Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary PerspectivesGabriele Bammer, Michael Smithson This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years. Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike. Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference. Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept. George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities. In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty. |
Other editions - View all
Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives Gabriele Bammer,Michael Smithson No preview available - 2009 |
Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives Gabriele Bammer,Michael Smithson No preview available - 2008 |
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accessed ACT Legislative Assembly ACTEW Corporation adaptive adaptive management analysis approach areas assessment Australian Australian Capital Territory Australian National University Bammer behaviour Canberra certainty challenge Chapter cognitive cognitive bias complex concept context culture dealing with uncertainty debate decision decision theory decision-making discipline Dovers economic ecosystems Edward Elgar emergency management environment environmental evidence example expected utility experience focus framework future goals Handmer heroin users historians human human ecosystems ignorance impact Implementation Sciences important improvisation integration and implementation intelligence involved issues judgements knowledge law enforcement measurement methods moral motives nanotechnologies National nature outbreak outcomes perspectives political potential practice precautionary principle predict probability probability theory problems quantum reduce uncertainty relevant response rules SARS scientific sector Smithson social society statistical strategies tainty terrorist theory thinking tion uncer understanding University Press values Wolseley