Contribution short abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic is a risk had been underestimated. It has affected both the organization of care and population movements. Based on a comparative research I investigate what the management of contamination risks by tactical urbanism tell us about risks and the underlying political agenda.

Contribution long abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic is a risk that had not been anticipated or, more precisely, its extent had been underestimated. Both the organization of care and population movements have been affected. Here, the crisis has been a moment of weakening of the hegemonic framework and countered the preparedness (Keck 2016), that 'state of vigilance cultivated by the imaginary of disaster' at the heart of the processes of anticipation of crises and therefore of risks. In response to the risk of contamination which has created a need for physical distancing, as well as to counter the risk of a massive modal shift towards the car, metropolises around the world implemented pop-up cycling infrastructures limiting the space given to cars and/or pedestrians, depending on the case, whose creation disregarded the usual urban planning rules. A material and political response to a health risk. Indeed, even if the infrastructures built throughout the world are similar, a tactical urbanism to protect cyclists' traffic that can be easily dismantled, they refer to different representations of the risks incurred and do not serve the same political agenda. Based on a comparative research carried out in several cities in France and around the world, this paper will show how the management of contamination risks by tactical urbanism has also made it possible, following Douglas, to highlight the cultural and political differences, the role of the technicians and through it which hidden agenda it was answering.

Contribution short abstract:

Responding to recent “pedagogies of uncertainty” produced by interpretive, cultural and relational risk theorists we present local responses and expert portrayals of industrial decarbonization elucidating affective engagements with host communities through an analytic praxis of reparative readings.

Contribution long abstract:

Risk anthropology has flourished in the wake of engagements with the work of interpretive, cultural and relational risk theorists. Challenging questions have been posed (constituting “pedagogies of uncertainty”) about situations of indeterminacy, practices of intelligibility, and the dynamic interplay of temporalities in real-world risk problems (e.g. Switek, Abramson and Swee, 2022). Scholarship has involved revisiting Beck’s world risk theory as an a priori understanding of insecurities associated with local and global risks and impacts. On this footing, risk study into local responses and expert portrayals of industrial decarbonization (ID) has generated methodological and analytical strategies elucidating affective engagements within host communities. We draw on data from ID research at two industrial places on the south Wales coast interpreted through analytic praxis of reparative readings of what we term mini-icons provided to research participants as triggers for emotional engagement. This research developed a nuanced visual practice, articulated through a framework of liveliness of objects relevant to participants’ lives, drawing out the affective forces that flow through or inhabit localised experiences of uncertainties. Understandings across temporalities were gathered that invoke depressive readings of present and future risks. Our research makes apparent both gaps and alignments between what can loosely be termed industrialist vision makers and local digestors of such plans. Gathering responses to expert portrayals of risk as well as their proposed solutions through reparative framework, creates a coherent space enabling risk reasoning to become articulated as reparative and multiple without binary reductivity bleaching out potential problems as well as unifying possibilities.

Contribution short abstract:

This contribution to the round table discussion introduces the lionfish, pterois miles, as a jester whose story can help us understand the workings of contemporary (and past) risk discourses and formulate anthropological critiques of them.

Contribution long abstract:

Risk refers to modes of positional reasoning with uncertainty and perceived danger that are deeply embedded in societal power relations, cultural beliefs, and political and economic trajectories, as Mary Douglas diligently drew out in her seminal writings on the matter. Many contemporary risk discourses and policies circulate globally, claiming a universality that is unjustified and effectively covers up exclusions, essentialization, interests and responsibilities.

In search of contemporary mythologies that could help us grasp and trace these circulations, we introduce the lionfish, pterois miles, as a jester whose story holds up a critical mirror to a variety of moralizing risk narratives that make sense of global connectivities and ideologies of entitlement in times of the climatic crisis.

Thanks to international pet trade, multiplying hurricane incidents, and to global containership mobilities, in the past decade different populations of lionfish across the globe happened to dwell in new habitats and multiply significantly more than before. Meanwhile, as a result, researchers, politicians, local populations, tourists, and even AI have been activated to work together against new lionfish populations which have been classified as invasive species.

The contribution to the roundtable debate takes the story of the lionfish as a teacher and starting point for further reflection and critique of contemporary risk reasoning, addressing the stickiness of risk, questions about "whose existential risk”, hegemonic categories of uncertainty and danger, the commoditization of new uncertainties, and the entitlement implicit in employing risk reasoning.

Contribution short abstract:

The paternalistic institutions of the nation-state manage risks, sometimes deeply hidden ones like alienation and racialization, contributing to increasing division within society. We should recreate a space for collective action and the production of new and diverse realities of the future.

Contribution long abstract:

The production of Risks associated with contact with the otherness of bodies or perspectives is a dividing blade in society, which pedagogies of uncertainty in the form of practices that activate the community to collectively act/negotiate the restructuring of local and regional spaces (common yards or carbonsapce) can be a way to blunt. Through such activities, we domesticate the uncertainties associated with contact with otherness rather than generate risks associated with alienation. The processes of alienating and racialization of otherness are a kind of production of threat, and thus the risks associated with that threat.

The paternalistic institutions of the nation-state and the EU "providing security" externalize the risks (otherness) that may fall on the purity of the nation or the fenced settlement. At the same time, they create mechanisms to move away the risks that threaten minorities from potential ethnic attacks and discrimination, which sometimes widen differences that lead to antagonization and unrest. Managing risks from otherness creates barriers that push different social and ethnic groups further apart.

Usually hard-to-see actions that leave no space for joint debate only emanate physically in extreme situations, when a line of police separates protesters from the risk-managed everyday life.

Pedagogies of uncertainty can be ways of producing communities and mutual understanding in our otherness. We need to produce platforms on which, through understanding, we will try to create new imaginaries, new tomorrows.

Contribution short abstract:

The practices of the forest activists movements in Poland are a sort of attempt to create a pedagogy of uncertainty. Their activities are a response to the forest management carried out by the Polish forestry, and therefore also to how forest managers create and manage Risk.

Contribution long abstract:

State management of the forest is a deeply rooted cultural practice in Poland. The State Forests manage the forest by generating various Risks of forests, which at the same time shape the public's forests perception. There are dangerous trees that threaten people, risks related to the shortage of wood or the dangers of forest destruction, i.e. bark beetle, drought, fires. These are risks that are mostly the consequences of climate catastrophe, however, climate catastrophe itself is not a Risk emphasized by forest managers. Taking long-term action to slow climate change is not in the interest of the currently in power right-wing government, which stands in opposition to the narrative of nation-state sovereignty. That's why for the past few years Polish society has been activating for forest protection, and this is in response to the State Forests' failure to act in this direction. Forest activists demand dialogue with foresters and the influence of society on forest management and the shaping of forests in Poland. They are creating activist structures from the bottom up that allow the exchange of perspectives and actions aimed at protecting forests. Their goal is to get to know each other, share emotions, talk about opportunities, possibilities and threats to forest movements, and develop common actions and narratives. Activists, therefore, through their actions create pedagogies of uncertainty as a response to the Risks shaped by foresters. They are one method for collective action in the face of climate catastrophe and rethinking our relationship with nature.

Contribution short abstract:

How do blind and visually impaired people embody a remarkable way of being-in-the-world? What distinct sensory modes of perception are used to navigate, communicate, and lend care? And, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, how does this lifeworld endeavour under the hegemonic framework of risk?

Contribution long abstract:

In this paper I draw upon my ethnographic fieldwork with blind and visually impaired people in the UK categorised as high-risk during the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, I take a phenomenological approach to explore how blind and visually impaired people embody a remarkable way of being-in-the-world: utilising distinct sensory modes of perception, fashioned by the interplay of the body with its surroundings in everyday contexts (Csordas,1990). This perceptual distinctiveness was most notable in a context which challenged its deep subjectivity: where tactile navigation and affection were scrutinised under hegemonic framework of risks.

For my blind and visually impaired collaborators, tactile perception became a taboo and 'dangerous' means of being-in-the-world, resulting in their physical separatism and isolation from wider, sighted society. I argue that calculated risk has the power to reframe, hierarchically position and naturalise sensorial ways of knowing, giving primacy to ocular-centric somatic norms. Significantly, the objectification of proxemics and touch as risk objects politicised the way that visually impaired people negotiate their everyday lives via the utility of their bodies, and how they mediate, interpret and interact with their physical and social contexts.

Contribution short abstract:

My submission focuses on the exhibition of futurity in so-called ‘Museums of the Future’, considering how they reify hegemonic understanding of risk and crisis. I argue that they centre risk as a mode of navigating the world, only beginning to engage with uncertainty as pedagogical tool.

Contribution long abstract:

My submission to this roundtable draws from my PhD research on the exhibition of uncertainty and risk in so-called ‘Museums of the Future’. In the past years, governments across the world from Brazil, Dubai, Germany and beyond have invested in million-dollar museums that focus on the ‘Future of Humanity’. Visits to these museums are filled with robots, virtual reality headsets, and laser-light shows depicting a world grappling with climate change, fueled by technological developed and struggling to adapt to both. The museums pose ontological questions to their visitors, like 'what makes us human' and 'what are we willing to sacrifice to stay safe'? With minimal text panels and audio guides explaining how artificial intelligence, blockchain, and autonomous vehicles are designed, interactive art pieces prompt visitors to reflect on visual narratives of crises and catastrophes that may arise from new technologies and climate change. Central to these stories of risk and it’s management, with curators making calculated decisions around narrating the effect of crisis. I consider how these choices reify hegemonic understanding of who causes and suffers crises, options to diffuse crises, and how risk is framed in relation to choice. Visitors are largely composed of school-aged children and foreign dignitaries, making these museum unique spaces to investigate relations between state-citizen, and between states. I argue that these museums centre risk as a mode of knowing and navigating the world, only beginning to engage with uncertainty and the potential of uncertainty as pedagogical tool.