Mapping Risk Perceptions As Political Cultures: The Case of UK Biotechnology Regulation. Les Levidow, Open University
In studies of risk perception, there has been a disciplinary divide between two main types of approach cognitive and socio-cultural which ask quite different questions. Cognitive approaches tend to ask why risk perceptions vary among individuals, especially between lay people and experts. Socio-cultural approaches tend to ask why risk perceptions vary among institutions. Cultural Theory has generally been used (or criticized) for classifying groups according to a universal taxonomy of cosmologies (or political cultures); yet the theory was intended to analyse how individuals attach themselves to institutions.This paper seeks to bridge that disciplinary divide between cognitive and socio-cultural approaches, by drawing upon Cultural Theory in a more open-ended way. The paper explores tensions among regulatory officials within an institutional setting the UK procedure for regulating the risks of biotechnology. It analyses the related ways in which they conceptualize environmental risk, proactively assign (or avoid) blame for any harm, define their own responsibility, and establish (or maintain) their political authority.
In this case, regulatory officials anticipate and manage threats to their political authority, which they maintain by accommodating and/or marginalizing external pressures, in various ways. That imperative generates practical dilemmas and internal inconsistencies. Moreover, the potential threat to a market underlies the rationale for precautionary measures and some safety judgements. In all these ways, individuals embody tensions between the hierarchist and individualist cosmologies of Cultural Theory.
To illustrate those dynamics, this paper refers to cognitive maps based upon interviews.
Elsewhere cognitive mapping has been used mainly to depict the strategic thinking of individuals within an organization and thus to clarify its common problems. In particular, it is used by consultants who are paid to advise organizations. By contrast, this paper extends the technique to highlight internal tensions within an organization, even within same person, and often in response to external pressures. In such ways, cognitive maps have helped to illuminate how individuals both internalize and influence wider socio-political dynamics.