Artikler

Indhold : Nummer 1 : Årgang 8 : 2005

 

u Tema

Tre risikokulturer

af Karen Lund Petersen

The Limitations of Risk Management

af Bill Durodie

Religious Risk and Certainty: Conflict or Coalition?

af Niels Henrik Gregersen

Health and Security

af Colin McInnes & Kelly Lee

Hinsidiges sikkerhedsdispotivet

af Flemming Bjerke

 

u Artikler

Tørklæder: diskrimination og nationalisme

af Sune Lægaard

Amerikansk sikkerhedspolitik efter den kolde krig

af Jakob Pall Skött og Anna Nielsen Kjær

Den amerikanske tilstedeværelse er fortsat nøglen til succes i Irak

af Peter Viggo Jakobsen

 

w Bøger

Bogomtaler

Gensvar til Carsten Henrichsen

af Tim Knudsen

Pas på! Selve dette udråb maner den magt, som begreber om risiko og sikkerhed har over os, frem. Dette nummers tema udspringer af en ambition om at forstå forskellige risiko- og sikkerhedsbegrebers indflydelse på samfundets indretning og den politiske magtstruktur. Forskellighed er noget af det første, der springer i øjnene. Både risiko- og sikkerhedsbegrebet anvendes forskelligt i forskellige sektorer og akademiske miljøer. Forsikringsbranchens brug af begreberne stemmer ikke overens med de dominerende forståelser i det internationale netværk omkring sundhedspolitik, lige såvel som økonomiske, sociologiske og politologiske tilgange til begreberne adskiller sig fra hinanden På trods af forskellighederne er det svært at komme udenom, at begreberne - om ikke andet i kraft af deres fælles sproglige betegnelse - relaterer til beslægtede fænomener.

Spændt ud mellem forskellighed og slægtskab og et fælles fokus på begrebernes politiske implikationer udpeger temaet et område med særdeles vigtige politiske implikationer i en tid, hvor risiko og sikkerhed via det toppolitiske fokus på terror sprænger alle grænser og præger udviklingen på traditionelt set adskilte politiske områder fra forsikringsmatematik til terrorbekæmpelse, fra international politik til sundhedspolitik, og fra sikkerhedspolitik til it-design.

 

 

Abstracts:

 

Tre risikokulturer

Karen Lund Petersen, research student in political science, University of Copenhagen.

 

By categorizing the debate on the concept of risk into three cultures, the article investigates how different approaches to risk facilitate a certain understanding of the role of business vis-à-vis society. One culture is the technical and economic approach arguing that risk can be measured and consequently controlled. Another culture argues that risk has to do with perceptions and worldviews. And the third culture argues that risk is a discursive construction constantly changing because of political struggles and decisions. The article shows that the choice of concept of risk is not without practical implications for business – and its actions and societal responsibilities. This is exemplified by looking at the role of business in the fight against terrorism.

 

The Limitations of Risk Management

Bill Durodie, director of the International Centre for Security Analysis, King’s College London.

 

This article explores the significance of social resilience in the light of the events of the 11th of September 2001. It examines the way in which evolving cultural contexts alter our perceptions of risk and disaster. It argues that the contemporary dominance of technically focused risk management led responses is limiting and may serve to undermine the ordinary human bonds that make us truly resilient. A political debate over societal values is required if we are to re-engage the public in order to achieve this and hence deal appropriately with disasters and terrorism.

 

Religious Risk and Certainty

Niels Henrik Gregersen, professor in systematic theology, University of Copenhagen.

 

It is argued that both Renaissance life-styles and Reformation theology are forerunners of our current risk-awareness. As soon as the religious securities offered by law and church regulations were abandoned, trust in face of uncertain futures became the new central value within the religious system. In the early Reformation, the life strategies of self-made security (‘Law’) gave way to new open life-styles that nonetheless needed to be nourished by a religious certainty (the ‘Gospel’). In later doctrinal developments, ‘salvation’ is no longer derived unilaterally from a divine predestination, but depends on the common result of a divine providence and the human attunement hereto. Similarly, the secular equivalent to salvation, ‘success’, depends both on the individual’s willingness to risk, and on the expectation of being supported by a social system that rewards the risk-taker, at least in the long run.

From this perspective, the discussion between realists and constructionists in the sociological literature is critically assessed. It is argued that the explanatory scheme proposed by Anthony Giddens and Ulrik Beck, and others, is insufficient. The pre-modern sense of fate, the modern will to control, and late-modern risk-awareness should not be put in contrast to one another. Rather, societies continue to concern themselves with external dangers (such as tsunamis and global warming) while they rely on technological assistance for coping with crises, and on cultural subsystems that are able to nourish a continuous risk-willingness in relation to uncertain futures.

 

Health and Security

Colin McInnes, Aberystwyth, and Kelley Lee, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

 

On the basis of our participation in a series of meetings from 2002 on dealing with health risks in a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral context, we conclude that there are fundamental differences in the perspectives on this issue adopted by respectively academic researchers, policy analysts and policy makers. In the article, we attempt to identify and address a series of conceptual questions which underpin such discussions but which are rarely articulated. In so doing, we have attempted to draw out areas of common ground, or where agreement might be possible, rather than attempting to impose a framework developed without reference to existing perspectives. Our purpose is not to analyse the state of play but to suggest a way forward. We argue that although individual security matters, the referent object should be the community (which is not the same as the state), and that the relevant criteria for any securitising claims vis-à-vis communities should be the severity of risk, immediacy of timeframe and geographical reach.

 

Hinsidiges sikkerhedsdispotivet

Flemming Bjerke, director of Politologisk Forskerskole, University of Copenhagen.

 

For a long time, networks, security and power have been intertwined. Networks are simultaneously useful and dangerous, and it takes power to secure them and those involved in them. Today, the increasing importance of cyberspace has actualised the importance of the relationship between networks, security and power, and in this article, I will analyse the way the American government and a number of the world’s largest IT-companies are trying to configure the developing new IT-based networks through a variety of technologies of control, such as Trusted Computing. My analysis demonstrates that these are organised in accordance with a new model for the exercise of power that I will call the economic power model. The increasing privatisation of power and security together with the growing importance of commercial actors in the formation of IT-security policies characterises this new power model and dictates important parts of national, private and cultural security. Further development along the lines identified here may eventually problematise central democratic values such as freedom of speech and the right to privacy.

 

Abstracts:

 

Tørklæder: Diskrimination og nationalisme

Sune Lægaard, research student in philosophy, University of Copenhagen.

 

The liberal concept of discrimination is sketched on the basis of the prohibition against discrimination in Danish legislation and the court decision in the latest Danish ‘headscarves affair’, and attention is drawn to the inescapably normative and non-neutral character of specific conceptions of discrimination. Liberal non-discrimination is contrasted with nationalism, exemplified with reference to the Danish People’s Party’s proposal for a ban on ‘culturally determined headdress’, and the possibility and meaningfulness of a liberal kind of nationalism which combines a plausibly liberal ban on discrimination with a nationalist concern with securing a common national identity for all citizens is discussed. Finally, the issue of how such a form of liberal nationalism would relate to Muslim headscarves in public schools is touched upon.

 

Amerikansk sikkerhedspolitik efter den kolde krig

Jakob Pall Skött and Anna Nielsen Kjær, students of political science at the University of Southern Denmark.

 

Analysing the official American security discourse after the end of the Cold War through a Foucauldian frame frame of analysis, the article concludes that the current security discourse is dominated by ontological insecurity. This risk-discourse is maintained through a governmentality logic of power which produces and regulates the social and political space through a praxis of control. Governmentality has paradoxical consequences for the war on terror which is fought in the name of freedom and democracy.

 

Den amerikanske tilstedeværelse er fortsat nøglen til succes i Irak

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, head of section, Danish Institute for International Studies.

 

The American presence in Iraq is necessary to secure the peaceful development of a democratic state. Without an international military presence securing that it is futile to try to influence the political process through force of arms, the problems in Iraq would develop into a full-fledged civil war, because the three main parties do not trust each other, are armed to the teeth, and have no tradition for peaceful solution of conflicts.