As Time Goes By: The Beginnings of Social and Behavioural Science Risk Research

Abstract

Attempts at studying risk issues in the social and behavioural sciences have now been going on for about 30 years. A brief summary of the first Swedish project, launched in 1975, and now available on the Internet site www.dynam‐it.com/risk, is presented. It was a fairly large‐scale attempt to review work then available or in a start‐up phase in several disciplines, mainly in the social sciences, but also in some of the humanities and in technology. The usual problems of interdisciplinary work were met with, and are briefly noted here. However, there was also a philosophical rift between empirical and theoretical/conceptual approaches which surfaced in requirements of “a theory of risk” and an accompanying and integrated analysis of risk generation in society. These requirements are as difficult to meet today as they were in the 1970s, and in some quarters they are just as demanding. However, the quest for “a theory of risk” is arguably meaningless, and fruitful research on risk topics is hardly to be expected to be the result from merely analysing the meaning of the word. Risk is just a four‐letter word.

Keywords:

• Social science
• risk research
• risk perception
• risk generation