to debates in evolutionary theory can move the field forward.
I present a complex theoretical explanation that draws on multiple bodies of literature to present an academically rigorous version of a simple argument: good deeds earn chits. I advance/defend three core assertions: (1) corporate philanthropy can generate positive moral capital among communities and stakeholders, (2) moral capital can provide shareholders with insurance-like protection for a firm's relationship-based intangible assets, and (3) this protection contributes to shareholder wealth. I highlight several managerial implications of these core assertions.
Scientists have made remarkable progress in dealing with technical challenges but not in dealing with society. Given that public concerns have grown, in the face of declining ''real'' risks, the common if simplistic tendency has been to blame public ignorance or irrationality and to argue that policy decisions should be based on quantitative risk estimates, effectively ignoring public concerns. Such assertions are superficially plausible, but they reflect fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of technological societies, as well as of the reasons behind declining scientific credibility and of actual strengths and weaknesses of risk assessment. Scientific credibility has been undermined not so much by shadowy enemies as by actions of self-proclaimed friends, and there are inherent limitations to the practical usefulness of risk assessment in policy disputes. If proposals for risk-based decision making were actually implemented, they could well lead not to increased credibility for specific technologies but to self-reinforcing losses of credibility for science and technology as a whole.
Perceptions of risk from radiation have been studied systematically for about 20 years. This paper summarises the key findings
and conclusions from this research with regard to the nature of risk perceptions, the impacts of these perceptions, and the
need for communication about radiological hazards. Perhaps the most important generalisation from research in this area is
that there is no uniform or consistent perception of radiation risks. Public perception and acceptance is determined by the
context in which the radiation is used and the very different reactions to different uses provide insight into the nature
of perception and the determinants of acceptable risk.
The aim of this study is to improve our understanding of how young people make sense of traffic risk. The study also aims to contribute to current theory by refining the concept of ‘sense-making of risk’. The focus is to explore, empirically as well as theoretically, how role-taking emotions can contribute to this particular area of research. In order to chart both the sense-making of social interaction and the respondents’ subjective sense of traffic risk, the present study used both in-depth interviews and focus group interviews: the in-depth interviews comprised a total of 11 interviews with as many interviewees, while a total of 36 people were included in the eight focus group interviews. All interviewees were Swedish residents aged between 16 and 20. It is found that by adopting the perspective afforded by theory of emotion, it is possible to deepen our knowledge of individual sense-making of risk. Both primary emotions and role-taking emotions seem to be central to how young Swedes form their understanding of traffic risk. A focus on role-taking emotions reveals the value of indirect social interaction for the individual’s sense-making of risk in general, and adds to our knowledge of the individual’s sense-making of traffic risk in particular.
A theory of heuristic and systematic information processing The heuristic-systematic model proposes two distinct modes of thinking about information. Systematic processing involves attempts to thoroughly understand any available information through careful attention, deep thinking, and intensive reasoning, whereas heuristic processing involves focusing on salient and easily comprehended cues that activate well-learned judgmental shortcuts. Heuristic processing is a more efficient and relatively automatic mode of processing, but more often than not confers less judgmental confidence. Systematic processing confers more confidence but is relatively effortful and time-consuming. Thus, individuals tend to engage in heuristic processing unless they are both motivated and able to think carefully about information, in which case the two modes of processing can have additive, attenuating, or interactive effects. Furthermore, both modes of processing can be relatively open-minded, driven by accuracy concerns, or relatively biased, driven by defense or impression concerns. This chapter situates the heuristic-systematic model within its ...
Scientists have made remarkable progress in dealing with technical challenges but not in dealing with society. Given that public concerns have grown, in the face of declining "real" risks, the common if simplistic tendency has been to blame public ignorance or irrationality and to argue that policy decisions should be based on quantitative risk estimates, effectively ignoring public concerns. Such assertions are superficially plausible, but they reflect funda mental misunderstandings of the nature of technological societies, as well as of the reasons behind declining scientific credibility and of actual strengths and weaknesses of risk assessment. Scientific credi bility has been undermined not so much by shadowy enemies as by actions of self-proclaimed friends, and there are inherent limitations to the practical usefulness of risk assessment in policy disputes. If proposals for risk-based decision making were actually implemented, they could well lead not to increased credibility for specific technolo gies but to self-reinforcing losses of credibility for science and tech nology as a whole.
Many public relations scholars identify the importance of environment. Contentions about the role of public relations in helping organizations to continuously adapt to their social environment underpin mainstream research and theoretic literature. However, the field has paid limited attention to specifying, testing, and explicating such complex and problematic presuppositions. This article responds to the resulting opportunity for theory building by applying the untried and underutilized ecological lens to conceptualize and explore a primary sector of organizational social environments, the public opinion environment, at the population level of analysis. Four dimensions of the organizational population's public opinion environment are proposed: stability, complexity, intensity, and direction (favorability). Using macro-level variations in the public opinion environment to explain micro-level responses—specifically, the emergence of activist publics—the article explores four theoretic propositions longitudinally, using three case studies of the same organizational population, Australia's major banks from 1981 to 2001. It lays the foundation for contesting much vaunted but unproved presuppositions about the place of public relations in helping organizations to adapt continuously to their changing environments.
One of the most important works of modern anthropology. Written against the backdrop of the student uprisings of the late 1960s, the book took seriously the revolutionary fervour of the times, but instead of seeking to destroy the rituals and symbols that can govern and oppress, Mary Douglas saw instead that if transformation were needed, it could only be made possible through better understanding. Expressed with clarity and dynamism, the passionate analysis which follows remains one of the most insightful and rewarding studies of human behaviour ever written.
This article uses a qualitative case study approach to examine policy-oriented risk communication in the battle between Greenpeace and Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil structure. Policy-agenda-setting literature is fused with literature from the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) and transnational advocacy networks to generate further insights. This analysis demonstrates that in attempting to influence policy, Greenpeace and Shell are prepared to redefine risk according to their own strategic needs and arenas of operation. It suggests that media exposure impacts policy both by shaping public perception of risk (rather than of policy) and by shaping policy makers’ perception of public opinion. It is suggested that for successful policy-oriented risk communication, social trust in the communicator must be cultivated and maintained with key audiences prior to, and during, risk communication
To make sense of the complexity of the world so that they can act, individuals and institutions need to develop simplified, self-consistent versions of that world. The process of doing so means that much of what is known about the world needs to be excluded from those versions, and in particular that knowledge which is in tension or outright contradiction with those versions must be expunged. This is ‘uncomfortable knowledge’. The paper describes four implicit strategies which institutions use to keep uncomfortable knowledge at bay: denial, dismissal, diversion and displacement. It concludes by suggesting that ‘clumsy’ arrangements may need to be constructed to ensure that uncomfortable knowledge is not excluded from policy debates, especially when dealing with ‘wicked problems’ where the accepted version excludes knowledge that is crucial for making sense of and addressing the problem.
What goes on in editorial conferences and how do news journalists decide what is newsworthy? The journalistic “gut feeling” is an important part of the professional self-understanding of journalists and editors expressing how news judgements seem self-evident and self-explaining to the practitioners. This article presents an analysis of everyday news work drawing on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu and using ethnographic material from observations of editorial practices in a Danish television newsroom as a case study. The analytical concepts “journalistic doxa”, “news habitus” and “editorial capital” are put to empirical work on close-up observations of journalistic practices in editorial conferences and two types of news values are identified as part of the journalistic “gut feeling”: the explicit orthodox/heterodox news values which are part of the sphere of journalistic judgement, and the implicit, silent doxic news values which are part of the sphere of journalistic doxa. An important task for future studies of journalistic practice is to investigate the seemingly self-evident orthodox news values as well as making visible the doxic news values imbedded in journalistic practice.
This paper discusses the potential of the notions of reification and consensualization as developed by the theory of social representations as analytical tools for addressing the communication between the lay and scientific spheres. Social Representations Theory started by offering an over-sharp distinction between the reified and the consensual universes of which science and common sense, respectively, were presented as paradigmatic. This paper, however, suggests that the notions of consensual and reified can be considered as describing two distinct communicative formats: reification implying the use of arguments which establish prescriptions for representations and action, and consensualization relying on arguments which recognize the heterogeneity of representation and action. We illustrate this proposal through the analysis of a case in which the expert and the lay spheres of a Lisbon neighborhood opposed each other regarding the new laws of public participation in community matters. This analysis showed how reification and consensualization can be used as discursive formats by both spheres. The implications of the use of reification and consensualization and how they may depend on several power resources and have different impacts on social change are discussed.
Written by leading experts in the field, Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty is an introduction to mainstream theorizing on risk and uncertainty in sociology. Provides an overview of the historical developments and conceptual aspects of risk Identifies why theorizing on risk is necessary and highlights specific sociological contributions to this field of research Explores key topics including risk society and reflexive modernization, culture and risk, governmentality and risk, systems theory and risk, and edgework and voluntary risk taking Offers a comprehensive look at the promises, pitfalls, and perspectives of risk theorizing.
Human beings have always been intuitive toxicologists, relying on their senses of sight, taste, and smell to detect harmful or unsafe food, water, and air. As we have come to recognize that our senses are not adequate to assess the dangers inherent in exposure to a chemical substance, we have created the sciences of toxicology and risk assessment to perform this function. Yet despite this great effort to overcome the limitations of intuitive toxicology, it has become evident that even our best scientific methods still depend heavily on extrapolations and judgments in order to infer human health risks from animal data. Many observers have acknowledged the inherent subjectivity in the assessment of chemical risks and have indicated a need to examine the subjective or intuitive elements of expert and lay risk judgments. We have begun such an examination by surveying members of the Society of Toxicology and the lay public about basic toxicological concepts, assumptions, and interpretations. Our results demonstrate large differences between toxicologists and laypeople, as well as differences between toxicologists working in industry, academia, and government. In addition, we find that toxicologists are sharply divided in their opinions about the ability to predict a chemical's effect on human health on the basis of animal studies. We argue that these results place the problems of risk communication in a new light. Although the survey identifies misconceptions that experts should clarify for the public, it also suggests that controversies over chemical risks may be fueled as much by limitations of the science of risk assessment and disagreements among experts as by public misconceptions.
As a result of Structural Adjustment Programme from the 1980s, many developing countries have experienced an increase in resource extraction activities by international and transnational corporations. The work reported here examines the perceived impacts of gold mining at the community level in the Wassa West District of Ghana, Africa and discusses those perceived impacts in the context of globalization processes and growing multinational corporate interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Interview data compared community members' perceptions with those of company representatives in three communities. The results indicate that communities held companies responsible for a series of economic, social, and environmental changes. While recognizing some of the benefits brought by the mines, communities felt that the companies did not live up to their responsibility to support local development. Companies responded by denying, dismissing concerns, or shifting blame. Findings from this work show that lack of engagement and action by government agencies at all levels resulted in companies acting in a surrogate governmental capacity. In such situations, managing expectations is key to community–company relations.
Our usual representations of the opposition between the âcivilizedâ and the âprimitiveâ derive from willfully ignoring the relationship of distance our social science sets up between the observer and the observed. In fact, the author argues, the relationship between the anthropologist and his object of study is a particular instance of the relationship between knowing and doing, interpreting and using, symbolic mastery and practical masteryâor between logical logic, armed with all the accumulated instruments of objectification, and the universally pre-logical logic of practice. In this, his fullest statement of a theory of practice, Bourdieu both sets out what might be involved in incorporating oneâs own standpoint into an investigation and develops his understanding of the powers inherent in the second member of many oppositional pairsâthat is, he explicates how the practical concerns of daily life condition the transmission and functioning of social or cultural forms. The first part of the book, âCritique of Theoretical Reason,â covers more general questions, such as the objectivization of the generic relationship between social scientific observers and their objects of study, the need to overcome the gulf between subjectivism and objectivism, the interplay between structure and practice (a phenomenon Bourdieu describes via his concept of the habitus ), the place of the body, the manipulation of time, varieties of symbolic capital, and modes of domination. The second part of the book, âPractical Logics,â develops detailed case studies based on Bourdieuâs ethnographic fieldwork in Algeria. These examples touch on kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social categories of perception and classification, and ritualized actions and exchanges. This book develops in full detail the theoretical positions sketched in Bourdieuâs Outline of a Theory of Practice . It will be especially useful to readers seeking to grasp the subtle concepts central to Bourdieuâs theory, to theorists interested in his points of departure from structuralism (especially fom Lévi-Strauss), and to critics eager to understand what role his theory gives to human agency. It also reveals Bourdieu to be an anthropological theorist of considerable originality and power.
Risk management has become increasingly politicized and contentious. Polarized views, controversy, and conflict have become pervasive. Research has begun to provide a new perspective on this problem by demonstrating the complexity of the concept "risk" and the inadequacies of the traditional view of risk assessment as a purely scientific enterprise. This paper argues that danger is real, but risk is socially constructed. Risk assessment is inherently subjective and represents a blending of science and judgment with important psychological, social, cultural, and political factors. In addition, our social and democratic institutions, remarkable as they are in many respects, breed distrust in the risk arena. Whoever controls the definition of risk controls the rational solution to the problem at hand. If risk is defined one way, then one option will rise to the top as the most cost-effective or the safest or the best. If it is defined another way, perhaps incorporating qualitative characteristics and other contextual factors, one will likely get a different ordering of action solutions. Defining risk is thus an exercise in power. Scientific literacy and public education are important, but they are not central to risk controversies. The public is not irrational. Their judgments about risk are influenced by emotion and affect in a way that is both simple and sophisticated. The same holds true for scientists. Public views are also influenced by worldviews, ideologies, and values; so are scientists' views, particularly when they are working at the limits of their expertise. The limitations of risk science, the importance and difficulty of maintaining trust, and the complex, sociopolitical nature of risk point to the need for a new approach--one that focuses upon introducing more public participation into both risk assessment and risk decision making in order to make the decision process more democratic, improve the relevance and quality of technical analysis, and increase the legitimacy and public acceptance of the resulting decisions.
The general view of descriptive research as a lower level form of inquiry has influenced some researchers conducting qualitative research to claim methods they are really not using and not to claim the method they are using: namely, qualitative description. Qualitative descriptive studies have as their goal a comprehensive summary of events in the everyday terms of those events. Researchers conducting qualitative descriptive studies stay close to their data and to the surface of words and events. Qualitative descriptive designs typically are an eclectic but reasonable combination of sampling, and data collection, analysis, and re-presentation techniques. Qualitative descriptive study is the method of choice when straight descriptions of phenomena are desired.
Modern theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience indicate that there are two fundamental ways in which human beings comprehend risk. The "analytic system" uses algorithms and normative rules, such as probability calculus, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control. The "experiential system" is intuitive, fast, mostly automatic, and not very accessible to conscious awareness. The experiential system enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution and remains today the most natural and most common way to respond to risk. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotion and affect (a feeling that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a feeling that tells us whether it is safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange-smelling water. Proponents of formal risk analysis tend to view affective responses to risk as irrational. Current wisdom disputes this view. The rational and the experiential systems operate in parallel and each seems to depend on the other for guidance. Studies have demonstrated that analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless it is guided by emotion and affect. Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of thought. Both systems have their advantages, biases, and limitations. Now that we are beginning to understand the complex interplay between emotion and reason that is essential to rational behavior, the challenge before us is to think creatively about what this means for managing risk. On the one hand, how do we apply reason to temper the strong emotions engendered by some risk events? On the other hand, how do we infuse needed "doses of feeling" into circumstances where lack of experience may otherwise leave us too "coldly rational"? This article addresses these important questions.
Jubilee field project: Summary of the environmental impact assessment
- African Development Bank