Sociology 599:

Seminar in Science and Technology Studies

The Risk Society

Professor Andrew LakoffWednesdays 10:00 12:50KAP 345

Email: lakoff@usc.eduKaprielian Hall 348Office hours: Wed 1:00 2:00 & by appointment

Course Description

This course is a research seminar focusing on contemporary debates about the risk society. From environmental toxins, to emerging pathogens, to natural and man-made disasters, social actors are faced with a multiple threats to their wellbeing, and typically must rely on experts and authorities to provide advice and protection. However, stakeholders and members of the public often evaluate these threats differently than experts, leading to debates concerning the governmental provision of security. In this course we will look at current controversies around risk. We will ask: how do members of the public come to worry about some dangers and not others? How do authorities seek to involve the public in responding to risk? What is the role of trust in public response to the warnings of experts? Readings include work from leading contemporary thinkers in the sociology, history and anthropology of science and technology.

Course Requirements and Expectations

The course is a research seminar. The goal will be to produce a paper or dissertation chapter based on original research by the end of the semester. For this reason, weekly readings are kept to around 80 100 pages per week. You are expected to complete all weekly readings and participate actively in discussion during each session. Two times during the semester you will be asked to present the weeks readings. In addition, during the semester, there will be several deadlines and discussions focused on each students paper. These exchanges will take place on the course Blackboard site.

Required books: Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Sage, 1992) Michel Callon, Pierre Lacoumbes, Yannick Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy (MIT, 2009) Anthony Giddens, Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, 1990) Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, 1999)All other course readings will be made available on the course Blackboard site.

Schedule of Readings and Assignments

Week 1 January 11: Introduction to the Class

Part One: Conceptual Orientations

Week 2 January 18: Modernity and its Consequences Niklas Luhmann, The Concept of Risk, in Risk: A Sociological Theory (Aldine Transaction, 2005 [1993]), 1 32 Anthony Giddens, Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, 1990), Parts I and III: 1 54; 79 111

* Writing process: post on Blackboard a 1-2 paragraph statement of research interests and ideas. Everyone should read all of the statements.

Week 3 January 25: Risk Society and Reflexive Modernity Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Sage: 1992), 9 84; 155 182

Week 4 February 1: Governmentality and Advanced Liberalism Michel Foucault, Governmentality, from The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, 87 104 Nikolas Rose, Advanced Liberalism, and Control, in Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge 1999), 137 166; 233 273

* Writing process: post on Blackboard a 1 2 paragraph research proposal, identifying the problem to be addressed and suggesting possible findings. This proposal should also list the main sources (historical, contemporary documents, interviews, etc) that will form the basis of the paper.

Week 5 February 8: New Collectives Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy, 13 36, 71 106, 192 223

Part Two: Individuals and Collectives

Week 6 February 15: Deviance and Criminality Robert Castel, From Dangerousness to Risk, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, 281 - 298 Jonathan Simon, Reversal of Fortune: The Resurgence of Individual Risk Assessment in Criminal Justice, Annual Review of Law and Social Science Vol. 1: 397-421 (December 2005) Mariana Valverde, Targeted Governance and the Problem of Desire, in Risk and Morality, 438 458

* Writing process: submit a bibliography of secondary and primary sources. Write two paragraphs about what you have found so far in the literature and what you are looking for in your primary sources.

Week 7 February 22: Embodied Risk Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Diagnosing Moral Disorder: the Discovery and Evolution of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Social Science and Medicine 47(12):2025-2042 (1998) Paul Rabinow, Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality in Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, 91 111 Stefan Timmermans and Mara Buchbinder, Patients-in-Waiting: Living between Sickness and Health in the Genomics Era, Journal of Health and Social Behavior (2010), 408 423

Week 8 February 29: Epidemics and the Health of Populations Ian Hacking, Biopower and the Avalanche of Printed Numbers, Humanities in Society 5 (1982), pp. 279 - 295 William Coleman, Inequality Before Death: Paris, in Death is a Social Disease: Public Health and Political Economy in Early Industrial France (1982), pp. 149 180 Peter Baldwin, Bodily Fluids and Citizenship, in Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces Aids (2007), 7 40* Writing process: post on Blackboard a primary source of some kind. These will be presented in class.

Week 9 March 7: Insurance and Actuarialism Francois Ewald, Insurance and Risk, in Burchell, Gordon and Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect (1991), 197 210 Pat OMalley, Risk and Responsibility, in Andrew Barry, et al, Foucault and Political Reason (1996), 189 207 Jonathan Simon, The Emergence of a Risk Society: Law, Insurance, and the State, Socialist Review, No. 89: 61-89 (Fall/Winter 1987)

March 14 Spring recess

Part Three: Looming Catastrophe

Week 10 March 21: Emerging Disease and Biosecurity Laurie Garrett, The Next Pandemic? Foreign Affairs (2005) Nicholas B. King, Security, Disease, Commerce: Ideologies of Post-Colonial Global Health, Social Studies of Science 32:5 (2002), pp. 763 789 Andrew Lakoff, The Generic Biothreat, or, How We Became Unprepared, Cultural Anthropology 23:3 (2008), pp. 399 428

* Writing process: post a progress report on Blackboard. Read everyones report before next class.

Week 11 March 28: Science and Politics of Climate Change

Ulrich Beck, Global Public Sphere and Global Sub-Politics, or, How Real is Catastrophic Climate Change? in World at Risk, pp. 81 108 Cass Sunstein, Catastrophe, in Worst-Case Scenarios, pp. 118 175 Anthony Giddens, Climate Change, Risk, and Danger, in The Politics of Climate Change (2009), pp.17 34

Week 12 April 4: Industrialized Agriculture

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962), pp. 1 38 Sheila Jasanoff, Food for Thought, from Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States (2005) Elizabeth Dunn, Escherichia coli, Corporate Discipline and the Failure of the Sewer State Space and Polity 11 (2007), 35 - 53

Week 13 April 11: No class: Individual meetings

* Writing process: outline of your paper due before meeting.

Part Four: Paper Presentations

Week 14 April 18: First set of presentations

Week 15 April 25: Second set of presentations

Final papers due: Wednesday, May 2 at 5:00 pm

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