This article was downloaded by: [Tufts University]

On: 05 November 2014, At: 14:58

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Global Society
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgsj20

Trust Us and Be Scared: The Changing

Nature of Contemporary Risk
John Handmer & Paul James
Published online: 02 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: John Handmer & Paul James (2007) Trust Us and Be Scared: The Changing
Nature of Contemporary Risk, Global Society, 21:1, 119-130

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13600820601116609

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 Global Society, Vol. 21, No. 1, January, 2007

Trust Us and Be Scared: The Changing Nature of

Contemporary Risk

JOHN HANDMER and PAUL JAMES

The contemporary Western preoccupation with risk assessment is profound. However,

this does not mean that the concept of risk is a useful theoretical tool for understanding
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

contemporary society in general. The talk of a risk society is part of a tendency to take
risk as an all-embracing category with little attention paid either to the distinction
between abstract risk and risk assessment, or to different formations of risk in time
and place. We argue that a fundamental shift in the communication of risk has also
emerged, particularly in the context of the war on terror. Most of the classical risk com-
munication literature is concerned with persuading people that the authorities or com-
panies have the expertise to take care of some problem: “there is a risk”, it says, “we can
never manage it completely, but be reassured that we are taking care of it on your behalf”.
With the emergence of the war on terror, a number of changes have occurred. Govern-
ments in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere stress the
novelty and radical emergence of terrorism-as-risk, in part by ignoring history and con-
centrating on the symptoms to maintain a continuing sense of danger. Second, the prior
emphasis on experts and expert systems for generating risk assessment is being actively
undermined by ideologues. These changes represent a disturbing shift from the domi-
nance of the Enlightenment idea of trusting in science and knowledge to accepting a
post-Enlightenment idea that authority and ideology are all that can ever underpin
the assessment of abstract risk, particularly in the case of terrorism.

Introduction
The contemporary Western preoccupation with risk assessment is profound.
However, this concern does not by itself suggest that the concept of risk is a
useful theoretical tool for understanding contemporary society in general. Just
as some authors talk of the “risk society”, others refer to the “technological
society”, the “audit society”, the “surveillance society” and the “information
society”. These terms indicate that something is changing about our world, but
they are only metaphorically useful as generalisations.1 The characterisation of
a risk society is part of a contemporary tendency to take risk as an all-embracing
category with little attention paid to the different dominant and changing

1. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society (London: Sage, 1992); Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York:
Vintage Books, 1964); David Lyon, The Information Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); Michael
Power, The Audit Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

ISSN 1360-0826 print=ISSN 1469-798X online/07=010119– 12 # 2007 University of Kent

DOI: 10.1080=13600820601116609
 120 J. Handmer and P. James

formations of risk, both across history and across different places and issues.
Understanding formations of risk entails moving between understanding risk in
the context of the social whole and stepping down into the detail of risk-assess-
ment practices as well as the rhetoric of risk communication. In turn, understand-
ing risk communication and its rhetoric entails both confronting the issue of what
it means politically (including the representation of risk and how it is mediated to
the public) and asking what objectively has engendered the increasing emphasis
on the calculability of risk—its codification, objectification, and rationalisation.2
The argument of this article is, first, that modernisation has brought with it new
kinds of risks. These are more abstract and disembodied risks than previously
known, risks “layered over” older forms of risk. Rather than just dangerous
events, these generally invisible and complex risks include patterned processes
of increased danger such as background radiation, ozone depletion, global
warming and global dimming. These risks are permanent rather than temporary,
global rather than local, and manufactured by us in practical and ideological
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

ways. They are abstract processes in the sense that we cannot necessarily directly
see or feel them, but they are material in the sense that they involve the changing
form of nature itself or of sociality and its patterns of production and reproduction.
Recently this layer of abstract risk has been further complicated by acts of ter-
rorism as a form of danger that brings together both directly embodied practices
and disembodied abstract processes—acts of violence by people who are willing
to put their lives in jeopardy to extend the possibilities of technologies that may or
may not have been designed for killing but can be inserted into the machinery of
everyday life. Both terrorism and the global risks mentioned above present pro-
blems of incalculability and are therefore usually considered uninsurable. As
insurance (and various forms of compensation) has been a primary mechanism
for coping with the uncertainty of risk and its consequences, its absence alters
the implications of risk considerably. What is different about terrorism is that it
brings an older sense of embodied intentionality into relation with newer patterns
of abstract risk—and so in doing it compounds both.
The second argument is that the contemporary emphasis on the category of risk
can only be understood in the context of the general intensification of processes of
abstraction—in particular, processes of codification, objectification, and rationalisa-
tion along with other processes such as accelerated commodification and
mediation. These are uneven but nevertheless dominant regimes that mark our
time. In other words, in the practice of contemporary social reproduction we
have increasingly systematised the anticipation of events that we once only knew
as dangers, perils, hazards, problems, storms, tsunamis, bad luck, and acts of
God.3 We have drawn those events into rationalising frameworks of understanding
(rationalisation), codified them into discrete comparable elements (codification),
reified or standardised their meaning (objectification), worked out their financial
consequences and commercialised their “control” (commodification), and set up
extended ways of communicating their meaning (mediation).

2. Joost van Loon, Risk and Technological Society: Towards a Sociology of Virulence (London: Routledge,
2002). He argues along similar lines, identifying the practices of “visualization, signification and
valorization”, p. 97.
3. Owen Ingles explores the development of the language of risk and uncertainty. “A Linguistic
Approach to Hazard, Risk and Error”, in John Handmer et al., New Perspectives on Risk and Uncertainty
(Mt Macedon: Australian Counter Disaster College, 1991).
 Trust Us and Be Scared 121

Finally, we suggest that the subjective representation of different kinds of risk

adds another layer of complexity to the nature of risk today, particularly in the
context of the mass mediation of messages of risk management. The represen-
tation of risk is more prone to political vagaries than the practice of risk assess-
ment that has developed in relation to longer term social changes. Recently we
have seen a split in the kinds of risk communication. Most of the classical risk
communication literature of the last few decades is concerned with building at
least the appearance of trust to persuade people that the authorities or companies
have the expertise to take care of some problem. “There is a risk”, it says, “we can
never manage it completely, but be reassured that we are taking care of it on your
behalf.” However, at least in the arena of global security, particularly in the
representations of the war on terror and debates around global warming, a
number of changes have occurred. The dominant discourse of anti-terror now
emphasises the novelty and radical emergence of terrorism-as-risk, in part by
ignoring history and concentrating on the symptoms to maintain a continuing
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

sense of danger. Alternatively, in the discourse on global warming, Australian

and American governments call for more studies and use various techniques of
risk communication to defer substantial policy changes. In both cases, the reassur-
ing voice of classical risk literature has been overturned. Now the intonation runs
along two parallel lines; “there are risks, trust us, but also be very concerned” (in
the context of terrorism), or, “there is no verified risk, trust us, but if in doubt,
manage your own concerns” (in the context of global warming).

Qualifying the “Risk Society” Thesis

Western countries have become so preoccupied with risk that the concept has been
offered as a basis for understanding contemporary society, particularly through
the work of Ulrich Beck. He writes that the concept of risk society “designates a
developmental stage of modern society in which the social, political, economic
and individual risks increasingly tend to escape the institutions for monitoring
and protection in industrial society”.4 He continues:

The transition from the industrial to the risk period of modernity occurs
undesired, unseen and compulsively in the way of the autonomized
dynamism of modernization, following the pattern of latent side effects.
One can virtually say that the constellations of the risk society are pro-
duced because the certitudes of industrial society (the consensus for pro-
gress of the abstraction of ecological effects and hazards) dominate the
thought and action of people in industrial society. Risk society is not an
option that one can choose or reject in the course of political disputes. It
arises in the continuity of autonomized modernization processes which
are blind and deaf to their own effects and threats . . . Let us call the auton-
omous, undesired and unseen, transition from industrial to risk society
reflexivity (to distinguish it from reflection). Then “reflexive moderniz-
ation” means self-confrontation with the effects of risk society that
cannot be dealt with and assimilated in the system of industrial
4. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and
Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 5.
 122 J. Handmer and P. James

society—as measured by the latter’s institutionalized standards. The fact

that this very constellation may later, in a second stage, in turn become the
object of (public, political and scientific) reflection must not obscure the
unreflected, quasi-autonomous mechanism of the transition: it is precisely
the abstraction which produces and gives reality to risk society.5

There are a number of issues to sort out in this complex and provocative state-
ment, including what seem to be conflations and problems of overstatement. By
making risk a “master category” and naming a particular kind of society in
terms of risk, Beck gets himself into an epochal-style argument that may be unsus-
tainable. First, industrialisation continues as a process of production despite the
changing layers of risk. Industrialisation is not replaced by a new formation of
risk. Second, there is no historical gap or split between the first and second
stages of modernity to which Beck refers. Beck himself describes contemporary
society as being “between Industrial Society and Risk Society”, with considerable
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

overlap between them.6 Reflection on risks and dangers, however uneven, has
always occurred, and changes in the nature of that reflection—most pointedly,
the abstraction of risk analysis—has occurred alongside the abstraction of risk
itself. Here Beck is analytically conflating the process of the material abstraction
of risk—or the way in which dangers become generalised as non-palpable and
systemic—with the process of risk assessment, which has also become more
abstract through the use of intellectual techniques of codification, rationalisation
and objectification (discussed more fully below). It is being over-dramatic and his-
torically misleading to say that we have suddenly become aware of abstract risks
that have crept up upon us. The reality is more confronting. Each development in
technology and science, for example, has always been accompanied by abstract
practices of risk assessment, however flawed, politically framed or otherwise
motivated. For example, the nuclear scientists working at Los Alamos on the
first atomic bomb acknowledged the risk that triggering the bomb would set off
a nuclear chain reaction without end and destroy the planet, but they were pre-
pared to take that risk. Equally, within a short time the architects of Mutually
Assured Destruction (MAD) knew that what they were doing entailed the risk
of global nuclear war. Today, the proponents of genetically engineered food pro-
duction may believe that GM is a positive development, but they also know that
the process contains the inherent risk that modified organisms are not containable.

The Abstraction of Risk Assessment

There has been a long-term transformation in the nature of risk assessment that
can be traced across the period of modernity to its intensifying notoriety over
the past decade or so. It is signalled by the development of actuary tables, accoun-
ting methods, auditing systems, and risk-modelling techniques—generally traced
to the establishment of Lloyds insurance in the 1700s.7 But more recently it has
been extended in exponential ways by the computerisation of statistics and
social measurement. Understanding risk assessment requires seeing it as part of
5. Ibid., pp. 5–6.
6. Beck, Risk Society, op. cit., p. 72.
7. See, for example, Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), Ch. 9: “Insurance Business: The Risk Managers”.
 Trust Us and Be Scared 123

a more general process of the abstraction of how we produce and manage knowl-
edge. This can be analysed along various lines.
First, knowledge production has become increasingly codified. Computers have
facilitated a change that goes much deeper than simply speeding up communi-
cation of information or access to it. Through technologies of computerised infor-
mation storage, the dominant understanding of knowledge has become what
might be called “useful information”—namely, that which can be abstracted as
data. Older senses of knowledge continue, but they are overlaid by an imperative
to break down information into comparable, transferable, applied information
“bits”. Information is dissolved into its discrete, constituent parts and then put
back together in systematic form. This is what Daniel Bell uncritically calls “the
codification of knowledge into abstract systems of symbols”.8 This codification,
proceeding apace with the increasing specialisation of the risk management
field, means that knowledge (and often more importantly values) is ignored in
the risk calculus unless it conforms to the code adopted by the specialists con-
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

cerned. The result has been that not only are those at risk often excluded from
the processes of risk analysis, but decisions regarding management specialists
from cognate disciplines are also excluded. Those operating within a different
code or without codified knowledge are treated as irrelevant, ignorant, or as
having faulty perceptions of the risk.9 At the same time certain types of risk
become intensely political, such as terrorism, and debate about the nature of
that risk is cast out of bounds.
Second, knowledge production has simultaneously become increasingly ration-
alised. This is enacted through techniques of abstract “accounting”, from measur-
ing risk to setting up calibrated mechanisms for assessing organisational
performance. Institutions from corporations and military apparatus to univer-
sities and aid agencies have turned to performance management schemes as a
way of managing staff, and to activity-based costing (ABC) as a way of managing
resources. In the “Foreword” to a book on activity-based management (ABM),
Jeremy Hope turns this process into a kind of militarised threat-management
system:

It has become increasingly clear that companies can no longer plan and
control their way to the future. Today’s global marketplace is a fast
changing world. To survive, organizations need to operate with flexible
strategies that must counter competitive threats and capture new oppor-
tunities . . . Traditional accounting and budgeting systems act as a barrier
to such changes as they reinforce the centralized command and control
business model . . . Fortunately, like an old western movie, the cavalry
has arrived just in time in the guise of activity-based management
(ABM).10
8. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1976), p. 20.
9. Brian Wynne, among many others examines different forms of knowledge: “Risk and Social
Learning: From Reification to Engagement”, in Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding (eds.), Social
Theories of Risk (New York: Praeger, 1992).
10. Jeremy Hope, “Foreword” to the book by Steve Player and Roberto Lacerda, Arthur Andersen’s
Global Lessons in Activity-based Management (New York: John Wiley, 1999), p. xi.
 124 J. Handmer and P. James

ABM is the child of ABC (activity-based costing), a method that measures the
unit costs of the finely calibrated activities engaged in by an institution and by
each of its subsections. Every activity is treated as a costed function. ABM uses
ABC as its main source of data to determine the basis of those costs and how
they can be justified or reduced. This is a process of rationalisation in the sense
that it is as much, if not more, interested in the conformity, rigour and efficiency
of the practices of management than in the product of the activities subjected to
the method of ABC/ABM.
In risk assessment it means that we are now as much interested in the efficiency
of the assessment as in eliminating or minimising the risk itself. It is now assumed
that risk can only be managed, not overcome. Such detailed processes manifest
themselves in the rapid growth of processes and models for risk assessment
and management of almost everything. The assumption of management can be
seen as part of a realisation that risk cannot be zero—even though science and
technology may dramatically alter the risk or its outcome, and even though atti-
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

tudes expressed through litigation and health and occupational safety legislation
might suggest otherwise. Risk in the new sense cannot be zero as almost every
activity carries some risk of an adverse outcome and because the power of detec-
tion is now such that we can identify toxins almost everywhere. The prediction of
one risk often entails the creation of or increase in others. The great advantage of
the assumption of management rather than elimination for government and com-
merce is that risks hitherto thought to be unacceptable and therefore illegal—as
with certain imports, food additives, sources of medicines, heavy transport,
light aviation—become legitimate through the process of risk assessment. Unfor-
tunately, relatively little attention is paid to the inevitable remaining or residual
risk. We can pay far too little attention to the residual risk, and arguably this is
what is occurring at present. Security and risk management measures appear to
be led by vulnerabilities—in the sense of a possibility of danger—rather than by
an interpretative and qualitative risk assessment.
Third, knowledge production has also become increasing objectified, with
knowledge turned into a “thing in itself”. It has become reified as a thing which
sits outside the circle of its production, abstracted from the identity of the
person who knows and beyond the social setting that first gave meaning to that
knowledge. This means that knowledge is dependent on abstract systems of
knowledge acquisition and teams of intellectually trained collectors. Michael
Power’s study of auditing illustrates this point in relation to one area of
knowledge—management. Auditing activities changed from auditing the books
of a corporate entity to auditing the control systems of that institution. At one
level, auditing companies are now contracted as risk managers of the systems,
but at another level they are used to perform the task of risk communication. In
other words, auditors no longer look at the books or accounts as such. They are
enlisted primarily to assure the corporate world that the company being
audited is taking risk assessment and management seriously. In Power’s descrip-
tion, “[t]he abstract system tends to become the primary external auditable object,
rather than the output of the organization itself, and this adds to the obscurity of
the audit as a process that provides assurance about systems elements and little
else”.11

11. Power, The Audit Society, op. cit., p. 85.

 Trust Us and Be Scared 125

Much risk assessment and management reflects this approach with its emphasis
on appropriate standards and systems rather than on outcomes. As mentioned
above, the aim of the risk assessment and therefore risk communication may be
to provide the excuse for continuing a particular activity. Although counter-
trends exist in some sectors such as local environmental risk management and
emergency management for so-called “natural hazards”, risk assessment is
often reduced to a foundation for communication, especially where the focus is
on providing a basis for emergency planning as, for example, with flooding.
Analysis underlying security “travel advisories” is similarly the basis for risk
communication, although in this case the communication is increasingly becom-
ing an end in itself.
The process of abstraction contributes to other forces as the state expands its
power through enhanced marketing and control of usually independent voices.
Contradictory messages about a risk are considered an important reason for
failure in risk communication exercises. People need to believe that risks do or
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

do not exist, and believe, and more importantly trust, the message source. The
risk communicators are thus engaged in a struggle for the perceptions and atti-
tudes of those with some stake in the assessment and management of the risk.

The Complications of Risk Communication

Risk communication has become a powerful device in the contemporary world,
but its effects are variable, with intended and unintended consequences. Risks,
and therefore dangers in common parlance, can be normalised or alternatively
“fetishised”—in the language of risk they may become “attenuated” or “ampli-
fied”. Risks can become accepted, or at least tolerated, through gradual processes
of social absorption or by vigorous persuasion. Risk communication as persuasion
often seeks to change people’s behaviour, for example to drink less, stop smoking
or drive carefully. Typically, risk communicators target how the risk is perceived
on the assumption that the “right” perception will lead to “correct” behaviour.
There is little empirical support for this connection, and both perception and beha-
viour with respect to a given risk are subject to numerous influences, many of
which may be circumstantially specific. The role of the mass media is often
central but is not examined here. However, much risk communication is con-
cerned only with perceptions. This is the case with communications intended to
gain acceptance of government policy concerning some risk, where substantial
(and in Australia rapidly increasing) sums of money are spent on persuading
us that the risk is acute (as with asylum seekers and terrorism).12
As a result of the success of risk communication, we have learnt that drinking
and driving is not normal or socially desirable, and that video surveillance is for
our protection. On the other hand, a handful of SARS cases can bring about the
partial collapse of local economies with little encouragement from the risk com-
municators, but campaigns for safe sex, or against drug use and speeding, have
had more limited success. For some risks and some groups, risk communication
even appears to increase risky behaviour. In most circumstances people make up
their own minds about risks—they make decisions rather than follow orders. It
12. Ian Ward, “An Australian PR State?”, Paper presented to the ANZCA03 Conference, Brisbane,
July 2003.
 126 J. Handmer and P. James

makes sense, then, for governments to try to restrict or to control the range of
acceptable behaviour.
Risk communication in this arena of more embodied risk is thus often used
instead of responding to a danger through government regulation or prohibition.
It is part of a more general process of avoiding the earlier concerns about a legiti-
mation crisis of the liberal state by taking the emphasis off what your state can do
for you, and putting on to the individual what you in the marketplace or acting in
“partnership” with the state can do for yourself. Consequently, the emphasis of
citizenship is changing from rights to responsibilities. In some instances, commu-
nicating about risk through sending out warnings about a potential danger or
hazard may function primarily as a way for the state or corporation to avoid or
to defer actually taking action. The dominant rhetoric has thus moved from
taking care of people, with all that expert-based patronising “baggage” of classical
modern risk management, to shifting the risk and responsibility to those bearing
the consequences, even if the latter may not be in a position to reduce the risk by
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

changing their behaviour. Consequently, risk communication is increasingly

framed around encouraging participation by self-selecting stakeholders from
the community of those at risk. In this case the implication becomes, “if you do
not choose to be part of the process of ameliorating risk, then do not blame us if
something goes wrong, and if you do choose to be a participant in the process
then you cannot blame us anyway because we mutually decided to go in this
direction”. This approach is also sold softly as part of the “democratisation” of
risk. Let the people decide how to respond! It is difficult to disagree that those
at risk should have more say in how the risk is assessed and managed, but this
is quite different from having the risk, which may have been created for the
profit of others, dumped upon them. Table 1 lists various aspects of risk
communication.
Shifting the risk and making people partners in risk assessment is increasingly
taking place in the global security arena, even though abstract risks of Inter-
national Relations (IR) have not until recently been drawn into such a form of
risk communication. The form it takes can be summarised as follows: “It is a
good deal for you that you participate in the process of us setting up protection
for you from terror and the forces of evil.” The public are partners in this enter-
prise as they are persuaded to look out for suspicious activities and report
them. In Australia this process has been facilitated initially by a A$15 million
publicity such campaign—the most expensive campaign ever for Australia. In
February 2003 a plastic-wrap package labelled “An Important Message from the

Table 1. Aspects of Risk Communication

1. Assess the pattern and get the numbers verified by expert systems
2. Tell the public the numbers through a planned risk-communication
3. Explain what we mean by the numbers
4. Explain that they have accepted similar risks before
5. Explain that it is a good deal for them
6. Treat them well
7. Make them partners

Source: Adapted from B. Fischhoff, “Risk Perception and Communication Unplugged: Twenty Years of
Progress”, Risk Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1995), pp. 137–145.
 Trust Us and Be Scared 127

Prime Minister” was sent to all households in the country. The covering letter was
personalised with a computer-generated signature and included sentences such
as “I encourage you and your family and friends to read the booklet and heed
the experts’ advice.” The booklet included a detachable telephone card for the
24-hour National Security Hotline under the phrase “Be alert, but not alarmed.”
It is almost orthodoxy among risk communication specialists that campaigns
based on fear are rarely successful. In the area of embodied risk, people are not
as fearful of themselves as perhaps they should be on the issues of illicit drug
use, unsafe sex and so on. Yet with the compounding of both more abstract and
more embodied risk this package appears to have met its goal to generate
support for government policy. Fear of “outsiders” and of a non-specific, invisible
and uncontrollable threat was a powerful motivator in shaping perception.
In effect, the entire message of the campaign was “trust us, and be scared”.
Asking each Australian not to be alarmed at the same time as requesting that
“you” should “[c]ontact the National Security Hotline if you have information
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

of possible terrorist activity or have seen or heard something suspicious that

may need investigation by security agencies” was a way of keeping alive a
sense of alarm in the population. At the same time it gave the impression that
the government was doing something. It worked to bolster the standing of the
incumbent government as “security conscious”. To reinforce this message, a con-
tinuing debate was running alongside which cast opponents to the counter-terror
campaign and to Australia acting as an American franchisee in the task, as “un-
Australian”. Opponents of the Australian government on this issue were
effectively cast as supporters of the terrorists, and generally morally weak and
indecisive. So effective was (and is) this risk communication project at changing
and reinforcing a perception of serious and immediate danger from terror that
many people are not only tolerating draconian legislation that takes the work of
the security organisations out of the domain of Australia’s legal system, but
also in many cases embracing it.
In summary, then, the bulk of the risk communication literature continues to be
concerned with trust, that is with persuading people that state or corporate auth-
orities have the expertise to take care of some problem: “There is a risk, but be
reassured as we are taking care of it.” However, in a number of realms, particular
in the area of global security, this approach has become much more complicated.
Here, experts are either kept out of sight and treated as part of a background
system that may or may not have the facts sorted out, or those with the appro-
priate political orientation are wheeled out to enter into public combat against
those whose line does not suit mainstream considerations. Commissions of
inquiry are used this way, particularly by setting the terms of inquiry so that it
does not undermine the process of risk communication itself. For example, the
2005 United States Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission report found “no
indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction”.13 None of the analysts interviewed would
acknowledge that political pressure skewed their judgement of the material.
Rather, the report found that the problem was lack of evidence and how it was
treated. The implication of the report’s recommendations thus predictably
became that we need more rationalisation of the agencies of data collection,

13. Quoted in The Australian (2 April 2005). P. 14.

 128 J. Handmer and P. James

bringing them under the newly created Director of National Intelligence, more
systematic codification of material, and increasing analytical objectification in
dealing with the material that has been gathered.
A similar observation could be made about global environmental change, at
least in Australia and the United States with governments, much media and
some high-profile university policy commentators taking a very strong line
against climate-change science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). In some cases this has resulted in suppression of climate-
change predictions, which, for example, could have direct influence on policies
for bushfire prevention. Although no one will challenge the need for more ration-
alisation, codification and objectification of the risk of global warming, discredi-
ting one set of experts who do not concur with the dominant political line has
become easy politics. It is indicative that Senator Inhofe, Chairman of the US
Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, could so easily say that
global warming was an elaborate deception: “With all of the hysteria, all of the
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

fear, all of the phoney science, could it be that man-made global warming is the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?”14 All he and others
have to do is consistently ask two questions, “Is this good science?” and “Can
we risk the economy for an unproven hypothesis about another risk—this time
to the environment?” and the debate can be bogged down for years in untangling
the mess.

Conclusion: Communicating about Complex Unbounded Risks

The media and many commentators talk of trade-offs between civil liberties and
global and national security. Talk of trade-offs is the language of risk where
various risks are offset against others since a risk-free or zero-risk world is
unachievable. In the war against terror, most people (particularly in the United
States) appear to have accepted that the risks from insecurity in the area of terror-
ism are too large or too frightening to contemplate. Consequently, they are willing
to accept risks to their basic rights as citizens. In the absence of strong arguments
to the contrary, they believe that the government’s approach will deliver enhanced
security. The great rhetorical “achievement” here is that this trade-off has occurred
even though religious, security, IR experts and human rights groups have strongly
disagreed with the government’s approach. The effect in the Australian case has
been persuasive communication from multiple sources reinforced by real terrorist
attacks in the region.
In the global security debate considerable effort is being made to ensure that the
risk from terrorism in a probabilistic and comparative sense is not discussed.
Outside of Iraq and Afghanistan the risk of dying from a terrorist act is extremely
low. However, this is not the central concern of government public communiqués.
In this respect the war on terror is unusual. Normally, risk communication
approaches are used—often unsuccessfully—to show people that it is irrational
to object to the risk: “Trust us and be reassured.” Now in the arena of global secur-
ity risk the authorities ask that people be concerned over risks with a small prob-
ability, and that they accept that government should use counter-terror as an
organising concept. Between the end of the First World War and the attack on
14. Quoted in The Age (11 August 2003). P. 10.
 Trust Us and Be Scared 129

Table 2. Attributes of Complex Unbounded Risks

1. The risk is not local in space or time
2. The risk is not easily generalisable from one problem to another
3. The magnitude and consequences of the event may be extreme but not predicable
4. Features of the event may be resistant to quantification
5. The event may be driven by the interaction of processes on multiple time scales
6. The uncertainties of the event are high or unknown
7. The models of the physical phenomena involved may be generally adequate
except in the conjunction of circumstances surrounding this particular event
8. The onset of the event may be exceedingly gradual or abrupt
9. The event may be unexpected (a surprise)
10. The full impact and course of the event may depend critically on choices taken or
not taken while the event is unfolding
11. Even if the event is foreseen, it may not be clear what measures can be taken to
prevent or prepare for the occurrence of the event
12. The event may be novel to those experiencing it (lack of precedent)
13. The causes of the event, if known, may be counter-intuitive
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

14. Mitigation efforts may make the problem worse

15. The outcome of the event may be effectively irreversible
16. The causes of health impacts from the event may occur well in advance of effects
in the population, obscuring cause– effect relationships
17. There may be no clear delineation between “experts” and “non-experts”
18. Value issues may be central to one’s view of the problem or to selection of
responses

11 September 2001, democratic governments responded to terrorism threats by

urging their populations to carry on as normal since to do otherwise would be
“giving into terror”. Now it appears that the first priority of some governments
is to spread fear and implement a range of expensive measures in the name of
dealing with a threat that may make little difference locally.
Terrorism satisfies the attributes of complex unbounded risks, at least as it is
portrayed (see Table 2).15 For such risks there is typically little data or evidence
on which to base management decisions and practices, and there is little confi-
dence that management strategies will actually reduce the risk in a tangible
way. Some of these risks, such as ionising radiation, are often subject to consider-
able public fear and amplification, while others, such as widespread financial
fraud, may be attenuated. Usually the authorities and commerce seek to down-
play or attenuate these risks. But in a situation where the risk may get worse
with time, and where it may not be visible but potentially everywhere, people
may live in states of fear and anxiety.
There is, however—as this article has been concerned to emphasise—a further
dimension that takes terrorism beyond the realm of a complex unbounded risk as
understood in the literature. That is, terrorism stretches across the distinction
between more embodied and more abstract risk. At least in its portrayal, it is an
embodied, willed, arbitrary threat and a systemic, patterned, unseen risk. In the
arena of global security and global environmental risk, we have arrived in a
new situation. Risk assessment for the time being has been completely submerged
beneath the politics of risk communication. This is spilling over from the war on

15. Kai T. Erikson examines some of these problems in A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experi-
ence of Modern Disasters (New York: Norton, 1995).
 130 J. Handmer and P. James

terror into key areas of controversy such as refugee management and global
environmental-change debates, making it increasingly difficult to work out
where the risks are substantial and where they are manufactured. Politicians
and those benefiting from the marketing of either self-concerned fear or self-
concerned complacency now exploit the gap between objective practice and
subjective representation (or assessment) for their own ends. They use the risk-
assessment systems and their analytical conclusions when they suit their pur-
poses, and dismiss them or call for new studies when they do not. In this
context, particularly in the United States, Britain and Australia, we seem to
have shifted from the dominance of the Enlightenment idea of provisionally trust-
ing in the dominant theories and conclusions of the natural and social sciences to
accepting a post-Enlightenment idea that authority and ideology are all that can
ever underpin any decision about how we should respond to risk. The traditional
“command and control” approach of crisis management is being extended as we
pretend that we are in control.16 This makes for a very frightening world. The
Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 14:58 05 November 2014

problem in the case of the war on terror is, however, not so much acts of terror
as the conduct of the war on terror itself. Managed fear fuels power, with conse-
quences and repercussions that we cannot predict, and may not be able to control.

16. Beck argues that we feign control over the more abstract and uncontrollable risks. See “The Ter-
rorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2002) pp. 35–55.