STS 4541 - [Risk and Society]

(SBA-AS)

Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

S. Hilgartner.

Hurricanes. Guns. Zika. Contaminated food. Climate change. Hazardous chemicals. Accidents. Cyber warfare. We live in a hazardous world of uncertainty, surrounded by claims about risks, some sounding the alarm, some seeking to reassure. Scientists, engineers, and managers try to measure and model the risks embedded in complex systems, hoping to improve our understanding and guide decisions. This seminar will consider risk from the perspective of the social sciences. How do individuals, organizations, and societies produce knowledge about hazards? How do they decide which threats deserve their attention? How do conflicting viewpoints about risk shape technology and politics? We will examine controversies in public health, disaster management, medicine, finance, emerging technologies, and the environment. The central theme of the course will be a social investigation of how natural and social sciences have approached the problem of risk.