Collaborative Research: Technocratic Expertise and the Government of Catastrophic Risk in the United States, 1950-2010

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Technocratic Expertise and the Government of Catastrophic Risk in the United States, 1950 ? 2010 Stephen J. Collier (The New School) and Andrew Lakoff (University of Southern California) Abstract: In the last two decades a series of events in the United States has focused public attention on the government's role in anticipating and managing catastrophic events. In the wake of terrorist attacks, major natural disasters, pandemic influenza, and financial crises, planners and policy-makers have been criticized for their failure to prepare adequately for potential catastrophes. The problem of catastrophic risk has become a critical arena in which government is expected to manage risks to collective wellbeing. This project approaches the government of catastrophic risk from the vantage of science and technology studies: it asks how the category of catastrophic risk is constituted as an object of knowledge and intervention at the interface of potentially disruptive events, on the one hand, and the agencies and experts charged with managing them, on the other. The project investigates the historical emergence of distinctive "styles of reasoning" about catastrophic risk, and associated knowledge practices such as catastrophe modeling, vulnerability assessment, and simulation exercises. Many of these practices were initially developed in the context of the Cold War military confrontation, and then migrated to other areas, including natural disaster response, public health, and terrorism preparedness. The project traces critical moments when experts developed tools to manage events whose catastrophic potential outstripped the capacities of government agencies charged with protecting wellbeing. Findings from the investigation will be significant for several areas of scholarship and policy. These findings indicate that contemporary controversies over risk governance can be understood in terms of conflicting styles of reasoning that cannot be adjudicated by reference to common standards for validating truths. For policy-makers and risk analysts, the project's findings will be of interest in that they shed new light on the sources of conflict among experts and officials over how to understand and mitigate the risk of potentially catastrophic events.