The Democratization of Risk and Prevention in a Sociological Perspective

How are ‘risk’ and ‘harm’ defined in prevention and by whom? In this session we will discuss the outputs and outcomes of co-production of risk governance/prevention where risk is ambiguous and/or debated, such as in healthcare or crime contexts.

Prevention policies are usually informed by expert knowledge of undesired events. Governmentality scholars have critically considered regimes of power and how these “formulate the[ir] truths and link these truths to specific programmes of government where problems are to be named and resolved” (O’Malley, 2008:455; Burchell e.a., 1991). These studies highlight modes of governance in which some forms of knowledge, certain forms of truths, are excluded.

The growing involvement of non-academics in prevention is widely acknowledged, and co-production of risk-governance/prevention has developed in several policy areas and localities – e.g. involving medicine users and healthcare professionals in pharmacovigilance (Brown & Bahri, 2019), or participatory health research for enhancing participation of patients and caregivers in action oriented research (Egid et al., 2021; Gale et al. 2019). How do sociologists of risk and uncertainty study the outputs and outcomes of engagement interventions in risk governance where the modelling of causation and outcomes is not simple but rather uncertain, complex and/or ambiguous (Van Asselt & Renn, 2012)?

We welcome papers from theoretical and empirical perspectives on health-related and/or crime studies and in other areas where risk is ambiguous and/or debated. We furthermore welcome papers that explore and discuss emerging dialogues between different understandings of risk and harm, building on academic, experiential, professional, and other knowledges.