Sensing Risk: Risk-Related Research in Sociology and Anthropology

Risk is said to saturate everyday life. Yet, as an object of research, the everyday experience of risk is not always clearly ‘sensed’ within the extant theoretical frameworks. For example, when people engage in so-called risk-taking behaviours, they may rarely have in mind the cool calculus embedded in the actuarial logics, algorithms, and systems of classification that organizations use to identify and manage risks.

This gap—between everyday lived experience and the organizational systems that ‘sense’ risk—provokes a range of interesting questions for risk research. For example, what emergent conceptual tools are useful for thinking about the contemporary dynamics of risk in everyday life? (How) Do they address the disjuncture between peoples’ lived experiences and organizational determinations of risk? Which milieu are best suited to empirically analyzing these dynamics?

To begin addressing these questions, this roundtable will discusses how sociologists and anthropologists are thinking about—and sensing—risk in their research.

Learn more about this workshop.