Birgitte Jacobsen

Ontology in Modernity Risks: Implication for Societal Risk Governance Birgitte Jacobsen

Societal security is a concept of increasing significance. It is tightly connected to risk, since both concepts deal with the future. The understanding of risk is crucial in risk assessment, because it constitute the basis for legislation, control and regulation. Ontology is essential, because different ontological foundations will be materialized in different understandings of risk, risk assessment, risk management and thus appear as different ontological foundation for societal risk governance. In socio-technical research, objective or subjective ontology dominates. Relational ontology often is absent, which contributes to reductionistic risk assessment. Modernity risks are, however, a relational phenomenon, products of structuration, and must be understood accordingly. Connotations are a product of structuration and constitute different building blocks with patterns of thoughts about risks which are established by objective physical and social structures, subjective preferences and relational structuration. Connotations are thus important to make explicit and understand the constructions of societal regulation and control and to understand the production of modernity risks.