Koç Sociology Talks: Disasters and Society IV: Risk, Uncertainty and Ontological Security

Departing from Habermas’s important (1987:400) observation that “It takes an earthquake to make us aware that we had regarded the ground on which we stand everyday as unshakable,” in this talk I explore how critical studies of risk can shed important light on how we may cope with uncertainty and vulnerability in everyday life, and how this coping (or not coping) may become increasingly challenging when our everyday assumptions are no longer able to be taken-for-granted. More specifically, I will do this by considering how we might critically deconstruct risk, following insights from Douglas and Heyman, before exploring conceptual and empirical work on reflexivity (as self-confrontation) and ontological security following Beck and Giddens. Latterly I will explore what it means to (not) cope amid crises through studies on how risk, trust, hope and magic are combined or “bricolaged” in our everyday handling of vulnerability and uncertainty.