Scholars Award: An Empirical Study of the Making and Re-Making of Knowledge About Risk

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This award is to support an empirical investigation of knowledge-making practices in an organization that has recently launched an ambitious research program intended to make building construction more resilient to severe weather by identifying sources of risk, develop mitigation strategies, and trigger widespread change. That organization is the Insurance Institute for Home and Business Safety, a nonprofit funded by property and casualty insurance companies, which opened a unique research center in rural South Carolina in 2010. The purpose of the center is to produce and communicate knowledge about how to mitigate damage from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, hailstorms, and wind-driven rain. The centerpiece of the center is an enormous wind tunnel large enough to test full-scale buildings. The study of this center that is being supported by this award has as its overarching goal to understand how knowledge about risk is made and remade as a way of getting at broader conceptions of risk. The primary outcome of this project is its contribution of a case study for a book manuscript; the book will mainly be of interest to social science audiences, particularly the multi-disciplinary community of scholars interested in risk. The PI will also produce at least one article for policy makers and risk managers, a perspective piece for a science policy forum, at least one article for a general interest audience. The results of this project will have implications for public policy, the insurance industry, and damage mitigation; this is particularly so given the prospects of climate change. This project aims to advance theory and empirical knowledge about the work of experts who self-consciously set out to transform the conceptual frameworks and management practices through which society copes with a specific set of hazards. Understanding how knowledge about risk is made and remade is important for both intellectual and practical reasons. The empirical research will enable the PI to further develop theory about how dynamic change in knowledge about causation and control of risk shapes technological artifacts, systems, and infrastructures. The research will also shed light on the challenges of producing persuasive results and on the reception, uptake, and repackaging of mitigation knowledge.