Risk and Society: The Interaction of Science, Technology and Public Policy

Risk and Society: The Interaction of Science, Technology and Public Policy PDF Author: M Waterstone
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401136343
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Life in the last quarter of the twentieth century presents a baffling array of complex issues. The benefits of technology are arrayed against the risks and hazards of those same technological marvels (frequently, though not always, arising as side effects or by-products). This confrontation poses very difficult choices for individuals as well as for those charged with making public policy. Some of the most challenging of these issues result because of the ability of technological innovation and deployment to outpace the capacity of institutions to assess and evaluate implications. In many areas, the rate of technological advance has now far outstripped the capabilities of institutional monitoring and control. While there are many instances in which technological advance occurs without adverse consequences (and in fact, yields tremendous benefits), frequently the advent of a major innovation brings a wide array of unforeseen and (to some) undesirable effects. This problem is exacerbated as the interval between the initial development of a technology and its deployment is shortened, since the opportunity for cautious appraisal is decreased.

Risk and Society: The Interaction of Science, Technology and Public Policy

Risk and Society: The Interaction of Science, Technology and Public Policy PDF Author: M Waterstone
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401136343
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
Life in the last quarter of the twentieth century presents a baffling array of complex issues. The benefits of technology are arrayed against the risks and hazards of those same technological marvels (frequently, though not always, arising as side effects or by-products). This confrontation poses very difficult choices for individuals as well as for those charged with making public policy. Some of the most challenging of these issues result because of the ability of technological innovation and deployment to outpace the capacity of institutions to assess and evaluate implications. In many areas, the rate of technological advance has now far outstripped the capabilities of institutional monitoring and control. While there are many instances in which technological advance occurs without adverse consequences (and in fact, yields tremendous benefits), frequently the advent of a major innovation brings a wide array of unforeseen and (to some) undesirable effects. This problem is exacerbated as the interval between the initial development of a technology and its deployment is shortened, since the opportunity for cautious appraisal is decreased.

Understanding Regulation

Understanding Regulation PDF Author: Robert Baldwin
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199576084
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 563

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Book Description
An introduction to the practical and theoretical issues that are central to the study of regulation, which a particular focus on contested areas and how they are dealt with.

Future Risks and Risk Management

Future Risks and Risk Management PDF Author: B. Brehmer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401583889
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Future Risks and Risk Management provides a broad perspective on risk, including basic philosophical issues concerned with values, psychological issues, such as the perception of risk, the factors that generate risks in current and future technological and social systems, including both technical and organizational factors. No other volume adopts this broad perspective. Future Risks and Risk Management will be useful in a variety of contexts, both for teaching and as a source book for the risk professional needing to be informed of the broader issues in the field.

Threat Talk

Threat Talk PDF Author: Mary Manjikian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317010272
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
'Threat Talk' exposes how US and Chinese scientists and policy-makers have understood and responded to the problem of internet addiction in their societies. Is the internet good or bad for society? American analysts like Lessig and Zittrain suggest that the internet is inherently liberating and positive for society, while Morozov and Sageman warn that the internet poses risks to citizens and societies. Using a comparative framework to illustrate how the two states differ in their assessments of the risks to citizens posed by the introduction of new technology, Mary Manjikian compellingly argues that both 'risk' and 'disease' are ideas which are understood differently at different historic periods and in different cultures. Her culturalist approach claims that the internet is neither inherently helpful, nor inherently threatening. Rather, its role and the dangers it poses may be understood differently by different societies. Is the internet good or bad for society? The answer, it appears, is 'it depends'.

Communication Yearbook 18

Communication Yearbook 18 PDF Author: Brant R. Burleson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135152500
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
Communication Yearbook 18 originally published in 1995 focuses on cognitive approaches to the study of human communication, examining topics such as the formation of interaction goals, cognitive models of message production, mindfulness and minlessness in message processing and attention to televised messages. Sections two and three concentrate on the communicative management of health and environmental risks, critical analyses of classical approaches to risk communication and the ways in which people are connected through diverse forms of communicative behavior, including supportive relationships, electronic mail systems and ideologies. Commentaries in each section provide alternative perspectives on the state of research, extend issues of significance and help engage the reader with contemporary debates.

Deliberative Democracy for the Future

Deliberative Democracy for the Future PDF Author: Genevieve Fuji Johnson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 080209032X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The theory of deliberative democracy promotes the creation of systems of governance in which citizens actively exchange ideas, engage in debate, and create laws that are responsive to their interests and aspirations. While deliberative processes are being adopted in an increasing number of cases, decision-making power remains mostly in the hands of traditional elites. In Democratic Illusion, Genevieve Fuji Johnson examines four representative examples: participatory budgeting in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Deliberative Polling by Nova Scotia Power Incorporated, a national consultation process by the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and public consultations embedded in the development of official languages policies in Nunavut. In each case, measures that appeared to empower the public failed to challenge the status quo approach to either formulating or implementing policy. Illuminating a critical gap between deliberative democratic theory and its applications, this timely and important study shows what needs to be done to ensure deliberative processes offer more than the illusion of democracy.

Political Ecology

Political Ecology PDF Author: David Bell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134670923
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
This collection addresses environmental issues from a contemporary political economy perspective. The papers explore issues such as the link between culture and nature, the impact of humanity on the environment, technology's role and communications

Quotas in International Environmental Agreements

Quotas in International Environmental Agreements PDF Author: Amanda Wolf
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134176988
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Quotas have been used in international environmental agreements for at least a century and, in tandem with incentive approaches, should continue to be crucial to realizing a sustainable environment. This text is a critical examination of quotas both as regulatory tools and as products of negotiation. It reviews the main features of environmental problems, the regulatory options and criteria used to judge them, and the various ways of explaining negotiated outcomes. Quotas in the management of fisheries, other resources, freshwater and marine pollution, and air pollution are also described. Selected examples are considered in detail to provide an understanding of how quotas were developed in scientific, political, economic and social context. An assessment of the key features of quotas in practice leads to the identification of an emerging approach, the negotiation of constrained local quotas. The approach is a practical way to balance efficiency and fairness in complex negotiations, without sacrificing environmental effectiveness.

Discerning Prometheus

Discerning Prometheus PDF Author: Robert A. Wauzzinski
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838638668
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
These are the central questions of this book, a work that analyzes four ways that technology is understood."--BOOK JACKET.

Counting Civilian Casualties

Counting Civilian Casualties PDF Author: Taylor B. Seybolt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199977321
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
A popular myth emerged in the late 1990s: in 1900, wars killed one civilian for every eight soldiers, while contemporary wars were killing eight civilians for every one soldier. The neat reversal of numbers was memorable, and academic publications and UN documents regularly cited it. The more it was cited, the more trusted it became. In fact, however, subsequent research found no empirical evidence for the idea that the ratio of civilians to soldiers killed in war has changed dramatically. But while the ratios may not have changed, the political significance of civilian casualties has risen tremendously. Over the past century, civilians in war have gone from having no particular rights to having legal protections and rights that begin to rival those accorded to states. The concern for civilians in conflict has become so strong that governments occasionally undertake humanitarian interventions, at great risk and substantial cost, to protect strangers in distant lands. I n the early 1990s, the UN Security Council authorized military interventions to help feed and protect civilians in the Kurdish area of Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia. And in May 2011 , Barack Obama 's National Security Advisor explained the United States' decision to support NATO's military intervention in these terms "When the president made this decision, there was an immediate threat to 700,000 Libyan civilians in the town of Benghazi. We've had a success here in terms of being able to protect those civilians." Counting Civilian Casualties aims to promote open scientific dialogue by high lighting the strengths and weaknesses of the most commonly used casualty recording and estimation techniques in an understandable format. Its thirteen chapters, each authoritative but accessible to nonspecialists, explore a variety of approaches, from direct recording to statistical estimation and sampling, to collecting data on civilian deaths caused by conflict. The contributors also discuss their respective advantages and disadvantages, and analyze how figures are used (and misused) by governments, rebels, human rights advocates, war crimes tribunals, and others. In addition to providing analysts with a broad range of tools to produce accurate data, this will be an in valuable resource for policymakers, military officials, jou rnalists, human rights activists, courts, and ordinary people who want to be more informed--and skeptical--consumers of casualty counts.