Thinking Sociologically about LFI

1. Thinking Sociologically about LFI Professor Sue Scott Universities of Edinburgh and York

2. Outline • Introduction • Social Construction and why there is no such thing as an accident • Wisdom after the event • Risk, risk anxiety and critique • Behaviour in context • Prevention and its challenges • Not just learning but doing things differently –Practice Theory and its uses • Two Examples: Barbara Rawlings study of A Surgical Sterilization Unit and Lydia Martens and Sue Scott’s study of Domestic Kitchen Practices

3. Introduction • I will try to show why sociology is useful in relation to learning through incidents • My expertise is in the sociology of gender and sexuality, but have explored questions of risk in the context of sexual risk taking and debates about children and risk – also Domestic Kitchen Practices • I come from a tradition called symbolic interactionism and have used this and ethnomethodology to explore how ‘organization’ is produced in a work place – but this was a long time ago • I am now working on utilizing both Symbolic Interactionism and Practice Theory to explain sexual behaviour and risk taking • I am also interested in how historical incidents described of ‘sexual abuse’ are utilized to justify the focus on individual ‘monsters’ rather than on wider gender and generational issues AND also to justify criticism of professionals who are expected to know what we know now. One useful aspect of this current debate is the way in which it flattens history by imposing current values on the past – it is a good example of why it is always important to understand the social context in which any critical/problematic incident occurs.

4. Changing Understandings • What counts as an incident? • From Hazard to Risk • No such thing as an accident • Disaster in the midst of everyday life • Wise after the event

5. From Riscum and Fortuna to Risk • Risk in the past (from the 16th century) defined as an ‘act of god’ or some such • Excluded Human fault • Could only take steps to estimate likelihood and ameliorate impact • With modernity definition extended to include human action • Statistical calculation, prediction and insurance

6. From Risk to Risk Anxiety • Notion of risk helps to manage uncertainty • Risk as good and bad • Late modernity – risk as danger and high risk as greater danger, unless your in the financial sector! • Living with uncertainty in late modernity • Risk, Risk Acceptability and Responsibility (see Douglas and Wildavsky,1985) • Risk as a persuader – on both sides of arguments e.g. MMR vaccination

7. The Risk Society Ulrich Beck argues in ‘Risk Society: Towards a new modernity’, that we live with global risks which previous generations have not had to face and which Governments and Institutions have failed to deal with adequately – climate change/nuclear threats/AIDS etc. Not that we face greater dangers than previous generations in our everyday lives, but that pre Industrial dangers where hazards not risks. In modern societies there has developed an expectation of rational control and prevention, and when this doesn’t occur then trust breaks down and anxiety increases.

8. Risk Anxiety So, at the point in history when in Western/Northern democracies most of us are living longer and more comfortable lives we are anxious about a myriad of ‘risks’ from environmental pollutants through viruses and bacteria to thefts muggings and paedophiles In this period of reflexive modernization – according to Beck – there is a contradictory tendency to put blame and responsibility on to individuals rather than focusing on wider social-institutional systems So risk and risk management attempt to make the incalculable calculable while risk monitoring presupposes agency; choice; calculation and responsibility

9. More Risk Anxiety Process of disembedding from tradition and increasing individualization means that people have to make their own decisions about how to behave and what to think – or at least they feel that they do. And in a context where this is, or seems, to be the case, then individuals are seen as culpable if things go wrong – this fits well with Neo Liberal ideology and rational choice theories. The more rules and procedures which are put in place in the attempt to avoid incidents the harder it becomes for anything to be described as an accident – all risks are deemed preventable and if they are not prevented then someone is to blame. I am not arguing against risk management, but we do need to understand what happens when this leads us seek to blame individuals rather than practices or processes or social structural constraints

10. Critique Despite the usefulness of this line of argument it has serious limitations for empirical sociological explanation – Beck is offering a grand theoretical account which has been criticized as overly rationalistic and instrumental There is lack of focus on how risk is dealt with in everyday life – on how it is embodied and how it is given meaning through subjectivity and interpersonal relations

11. ‘Behaviour’ in organizational contexts • Rawlings study of a hospital surgical sterilization unit • Harper et al’s Study of Air Traffic Controllers

12. Preventing Recurrences • Why is behaviour so hard to change? • The problem with KAB • Some examples • We need better explanations

13. Practice Theory • In recent years (since about 2000) there has been a move in some areas - most notably the sociologies of consumption and science and technology - to develop the work of Bourdieu (1978), Shatski (1996 and 2002) and the Pragmatists (see Kilpinen 2000) into a theory of practices appropriate to sociological research and analysis (Reckwitz 2002; Crossley 2001, Warde 2005, 2013; Shove et. al. 2012)

14. Definitions of Practice • Practice (praxis) simply refers to human action • A Practice (praktik) in the context of a theory of social practices is a routinized type of behaviour made up of a number of interconnected elements • Schatzki (1996) identifies 2 central aspects of a social practice: • Practice as coordinated entity • Practice as performance

15. Further definition • Practices in Schatzki’s first sense consist of both doings and sayings, which, according to Warde, form a nexus through which they are coordinated. This nexus is made up of ‘understandings’, ‘procedures’ and ‘engagements’ he goes on to suggest that ‘practice as performance’ refers to carrying out practices which both brings them into being and sustains them • Reckwitz (2002) defines Practice (Praktik) as a ‘routinized type of behaviourwhich consists of several elements, interconnected to one another:

16. Reckwitz definition continued Forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge.

17. Why is it useful • Attractive in that it moves us away from focusing on individual (rational)choice and action • Enables us to attend to routines and the embodiment of these routines (Warde 2005) • Allows for individual variability while also recognizing that practices are collectively created • Knowledge is necessary, but knowledge doesn’t simply create the practice

18. Empirical examples using Practice Theory • What would a theory of practice add to Rawlings analysis • The management of Risk via domestic kitchen practices

19. Thank You for Listening