Katarina Giritli Nygren - A Framework of Intersectional Risk Theory in the Age of Ambivalence

This book brings feminist theories and concepts to the sociology of risk in an attempt to define intersectional risk theories in times of ambivalence. Why ambivalence? As Smart states: Ambivalence, both analytical and existential, is an understandable consequence of not knowing, and knowing that one cannot know for sure, precisely what will emerge from the various complex processes of restructuring through which modernity is continually (re)constituted. Late modernity , or the postmodern reconditioning of modernity , constitutes a form of social life in which ambivalence is pervasive (Smart , p. 11). This is a framework that embraces a critical perspective of ambivalence to unpack risk, conceptualising social as well as material artefacts in terms of risk and its relation to power . Therefore, the scope of the book is not to explain the world and everything observed within it through a few concepts or mechanisms. Rather, it seeks to define a frame, or frames, through which we can begin to deepen our understanding of certain phenomena, namely risk, power , and inequality , and to suggest a number of theoretical entry points to such analyses.

A central perspective in this process is the feminist concept of intersectionality that is, awareness of the simultaneity of multiple oppressions and privileges that are historically and contextually embedded. The outcome is a theoretical framework that we call intersectional risk theory, which seeks not only to contribute to the scientific understanding of risk and inequality but to provide tools for tracing cracks and openings in the fabric of power and for rethinking risk governance in contemporary society. Intersectionality as a concept was popularised by Kimberl Crenshaw (). Today the concept of intersectionality has travelled far from its original field, and the insights it offers for understanding oppression are now used in diverse ways in different contexts. As with the notion of subjectivity, constituted by mutually reinforcing vectors of race, gender , class, and sexuality , intersectionality has emerged as the primary theoretical tool designed to interrogate hierarchy, hegemony, and exclusivity.

In this first chapter, we will set the scene for the book by introducing our view of ambivalence and then present a short overview of the book. Before we turn to ambivalence, there are a couple of other issues important to discuss and position ourselves against.

To begin with, it is important to acknowledge that risk theories are drawn from, and in turn contribute to, a particularly Western conceptualisation of risk analysis that is progressive, evidence based, and rational, situated historically and socially within a post-Enlightenment tradition of modernity , postmodernity, and development discourse. Further, social science theorising and investigating risk are often deeply grounded in the enlightened history of the Global North; the approach deployed by the authors of this book is no exception. In addition, although understandings of risk have not developed along the same historical trajectory all around the world, the concept has been deployed universally. Both the development of understanding risk and its deployment has happened through the imperialism of certain scientific practices and historical phases of colonialism, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism, which carry a progressive, scientific paradigm underpinned by an unchallenged assumption of objectivity (Desmond ).