In 2002, in an interview with François Ewald, Bruno Latour reflected upon Ulrich Beck’s concept of “risk societies.” Interrogating the concept together, Ewald and Latour concluded that for Beck what now “unites contemporary societies is not the production of goods, but the production and distribution of evils [maux].” (France Culture interview, 2002). By defining risks, as a society we conceptualize what is uncertain and seek to protect ourselves from the consequence of its occurrence. Unlike catastrophe that describes humanity’s vulnerability, the notion of risk entails a measure and a prediction. Hence, scholars have strongly associated the emergence of the notion of risk with seventeenth century scientific discoveries, Blaise Pascal’s on probability and statistics, and global commerce, i.e., the creation of maritime insurances although soon the management of risks applied to other activities (industry, medicine, and architecture for instance.) With the rise of capitalism in the eighteenth century, risk, defined as “a compound measure of the probability and magnitude of adverse effects,” was harnessed to the capitalist imperative of property protection, and eventually applied to human lives. (William W. Lowrance, 1980, p. 5-17.)
In the past fifteen years, the scholarship on risk has challenged Beck’s teleological chronology that tied risk calculation to modernity (Le Roux, 2016; Mouvement Social). This scholarship has argued that the governance of risks intervened at different geographical and historical scales and revealed a new history of distribution and acceptance of risks. Actors other than industrialists and entrepreneurs conceptualized notions of dangers, perils, or catastrophes to conceptualize and control uncertainty, enhance economic progress, and protect social bodies.
With this workshop, the organizers would like to pursue an approach that substitutes for “risk societies” the idea of a “régime du risque” or “those arrangements, formal as well as informal, by which public bodies, private interests, and civic mobilizations handle the danger and damage associated with an industry.” (Joseph Melling and Christopher Sellers, 2011, pg. 5). Building on Melling and Seller’s concept of “industrial hazard regimes,” alongside Mary Douglas’s work on cultural theories of risk perception, we are interested in how risk, originally an economic rediction appearing with the birth of capitalism and global industrialization, in fact permeates every aspect of society, from individual decision making to artistic and scientific practices.
Our workshop aims at, first, understanding how the creation of these regimes impacted scientific and artistic practices (as connoiseurship) and legitimizing institutions (institutions légitimantes) as galleries, museums or academies (Raymonde Moulin, L’artiste, l’institution et le marché, 1992). Personal risk-taking, for example, was a key element in the development of electrical science in the eighteenth century, with bodily experimentation—a willingness to put the self at risk—a source of scientific authority. Over the same period, financial or technical risk management could also be an important asset for institutions like drawing academies in the context of urban planning projects. These institutions could act as consultancy offices for the administrations or individuals who requested their services.
Second, although the scholarship has broadened the scope of actors, the focus has still been on the risk calculations of decision-makers, whether architects, doctors, or state apparatuses. We aim to look at how people’s individual practices of risk-taking are conditioned by regimes of risk. How do individuals make decisions in the face of uncertainty and catastrophe? How does the memory of a natural disaster, for example, influence those decisions? In the face of contemporary global catastrophes—the covid-19 pandemic, worsening climate-change related environmental disasters, the loss of trust in traditional media—is risk still an operative category for understanding how people conceptualize danger and uncertainty today?
Third, risk has typically been studied in the context of the industrialized west. This workshop proposes to investigate how decision-making and risk calculation have (or have not) been transposed in the French colonial empire. Scholars have shown how colonizers put both the natural environment and colonized populations at far greater risk than they were willing to accept in the metropole (Sara Pritchard, 2012, p. 591-615). How have risk regimes been inherited, evolved, and transformed in the opstcolonial, francophone world?
This conference aims to bring together scholars with expertise in concepts of risk and uncertainty across a range of geographic areas within the francophone world and a range of disciplines, including history, history of art, economics, anthropology, and environmental humanities. We welcome papers on the following topics:
Call For Papers Deadline: February 9, 2024
“Conceptualizing Uncertainty: Reflections on the notion of risk in France and the Francophone World (1600-present)” is a one-day and a half interdisciplinary workshop on the theme of risk that will take place on April 15 & 16, 2024 at Victoria College, in the frame of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.
Since the 1970s, a large scholarship has analyzed the prediction of risks in early and modern European societies. Building on the concepts of “risk societies” and cultural theories of risk perception, our workshop is interested in how risk, originally an economic prediction appearing with the birth of capitalism and global industrialization, in fact, permeated every aspect of society, from individual decision making to artistic and scientific practices and state policies. With this workshop, we aim to contribute to a rich scholarship by bringing scholars from different disciplines from the Toronto area whose work focuses on France and the Francophone world. For this event, the organizers, Constance de Font-Réaulx, Pierre Marty and Samantha Wesner, are delighted to welcome Prof. Matthew Hunter (Univ. Mc Gill, Montréal) as a key-note speaker.
Proposals -for twenty minute presentations- should include abstracts of no more than 500 words and a short curriculum vitae. Please submit them directly at constance.defontreaulx@utoronto.ca;
pierre.marty@utoronto.ca; s.wesner@utoronto.ca by February 9, 2024.
The organizers will notify all persons submitting abstracts of the acceptance or rejection of their proposals by February 16, 2024.
