Overview
- Brings together long-term ethnographic research to redefine notions of risk
- Reveals how risk and risk categorizations are related to individual agency and community resilience
- Shows how societal risk can in fact forge new and positive forms of social experience
Part of the book series: Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty (CRSTRU)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Self-Constitution: Defiance, Endurance and Choice
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Front Matter
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Shifting Dangers: Macro and Micro Politics of Risk
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Front Matter
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Environmental Threat and Cultural Possibility: Risk and the Contemporary City
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book untangles the relationship between expert categorisations of risk and the on-the-ground experiences of untrained ‘ordinary’ people who may be routinely subjected to significant danger in a variety of extraordinary contexts. It considers political, ethical and moral dimensions of risk and calls for more targeted ethnographic research, designed to reveal how grass-roots risk dispositions and practice intersect with official discourses, individual agency and community resilience.
Reviews
“This collection of essays provides a wonderful insight into the very ordinary way that us, human beings engage with risk in everyday life. Often overlooked, this important book, captures a key dimension of the lived experience of living with risk.” (Frank Furedi, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Kent, UK)
“Through detailed ethnographic investigations, the contributors to this intriguing volume reveal what life is like for people and communities who regularly face extreme threats. This book is highly recommended for anyone who wants to know more about what it is like to regularly face ordeals such as violence, conflict and occupational hazards or deliberately seek out danger as part of leisure pursuits.” (Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre, University of NSW, Australia)“This timely collection seeks to transcend the usual binaries between expert and lay, rationaland irrational that permeate much research on risk. It reveals not only the complexities inherent in the subject but also the situated knowledge that comes from qualitative approaches. A wide range of stimulating case studies and cross-disciplinary commentary deftly demonstrates people’s agency in negotiating the management of fear and the retention of hope in high risk, yet ordinary contexts.” (Pat Caplan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Allen Abramson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at University College London, UK.
Hannah Swee is a climate and capacity building specialist for the United Nations.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Extraordinary Risks, Ordinary Lives
Book Subtitle: Logics of Precariousness in Everyday Contexts
Editors: Beata Świtek, Allen Abramson, Hannah Swee
Series Title: Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83962-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-83961-1Published: 29 March 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-83964-2Published: 30 March 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-83962-8Published: 25 March 2022
Series ISSN: 2523-7268
Series E-ISSN: 2523-7276
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 336
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour
Topics: Sociology of Culture, Medical Sociology, Political Sociology, Ethnography