Risk Society, Resilience Society: What Is at Stake?

The risks are not opportunities as the economists considered them, but unwanted events. As unimplemented realities, they must be built. Thus, they refer to social facts of a particular type. Social facts, made from narratives, which aspire to a social validity and recognition. They correspond to the concept of faitiches, defined as entities made from facts and beliefs (Latour, 1991). Consequently, they are dependent on people who mobilize in their favour. These people or actors, called whistle blowers (Chateauraynaud, Torny, 1999), work to bring the society into alert as Luhmann has also suggested.

The production of narratives of risk opens the field for the identification of social and human responsibilities. This sociological perspective consequently presents the advantage to bind the notion of risk to a social criticism. The increasing of this mode of communication should also be linked to the rise of a new conception of social skills. This design opens a perspective for a visionary management; it values the prospective approach.

In parallel to these observations about a « culture of risk », we can wonder to what extent the notion of resilience doesn’t denote an inflection with regards to a « culture of risk ». The resilience semantic enhances the point of view of reparation instead of precaution and prospective. The semantic of resilience invites us to consider the day after the disaster or a few minutes before. Resilience questions the possibilities of a collective to avoid, to escape the worst, to restore its previous situation or to transform it in a certain way. It asks how we will mobilize ourselves to face the impact of a disaster? Communications about resilience invite us to explore our strengths and our weaknesses. This communication’s mode matches the pragmatic turn engaged by social sciences.