Through its exploration of the spatial dimension of risk, this book offers a brand new approach to theorizing risk, and significant improvements in how to manage, tolerate and take risks. A broad range of risks are examined, including natural hazards, climate change, political violence, and state failure. Case studies range from the Congo to Central Asia, from tsunami in Japan and civil war affected areas in Sri Lanka to avalanche hazards in Austria. In each of these cases, the authors examine the importance and role of space in the causes and differentiation of risk, in how we can conceptualize risk from a spatial perspective and in the relevance of space and locality for risk governance. This new approach – endorsed by Ragnar Löfstedt and Ortwin Renn, two of the world's leading and most prolific risk analysts – is essential reading for those charged with studying, anticipating and managing risks.
Reviews
‘The Spatial Dimension of Risk offers fresh, practical ways of seeing risk, governance and space. It combines previously separate approaches: sociology of risk, geography of hazard and politics of policy. The authors invite us to think about war, flood, disease and terrorism in new ways – changing our thought as profoundly as Beck’s ‘Risk Society’ 20 years ago.’ – Benjamin Wisner, disaster management consultant and author of Disaster Risk Reduction: Cases from Urban Africa (Earthscan 2009), Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction (Routledge 2011) and Disaster Management: International Lessons in Risk Reduction, Response and Recovery (upcoming Routledge 2013)
‘The book gives the floor to a central dimension of risk, namely its spatiality. Spatiality comes in many different disguises, in the Global South as well as in the North, be it state border policies, propagation of contagious diseases, distribution of drought or landslide risk, or the question on which scale a risk should be managed in a most opti With the concept of ‘Riskscapes’, the book provides an innovative and comprehensive frame for these widely diverse aspects of risk.’ – Jakob Rhyner, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security and Vice Rector in Europe of the United Nations University
Contents
Preface 1. Space Matters! Impacts for Risk Governance Ortwin Renn and Andreas Klinke 2. Riskscapes: The Spatial Dimensions of Risk Detlef Müller-Mahn and Jonathan Everts 3. A Place for Space in Risk Research – The Example of Discourse Analysis Approaches Peter Weichhart and Karl-Michael Höferl 4. Risk, Space and System Theory: Communication and management of natural hazards Jürgen Pohl, Swen Zehetmair and Julia Mayer 5. The Certainty of Uncertainty: Topographies of risk and landscapes of fear in Sri Lanka’s civil war Benedikt Korf 6. Anxiety and Risk: Pandemics in the 21st century Jonathan Everts 7. Ungoverned Territories – The con...