Risk Education: Bridging the divide between society and academia?

This paper will address the question of how we can bridge the chiasm between academic and public conceptions of risk as a means to enrich societal debates on difficult but important present day issues. Over the course of the... [ view full abstract ]

This paper will address the question of how we can bridge the chiasm between academic and public conceptions of risk as a means to enrich societal debates on difficult but important present day issues. Over the course of the past decades, a significant scholarly body of work on risk has emerged. This development was paired by a proliferation of new academic conceptions of risk. The risk concept surfaced in the early days of naval exploration and trade. Henceforth it became closely intertwined with narratives of capitalist endeavor, closely linked to romantic ideals of adventure. In those early days, risk was thus not only associated with possible adverse outcomes, but also importantly entailed promises for future gains. With the emergence of modern society in which large technological systems are ubiquitous, risk conceptualizations have drifted towards an emphasis on adverse outcomes. In the present-day public domain, risk seems primarily to be associated with possible adverse outcomes. Many present day public controversies revolve around the rejection to assume a particular risk that could potentially have large societal benefits. This skeptical attitude can – at least partly – be attributed to a shift in the allocation of costs and benefits of present-day risks. As a result, there is a chiasm between how academics talk about risk and how laypeople understand risk and seen from the newly developed academic conceptions of risk, laypeople’s attitudes may seem irrational. This paper will explore the idea of bridging this chiasm by means of risk education; a novel approach that focuses not only on improving risk communication top-down, but enables future citizens to engage in a productive dialogue. What potential is there for education to enrich the conceptual tools of laypeople to discuss complicated issues that are coined in terms of risk. First, I will give a brief overview of the dominant risk conceptions as they have emerged in academia. Then, I will explore (non-exhaustively) earlier ideas with risk education and on what conceptions they were based.