How to escape a technocratic culture of risk?

A risk doesn’t exist until it has not been built. Several ways to build risk can be identified, which correspond with different cultures of risk. In France, the prevalent technocratic culture relies on a paradox. While experts express the risk they claim to reduce it. They put the public away from the risk by pretending to control it. Another culture of risk would begin to accept the risk as an essential part of the modern constitution. It can’t be fully controlled by science or technology. So its construction cannot be the only fact of experts. Accepting the presence of irreducible risks leads to organize a social scene of risk. Thus, managing a public policy of risk begins by a policy of “concernment” that aims the constitution of a Public. Risk, as science and technology, has to enter in democracy. However, social dialogue about a “situation at risk” can lead to dead ends. The sense of this democracy must be questioned. Indeed, asking to participants what is the level of risk they accept is not enough. The debate can be skewed by the perceived utility of risk-taking or by the fact that negative effects will only be felt in the long term. Similarly, saying that the scene must allow the emergence of various alternatives, each with a different level of risk, but contributing to a common goal is not satisfactory. The temptation to choose the way minimizing the risk-taking may be strong, whatever its efficiency. But above, the issue of finalities is not part of the debate. In a modern society where risk is everywhere, the issue of goals, their desirability is one of the most important, essential in the assessment of risk and its acceptability.