The past 30 years have seen risk become a major field of study, most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic positioning it at the centre of public awareness, yet there is limited understanding of how risk can and should be used in policy making.
This book provides an accessible guide to the key elements of risk in policy making, including its role in rhetoric to legitimise decisions and choices.
Using risk as a framework, it examines how policy makers in a range of countries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and explains why some were more successful than others.
Table of Content
Foreword: Jens Zinn
Preface
1. Introduction: Risk as a Key Feature of Late Modern Societies
Part 1: Responding to the Challenges of the Pandemic
2. Managing Uncertainty: Framing COVID-19
3. The Risks of COVID-19: Probability, Categorisation and Outcomes
4. Communicating Risk: Public Health Messaging
Part 2: Mitigating Risk Through Science and Technology
5. ‘Following the Science’: Expertise and Risk
6. Risk Work To Maintain Services During the Pandemic
Part 3: Risk Narratives
7. Pandemic Narratives: Telling Stories About COVID-19 and Its Risks
8. Contesting Risk: Conspiracy Theories
9. Hindsight: Inquiries and the Blame Game
Part 4: Reflections on the Pandemic and Risk
10. Conclusion: Risk and the Pandemic
About the author
Andy Alaszewski is Emeritus Professor of Health Studies at the University of Kent. He is a social scientist who has specialised in the study of health risk and society, and is the Founding Editor of the international journal ‘Health, Risk and Society’.
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