745
Theorising Uncertainty and Risk in the Post-Truth Public Sphere
Abstract Submissions Closed
TG04 Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
Communication on a range of issues — such as vaccines, abortion, migration, integration, and national sovereignty and security — appears to be characterised by increasingly divided debate across a number of national public spheres. Alongside an apparent polarisation and segmentation of public attitudes, these debates are marked by a heightened contestation of expertise, a more explicit discussion of uncertainty, and the emphasis of particular risks. These processes are seen to define and potentially threaten the current functioning of democracy, yet they remain only partially theorised. Wider ascriptions of ‘post-truth’ are empirically crude and problematic, yet do reflect some important tendencies within late modernity.
This session explores various ways of theorising these debates and the socio-cultural processes which underpin them. Despite their status as ubiquitous and standard reference points in sociological studies of uncertainty and risk, the works of Mary Douglas and Ulrich Beck are underused and loosely-read bases for understanding the tendencies described above. From work developing reflexive modernisation perspectives on the nature of knowledge and debate in the public sphere, to studies drawing upon Douglas's analyses of (potentially polarising) conflict as drivers of categorisation processes and culture, to research drawing on related themes such as structures of the public sphere and communication, ritual dynamics and their shaping of institutional processes, or trajectories of disenchantment and re-enchantment with religion, the magical, or science and technology; we welcome papers which connect social theories of risk and uncertainty, wider social theorising and empirical cases in furthering our understanding of these important processes.