Narratives of Environmental Risk: Fate, Luck and Fortune

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposed network brings together scholars from across different disciplines (arts, humanities, social and physical sciences; see Academic Beneficiaries), creative writers, business strategists and policy makers to investigate the presence and role of concepts of fate, luck and fortune (hereafter FLF) in discussions of environmental risks, to develop a nuanced understanding of the variety of ways in which, in different historical and geographical contexts, concepts of FLF have played a role or roles in perceptions and expressions of risk, and responses to it, and continue to do so. In modern post-enlightenment western culture, risk tends to be described in terms of quantification. Setting FLF side-by-side with risk may seem incongruous: it has been argued that the idea of risk is what differentiates the modern era; risk management has become an arena of expertise, and specialised education and training. However, it is now widely accepted that people respond less to objective information about risks and take more notice of their own perceptions of danger, shaped by the implicit assumptions of their particular culture, including the role of FLF; nevertheless, these conceptions and the role that they play in shaping decision-making are rarely if ever made explicit and addressed. This network aims to provide a systematic overview of the ways in which concepts of FLF have been, and continue to be expressed in historical, contemporary and futuristic narratives concerned with environmental risk, for example, from ancient Greek dedications to the goddess tuche ('Chance'), to contemporary climate change fiction. Such an exploration will not only bring insights from other cultures, but also provide new perspectives on contemporary narratives of environmental risk-with the potential to reconsider current approaches to responses to environmental risk. There are three planned workshops addressing the following themes: - Historicising the role of FLF, providing scholars who study environmental risks with clarification of the development of these ideas and their use in this context;- Developing new policy approaches, exploring how a more thorough understanding of the role of FLF in narratives of environmental risk may be used to develop new responses in current policy; - The popularisation of FLF, exploring the ways in which conceptions of FLF (or personifications of abstract powers) remain powerful in historical and current discourses (visual, written and oral) concerned with environmental risks, and how they shape perceptions of agency.The project aims to provide insights that that will develop beyond the usual assumptions about environmental risks, gaining new perspectives, developing new questions and approaches to data, working with new evidence and methodologies. This will be achieved by bringing together the heuristic tools of different disciplines across the arts and humanities, sciences and social sciences. The network will also include participants from a broad range of publics and key stakeholders, including those working at the science - policy interface, in business, but also in the creative arts. As well as helping to develop a shared arena of research, the network aims to contribute to relevant public and policy conversations concerning the nature and role of fate luck and fortune in contemporary society, and in attitudes to environmental risks.