La Humanidad Amenazada: Gobernar los Riesgos Globales (Humankind Under Threat: Governing Global Risks)

Citation

Korstanje, M.E. (2012), "La Humanidad Amenazada: Gobernar los Riesgos Globales (Humankind Under Threat: Governing Global Risks)", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 522-524. https://doi.org/10.1108/09653561211256206

One of the most troublesome aspects of modern risks seems to be their effects on the normalcy and life of lay‐people. Of course, in a late‐modernity, we are accustomed to face daily risks; some of which are triggered by a higher degree of uncertainty. At first glance, risks and fears vary depending on culture and time, but to some extent they are inextricably interlinked to democracy and politics. The book edited by Daniel Innerarity and Javier Solana entitled Humankind Under Threat: Governing Global Risks gives readers a compilation of significant specialists who delve into the paradox of risk and technology. This means that the technological advances aimed at mitigating unexpected dangers in industrialized societies, can themselves engender other new risks, sometimes more frightful than earlier ones. Is risk a theme related to perception? Or are we gradually arriving at a state of disaster?

To respond to these questions, one might think that risk and disaster management policies are of paramount importance to democratize the world. If democracy makes states of exception (for the law) in contexts of emergencies, a potential failure in giving a sense of security to citizenry paves the pathways for the advent of dictatorships. Following Susstein's contributions, Innerarity and Solana argue that the paradox precisely lies in politics not being reinforced because of scientific inaccuracies. To put it brutally, the inflation of danger perception has expanded the horizon of democracy to the extent that it exerts considerable pressure on the State to present an all‐encompassing plan of contingency. Contrary to other scholars who say that the existent inflation of risks leads citizens to dictatorship (or the right's suspension), this book examines preferably how the quest for security plays a pivotal role for State to mobilize its resources in response to its citizens. Following this argument, the perception of risk would be functional to a much broader process of democratization.

Undoubtedly, U. Beck needs no introduction. His reputation based on a vast trajectory of research on risks and modernity can be synthesized by reading the first chapter where the connection between risks, market and politics is scrutinized. Unlike the existing literature, Beck argues that risks are often rooted in the language in order to facilitate the social cohesion among citizens who are unfamiliar with others in the postmodernism. If the market creates instability in the social life by the introduction of hypothesized dangers, the risk revitalizes the loyalties of the citizenry in the State. More specifically, globalized risks confer power to States by proposing new sources of legitimacy and alternative courses of actions for stakeholders.

In the second chapter, C. Bouton describes the tension between the viability of future and spatial acceleration. From this point of view, the controllability of the future decreases. The boundaries of the future and predictability are being blurred to the extent that the present time cannot be assimilated. Philosophically speaking, this means that our penchant to modify the environment can be expressed as a form of knowledge, but this knowledge is unable to anticipate the effects of our decisions. In perspective, human beings are more educated but have unfortunately less certainness respecting to the future of their environment. Nonetheless, the complexity of the modern world is accompanied by a pervasive role of scientists who are often in dependency of economical powers. In lieu of working hard to detect and mitigate the risks, some experts contribute to or create new risks in order for laboratories to sell their solutions (e.g. vaccines). Similarly, the third chapter illustrates how time acceleration contributes to the risk management. The speed not only alienates the consciousness but also allows for a reducing of the suffering. D. Desroches seems correct when acknowledging that the technical advances and their respective mobilities have certainly modified the culture of time. Machines are creating a new atmosphere of eternal urgency where subjects simplify knowledge before the mediated discourse. Following this, the author warns that the earth is not insecure; rather mass media (and the mega corporations behind it) have meditated the risks to weaken the presence of the State. The landscapes of disasters, framed and disseminated by the media, correspond with a much broader tendency to break the old monopoly of space introducing new urgent situations. That way, social behavior is determined by specific policies with the aim of facilitating mobility and velocity.

Weinstock, in the fourth section, explains that modern risks are often activated by six important dimensions, which are not exclusive but are correlated with the formation of a cosmopolitan public opinion:

1. (1)

   scope: new risks would demand a dichotomy between space and time;

2. (2)

   severity: consequences of human decisions would engender events of high impacts for industrialized societies;

3. (3)

   complexity: due to a strong normative integration, agents would be unable to detect and correct the risks;

4. (4)

   uncertainty: the boundaries between causes and aftermaths are being blurred;

5. (5)

   technology: efforts to mitigate the risk in one direction, makes new risk in another; and

6. (6)

   irreversibility: once the hazard takes hold, its consequences have no return.

D. Weinstock adds that there are some risks that can be labelled as “bad” and others as “good,” calling attention to the sentiment of alarmism in some scientists who often construct a radicalized image of dangers. The reason as to why lay‐people experience more fears today in comparison with other times is strictly associated to two factors. The first seems to be the omnipresence of technology which is broadly applied in all contexts and situations. Of course, the hegemony of technology, which industrialized countries have certainly spread to the four corners of the globe, has facilitated significant alternations of environment. This creates a false sense of superiority of humankind in respect to time. What scares us about risks, following this development, is our inability to control the world in a complete sense. Second, modern risks have been fabricated to work as conduit to political indoctrination favoring some classes and affecting others. This idea suggests that those risks that today concern industrialized societies have been altered by aristocracies to be internalized by the lower classes. The legitimacy of state appeals to a sense of well‐being and security, therefore, Weinstock reminds us how important it is to examine the risk from a political perspective.

With the benefits of hindsight, this book evaluates the connection of democracy in the process of identification and mitigation of risks. The 16 chapters that compose this project may be structured according to the following points:

1. (1)

   some risks are structured to keep high emotional impacts for humankind such as the global warming or nuclear power;

2. (2)

   the role of democracy in mitigating the disasters should be significant. While some risks are situated locally, others engender global consequences;

3. (3)

   the state should govern risks to promote continued well‐being of the population in the threshold of time;

4. (4)

   the paradox of technology prevents some risks but opens new ones;

5. (5)

   time and space are being blurred since risks are linked to mobilities;

6. (6)

   in a culture of social fragmentation, risks are the only way to connect people to each other. The risks are also rooted in the core of language;

7. (7)

   the technology and instrumental logic created a new scenario of uncertainness because we are unable to forecast the consequences of our decisions;

8. (8)

   the logic of novelty invaded not only all spheres of life but also shortened the present; and

9. (9)

   governance and new risks depend upon cognitive mobilization and the ways international organizations process citizens’ demands.

Here we have highlighted only a part of the 16 impressive chapters this book contains.

Authors interested by the connection of humanity to risks, such as E. Grande, D. D’andrea, M. Zurn, G. Jauregui, A. Metzner‐Szigeth, E. Pulcini, M. Wieviorka, M. Ojea and J. Solana, provide an all‐encompassed framework with which to understand the role of states in this new millennium. This work not only represents a serious effort to study the paradox of risk and technology, but also presents a fluent and integrated collection of papers. It is, in short, one of the best books I have read related to risk research.