Introduction
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 1999, 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 Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) to account for the ways race, gender, and class intersect to position black women in particular ways vis-à-vis the law. From the first, intersectionality was thus strongly invested in the intersection of race, class, and gender and closely related to black feminism (see Hill Collins 2008; Hill Collins and Bilge 2016). 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 2015). This leads us to question certain premises that expose the historical framing of risk as a construct of the post-Enlightenment Global North, given the necessary ambivalence of how concepts such as risk and uncertainty are applied, understood, and questioned in various contexts. Even though intersectional risk theory can be said to have developed from the standpoint of a ‘Northern’ perspective, our intentions are that the intersectional approach should help us to open the door to possible resignifications and to embrace ambivalence from a critical standpoint. Peggy Phelan (2003, p. 149) argues that in a world beset by fundamentalism, feminism foregrounds ambivalence as a necessary way of viewing the world—not as a sort of resigned pluralism or ‘anything goes’ but as a conscious approach or strategic positioning against fundamental power structures that define the world and ‘know’ it, causing contradictions and other interests, perspectives, and stories that also describe the world to be colonised and/or disappear. Moreover, by picking up what is relevant in intersectional theory for what we intend to do in this book we also appropriate the concept of intersectionality for the purpose of unpacking risk and its relation to oppressive structures and inequalities. In other words, in our search for new insights and understandings of risk we allow ourselves to select concepts and thinking within intersectional theory and critical research more broadly that we find relevant, rather than embracing the entire frameworks. For instance, although much research with an intersectional perspective problematises identity as identity politics, multiple identities, and identity work, we leave these elements more or less out in this book. This is also an example of how we use and define ambivalence as a theoretical method. Thus, this ambivalence allows us to see and so to conduct a dialogue amongst different types of knowledge or conversation, which permit multiple meanings. As such, ambivalence can also be viewed as a form of resistance towards reductionist and dogmatic epistemological views (Griffin et al. 2013).
Ambivalence as an Epistemological and Ethical Position
Although the concept of ambivalence is widely used in everyday speech and in various scientific fields, its meaning and usage seem to vary. Here, in a book whose title includes the word ‘ambivalence’, it seems appropriate to attempt to bring clarity to the concept in this context whilst at the same time pursuing theoretical coherence. One claim commonly made for ambivalence is that the concept reaches beyond dualistic ideas such as ‘either/or’ to favour thinking that includes ‘both’. In so doing, it accommodates the simultaneous existence of conflicting ideas, which to us seems a productive way forward in studying risk. As the authors of this text, we might be understood as three individuals sharing the same view of risk or the same theoretical point of departure, which is not at all true. We have different and sometimes contradictory ways of viewing science and the world, and whilst this has sometimes been a source of difficulty in writing the book, it has also made us aware of the need of—as well as the benefit from—incorporating ambivalence in the study of risk.
Ambivalence was first advanced theoretically as a psycho(patho)logical concept by Eugen Bleuler at the beginning of the twentieth century to describe the presence of conflicting feelings or opposed impulses of the same intensity with respect to an object, as in the often-used example of eating or not eating (Stotz-Ingenlath 2000). This is also pertinent in terms of the perspective of an individual’s ability to hate and love the same object; Bleuler says that ambivalence is the exception when a normal person is making decisions between contradictory values, but in a pathological situation these opposing feelings are not separated —love might be intensified and hate take the form of an exaggerated declaration of love. As something quite distinct from ‘psychological ambivalence’, Robert Merton and Elinor Barber (1976) introduced the term ‘sociological ambivalence’ in the 1960s. Here we start to see some of the things we find relevant for a theory of intersectional risk: Sociological ambivalence relates to the ways in which the relationship between individual/subjective and collective/structural identity generates conflicting frames, sometimes described as a pendulum moving between two more or less opposite positions (Merton and Barber 1976). Ambivalence has subsequently been assimilated by other sociologists—for example in the field of risk studies, where the term is used to describe contingency, uncertainty, and the experiential and affective dimension of late modernity (see also Arribas-Ayllon and Bartlett 2014 and works by Mary Douglas 2001; Zygmunt Bauman 1990; Ortwinn Renn 2008; Ulrich Beck 1992, amongst others). In ...