Extraordinary Risks, Ordinary Lives: Logics of Precariousness in Everyday Contexts

by Beata Switek (Editor), Allen Abramson (Editor), Hannah Swee (Editor)

Overview

This book untangles the relationship between expert categorisations of risk and the on-the-ground experiences of untrained ‘ordinary’ people who may be routinely subjected to significant danger in a variety of extraordinary contexts. It considers political, ethical and moral dimensions of risk and calls for more targeted ethnographic research, designed to reveal how grass-roots risk dispositions and practice intersect with official discourses, individual agency and community resilience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030839642
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	03/26/2022
Series:	Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty
Edition description:	1st ed. 2022
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Beata Świtek is Assistant Professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Allen Abramson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at University College London, UK.

Hannah Swee is a climate and capacity building specialist for the United Nations.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction: Ordinary life, extraordinary risk: On the normalisation of significant risk-taking in precarious contexts.- Part I. Self-Constitution: Defiance, endurance and choice.- Chapter 2. ‘Knowing how to walk’: Risk, violence and practices of endurance in urban Brazil.- Chapter 3. Risk negotiations in the mines of Potosí: Implications for rethinking current Health and Safety approaches.- Chapter 4. Regenerative medicine, unproven therapies and the framing of clinical risk.- Chapter 5. Commentary: Clear and present danger: Dodging and dealing with risk and uncertainty in everyday life.- Part II. Shifting dangers: Macro and micro politics of risk.- Chapter 6. ‘Keeping the conversation going’: Understanding risk in a context of escalating conflict in Syria.- Chapter 7. The Edgeworker’s Habitus: Climbing and Ordinary Risks.- Chapter 8. Commentary: Action, edgework, and the situated logics of risk.- Part III. Environmental threat and cultural possibility: Risk and the contemporary city.- Chapter 9. ‘Asılmak tehlikeli ve yasaktır’: Unintelligible mobility and uncertain manhood in Istanbul’s Old City.- Chapter 10. Ordinary life in the shadow of Vesuvius: Surviving the announced catastrophe.- Chapter 11. Keeping disasters under control: Anticipation, cyclones and responses to uncertainty.- Chapter 12. Commentary: Interpretive risk ethnography as a means of understanding risk problems: Encounters with the ordinary-extraordinary and what comes after?

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This collection of essays provides a wonderful insight into the very ordinary way that us, human beings engage with risk in everyday life. Often overlooked, this important book, captures a key dimension of the lived experience of living with risk.” (Frank Furedi, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Kent, UK)

“Through detailed ethnographic investigations, the contributors to this intriguing volume reveal what life is like for people and communities who regularly face extreme threats. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wants to know more about what it is like to regularly face ordeals such as violence, conflict and occupational hazards or deliberately seek out danger as part of leisure pursuits.” (Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre, University of NSW, Australia)

“This timely collection seeks to transcend the usual binaries between expert and lay, rationaland irrational that permeate much research on risk. It reveals not only the complexities inherent in the subject but also the situated knowledge that comes from qualitative approaches. A wide range of stimulating case studies and cross-disciplinary commentary deftly demonstrates people’s agency in negotiating the management of fear and the retention of hope in high risk, yet ordinary contexts.” (Pat Caplan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)