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

1950年美国的技术专家专家和灾难风险政府？[摘要]在过去的二十年里，美国发生的一系列事件使公众的注意力集中在政府？美国在预测和管理灾难性事件中的作用。在恐怖袭击、重大自然灾害、大流行性流感和金融危机之后，规划人员和决策者因未能为潜在灾难做好充分准备而受到批评。灾难性风险问题已成为一个关键领域，在这个领域，人们期望政府管理危及集体福祉的风险。这个项目从科学和技术研究的角度来探讨灾难性风险的政府：它询问了灾难性风险的类别是如何构成的，一方面是作为潜在破坏性事件界面上的知识和干预对象，另一方面是负责管理它们的机构和专家。该项目调查了独特的？推理风格？关于灾难风险，以及相关的知识实践，如灾难建模、脆弱性评估和模拟练习。其中许多做法最初是在冷战军事对抗的背景下发展起来的，然后转移到其他领域，包括应对自然灾害、公共卫生和防范恐怖主义。该项目追溯了专家开发工具来管理事件的关键时刻，这些事件的灾难性潜力超出了负责保护人民福祉的政府机构的能力。调查结果将对奖学金和政策的几个领域具有重要意义。这些发现表明，当代关于风险治理的争论可以理解为推理的冲突风格，不能通过引用验证真理的共同标准来裁决。对于政策制定者和风险分析师来说，项目？美国的研究结果将引起人们的兴趣，因为它们揭示了专家和官员之间在如何理解和减轻潜在灾难性事件风险方面冲突的根源。

Technocratic Expertise and the Government of Catastrophic Risk in the United States, 1950 ? 2010Stephen 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.