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

技术官僚专业知识与美国政府的灾难风险，1950-2010史蒂芬·J·科利尔(The New School)和安德鲁·莱科夫(Andrew Lakoff)(南加州大学)摘要：在过去的二十年里，美国发生的一系列事件将公众的注意力集中在政府在预测和管理灾难性事件方面的角色上。在恐怖袭击、重大自然灾害、大流行性流感和金融危机之后，规划者和政策制定者因未能为潜在的灾难做好充分准备而受到批评。灾难性风险问题已成为政府管理集体福祉风险的关键领域。这个项目从科学和技术研究的角度探讨了巨灾风险的政府：它询问巨灾风险的类别是如何构成的，一方面是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这些事件的机构和专家。该项目调查了历史上出现的关于巨灾风险的独特的“推理风格”，以及相关的知识实践，如巨灾建模、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，包括自然灾害应对、公共卫生和恐怖主义准备。该项目追踪了当专家开发工具来管理灾难性潜力超过负责保护福祉的政府机构能力的事件时的关键时刻。调查结果将对学术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议可以理解为相互冲突的推理风格，不能参照确认真理的共同标准来判断。对于政策制定者和风险分析师来说，该项目的发现将是有意义的，因为它们揭示了专家和官员之间关于如何理解和减轻潜在灾难性事件风险的冲突根源。

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.