Navigating Risk and Uncertainty In Everyday Life

Risk and uncertainty are not only objects of expert assessment, regulation or governance. They are also lived, negotiated and interpreted in everyday life. Individuals, families, communities and professionals routinely make sense of uncertain futures through practical calculations, embodied experiences, emotions, trust, hope, faith, routines, narratives, imaginaries and forms of improvisation. This session invites papers exploring how people navigate risk and uncertainty in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, including work, unemployment, migration, health, family life, ageing, youth transitions, digital life, climate adaptation, housing, care, consumption, security and disaster recovery.

We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions that examine how everyday actors understand, avoid, accept, normalise, resist or transform risks. Papers may address the role of inequality, gender, class, race, coloniality, generation, place and institutional context in shaping everyday capacities to respond to uncertainty. The session is especially interested in the relation between expert framings and lived experience: when do institutional calculations resonate with everyday concerns, and when do they misrecognise or intensify vulnerability?

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