Tom Horlick-Jones
Biographic Data
| ID | 244588 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Horlick-Jones |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Horlick-Jones |
| SIGNATURE | HORLICK-JONES T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cardiff University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Translating between social worlds of policy and everyday life
A large international literature on how lay citizens make sense of various aspects of science and technology has been generated by investigations which utilise small group methods. Within that literature, focus group and other group-based methods have come to co-exist, and to some extent, hybridise, with the use of small groups in citizen engagement initiatives. In this article, we report on how we drew upon these methodological developments in t…
Riesgos tecnológicos, conflictos sociales y políticas ambientales. Del estudio de las percepciones a la implicación pública
La gestió dels riscos tecnològics i ambientals, juntament amb la promoció del desenvolupament sostenible, ha constituït un pilar essencial de les polítiques públiques de les últimes dècades. Una bona part d’aquestes polítiques ha pretès influir en l’opinió pública fomentant comportaments preventius o evitant aquells que no resulten sostenibles. No obstant això, la ciutadania no sol seguir aquestes recomanacions sense més ni més, sinó que desplega…
Risk and time
Investigating the degree of “stigma” associated with nuclear energy technologies
The extent to which nuclear energy technologies are, in some sense, “stigmatised” by historical environmental and military associations is of particular interest in contemporary debates about sustainable energy policy. Recent claims in the literature suggest that despite such stigmatisation, lay views on such technologies may be shifting towards a “reluctant acceptance,” in the light of concerns about issues like anthropogenic climate change. In …
Taking the Bundle Apart
On interpretative risk perception research
The use of risk communication as a policy tool has become increasingly important in areas as diverse as emergency planning and health communication, and including aspects of many of the leading issues of the day. Its use, as a part of institutional attempts to inform and influence lay behaviour, is predicated upon a variety of models of how people make sense of risk-related issues. Many such models are based upon a cognitive information-processin…
Finding a way between nihilism and romanticism
This editorial argues that aspects of a number of contemporary debates within the sociology of risk, including those concerned with the nature of expert knowledge, the capacity of theory to address practical real-world issues, and the appropriate political stance of the scholar, were pre-figured in helpful and insightful ways in the work of the British medical sociologist Philip M. Strong (1945–1995). The recent publication of a selection of Stro…
Analysis of a normative framework for evaluating public engagement exercises
Over recent years, many policy-makers and academics have come to the view that involving the public in policy setting and decision-making (or “public engagement”) is desirable. The theorized benefits of engagement (over traditional approaches) include the attainment of more satisfactory and easier decisions, greater trust in decision-makers, and the enhancement of public and organizational knowledge. Empirical support for these advantages is, how…
Communities of risk research and risk practice
This short commentary paper provides a critical, but supportive, discussion of the paper by Löfstedt and 6 (L&6). Three suggestions are made. First, that L&6 make certain unsatisfactory assumptions about the underlying problems faced by risk communication initiatives. Second, that one should not be too surprised about the lack of dissemination of risk communication knowledge across different substantive risk areas, given the diversity of the risk…
The GM Debate
This book tells the story of an unprecedented experiment in public participation: the government-sponsored debate on the possible commercialization of ‘GM’ crops in the UK. Giving a unique and systematic account of the debate process, this revealing volume sets it within its political and intellectual contexts, and examines the practical implications for future public engagement initiatives. The authors, an experienced team of researchers, produc…
Bricolage in action
Making sense of new technologies and their associated risks entails lay people in utilizing various modes of reasoning and making use of a range of interpretative resources at hand to interrogate evidence. Such sense making is accomplished collectively in ways that are sometimes playfully inventive, and which have regard to ideas of accountability and morally acceptability. In practice, such bricolage-like processes appear to have certain similar…
Citizen engagement processes as information systems
An important direction in recent thinking about public understanding of science and technology is embodied in the international trend within many democratic countries towards the promotion of citizen engagement. These developments entail the participation and deliberative involvement by lay publics in planning, decision-making and policy-making situations. In this paper we argue that citizen engagement exercises can usefully be understood as info…
Any port in a storm
This article draws on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Russia, as part of an international comparative examination of health and safety regulatory enforcement in the shipping industry. We discuss the difficulties faced by fieldworkers in ensuring personal safety and maintaining rapport with research respondents in conditions characterized by danger and crisis; a situation made worse by the murder of one of our key gatekeepers. We develop…
On evaluating the GM Nation? Public debate about the commercialisation of transgenic crops in Britain
The public debate about GM crops that took place in Britain in 2002–03 was an unprecedented experiment for the UK in public engagement. The Government, which sponsored the exercise, made a pledge: to take into account lay perspectives, as well as the views of its expert advisers, when making a decision about the possible commercialisation of this controversial technology. As officially accredited but independent evaluators of the debate, we were …
Unicorn among the Cedars
This article considers the prospects for effective regulation of emerging globalized industries by examining the effectiveness of the ‘smart regulation’ approach associated with the port state control enforcement regime for seafarers’ health and safety. Smart regulation seeks to generate incentive structures that promote proactive compliance by ship operators. Drawing on an international comparative study, which included extensive observation of …
On ‘risk work’
In recent years a technical discourse of risk has assumed the status of a universal basis for governance and administrative practice in both private and public sector organizations within Britain, the United States, and a number of other Western countries. The re-framing of pre-existing organizational concerns in terms of risk categories reflects an underlying bureaucratic concern with the accountable and cost-effective management of contingency.…
Difficulties in evaluating public engagement initiatives
In the realm of risk management, and policy-making more generally, “public engagement” is often advocated as an antidote to pathologies associated with traditional methods of policy-making, and associated deficit-model-driven communication strategies. The actual benefits of public engagement are, however, difficult to establish without thorough evaluation of specific engagement processes. Unfortunately, rigorous evaluation is difficult, and, perh…
‘Experts in risk? … do they exist?’
Important changes are occurring in the nature of expertise: from the traditional authoritative work of professionals to auditable forms of practice, and the rise of ‘alternative’ forms of expertise rooted in the experience and interests of patients, activists and business. The character of risk issues challenges the authority of both old and new forms of expertise and renders them problematic. The huge expansion of electronic communications drive…
Critical trust
The binary opposition of trusting or not trusting is inadequate to understand the often ambiguous and contradictory ideas people possess about risk regulators, particularly when knowledge and experience of such institutions is limited. The paper reports qualitative and quantitative data from a major study of public perceptions (n = 30 focus groups) of UK risk regulators. We compare the complex and widely different ‘trust profiles’ of two regulato…
Living on the border
Managing risk and contingency
This commentary paper sets the six preceding studies within an emerging understanding of the character of risk and social interaction, and the wider social and organisational context: of shifting lay sensibilities towards risk, and the role of risk in shaping professional practices. It critically examines the explanatory potential of two approaches drawn from social theory--reflexive modernisation and governmentality--to encompass the specific fe…
The Social Amplification of Risk
The management of and communication about risks has become a major question of public policy and intellectual debate in the modern world. The social amplification of risk framework describes how both social and individual factors act to amplify or dampen perceptions of risk and through this create secondary effects such as stigmatisation of technologies, economic losses or regulatory impacts. This volume, edited by three of the world's leading an…
Decision support for organisational risk management by problem structuring
Risk management in the real world of commerce, enterprise and administration is problematic, not least because corporate or inter-organisational stakeholders often have very different perceptions of the task at hand. Sectional interests and hidden agendas permeate discussions of proposals for change, and uncertainties obscure the possible effects of decisions on objectives. The embedding of risk issues within resulting micropolitical tangles pres…
Decision support for organisational risk management by problem structuring
Risk management in the real world of commerce, enterprise and administration is problematic, not least because corporate or inter-organisational stakeholders often have very different perceptions of the task at hand. Sectional interests and hidden agendas permeate discussions of proposals for change, and uncertainties obscure the possible effects of decisions on objectives. The embedding of risk issues within resulting micropolitical tangles pres…
Citizen Science
Living on the border
Any port in a storm
This article draws on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Russia, as part of an international comparative examination of health and safety regulatory enforcement in the shipping industry. We discuss the difficulties faced by fieldworkers in ensuring personal safety and maintaining rapport with research respondents in conditions characterized by danger and crisis; a situation made worse by the murder of one of our key gatekeepers. We develop…
Unicorn among the Cedars
This article considers the prospects for effective regulation of emerging globalized industries by examining the effectiveness of the ‘smart regulation’ approach associated with the port state control enforcement regime for seafarers’ health and safety. Smart regulation seeks to generate incentive structures that promote proactive compliance by ship operators. Drawing on an international comparative study, which included extensive observation of …
Riesgos tecnológicos, conflictos sociales y políticas ambientales. Del estudio de las percepciones a la implicación pública
La gestió dels riscos tecnològics i ambientals, juntament amb la promoció del desenvolupament sostenible, ha constituït un pilar essencial de les polítiques públiques de les últimes dècades. Una bona part d’aquestes polítiques ha pretès influir en l’opinió pública fomentant comportaments preventius o evitant aquells que no resulten sostenibles. No obstant això, la ciutadania no sol seguir aquestes recomanacions sense més ni més, sinó que desplega…
Communities of risk research and risk practice
This short commentary paper provides a critical, but supportive, discussion of the paper by Löfstedt and 6 (L&6). Three suggestions are made. First, that L&6 make certain unsatisfactory assumptions about the underlying problems faced by risk communication initiatives. Second, that one should not be too surprised about the lack of dissemination of risk communication knowledge across different substantive risk areas, given the diversity of the risk…
Urban disasters and megacities in a Risk society
The crisis of scientific expertise in fin de siècle Europe
Is ‘advocacy science’ in the process of crossing the Atlantic to Europe? This issue is set in a discussion of how powerful social, economic and technological currents have created a crisis for European scientific expertise. This crisis must be addressed by developing procedures that enhance the quality of scientific expertise and degree of genuine democracy in decision-making. Such developments must build on an improved understanding of existing …
Urban disasters and megacities in a Risk society
Learning from Disaster
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title The 1984 lethal gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, may be the most extensively studied industrial disaster in history. In a departure from earlier studies that have focused primarily on the causes of the catastrophe, Sheila Jasanoff and the contributors to this volume critically examine the consequences of the accident
Citizen Science
Decision support for organisational risk management by problem structuring
Risk management in the real world of commerce, enterprise and administration is problematic, not least because corporate or inter-organisational stakeholders often have very different perceptions of the task at hand. Sectional interests and hidden agendas permeate discussions of proposals for change, and uncertainties obscure the possible effects of decisions on objectives. The embedding of risk issues within resulting micropolitical tangles pres…
Decision support for organisational risk management by problem structuring
Risk management in the real world of commerce, enterprise and administration is problematic, not least because corporate or inter-organisational stakeholders often have very different perceptions of the task at hand. Sectional interests and hidden agendas permeate discussions of proposals for change, and uncertainties obscure the possible effects of decisions on objectives. The embedding of risk issues within resulting micropolitical tangles pres…
Managing risk and contingency
This commentary paper sets the six preceding studies within an emerging understanding of the character of risk and social interaction, and the wider social and organisational context: of shifting lay sensibilities towards risk, and the role of risk in shaping professional practices. It critically examines the explanatory potential of two approaches drawn from social theory--reflexive modernisation and governmentality--to encompass the specific fe…
The Social Amplification of Risk
The management of and communication about risks has become a major question of public policy and intellectual debate in the modern world. The social amplification of risk framework describes how both social and individual factors act to amplify or dampen perceptions of risk and through this create secondary effects such as stigmatisation of technologies, economic losses or regulatory impacts. This volume, edited by three of the world's leading an…
‘Experts in risk? … do they exist?’
Important changes are occurring in the nature of expertise: from the traditional authoritative work of professionals to auditable forms of practice, and the rise of ‘alternative’ forms of expertise rooted in the experience and interests of patients, activists and business. The character of risk issues challenges the authority of both old and new forms of expertise and renders them problematic. The huge expansion of electronic communications drive…
Critical trust
The binary opposition of trusting or not trusting is inadequate to understand the often ambiguous and contradictory ideas people possess about risk regulators, particularly when knowledge and experience of such institutions is limited. The paper reports qualitative and quantitative data from a major study of public perceptions (n = 30 focus groups) of UK risk regulators. We compare the complex and widely different ‘trust profiles’ of two regulato…
Living on the border
On ‘risk work’
In recent years a technical discourse of risk has assumed the status of a universal basis for governance and administrative practice in both private and public sector organizations within Britain, the United States, and a number of other Western countries. The re-framing of pre-existing organizational concerns in terms of risk categories reflects an underlying bureaucratic concern with the accountable and cost-effective management of contingency.…
Difficulties in evaluating public engagement initiatives
In the realm of risk management, and policy-making more generally, “public engagement” is often advocated as an antidote to pathologies associated with traditional methods of policy-making, and associated deficit-model-driven communication strategies. The actual benefits of public engagement are, however, difficult to establish without thorough evaluation of specific engagement processes. Unfortunately, rigorous evaluation is difficult, and, perh…
On evaluating the GM Nation? Public debate about the commercialisation of transgenic crops in Britain
The public debate about GM crops that took place in Britain in 2002–03 was an unprecedented experiment for the UK in public engagement. The Government, which sponsored the exercise, made a pledge: to take into account lay perspectives, as well as the views of its expert advisers, when making a decision about the possible commercialisation of this controversial technology. As officially accredited but independent evaluators of the debate, we were …
Unicorn among the Cedars
This article considers the prospects for effective regulation of emerging globalized industries by examining the effectiveness of the ‘smart regulation’ approach associated with the port state control enforcement regime for seafarers’ health and safety. Smart regulation seeks to generate incentive structures that promote proactive compliance by ship operators. Drawing on an international comparative study, which included extensive observation of …
The GM Debate
This book tells the story of an unprecedented experiment in public participation: the government-sponsored debate on the possible commercialization of ‘GM’ crops in the UK. Giving a unique and systematic account of the debate process, this revealing volume sets it within its political and intellectual contexts, and examines the practical implications for future public engagement initiatives. The authors, an experienced team of researchers, produc…
Bricolage in action
Making sense of new technologies and their associated risks entails lay people in utilizing various modes of reasoning and making use of a range of interpretative resources at hand to interrogate evidence. Such sense making is accomplished collectively in ways that are sometimes playfully inventive, and which have regard to ideas of accountability and morally acceptability. In practice, such bricolage-like processes appear to have certain similar…
Citizen engagement processes as information systems
An important direction in recent thinking about public understanding of science and technology is embodied in the international trend within many democratic countries towards the promotion of citizen engagement. These developments entail the participation and deliberative involvement by lay publics in planning, decision-making and policy-making situations. In this paper we argue that citizen engagement exercises can usefully be understood as info…
Any port in a storm
This article draws on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Russia, as part of an international comparative examination of health and safety regulatory enforcement in the shipping industry. We discuss the difficulties faced by fieldworkers in ensuring personal safety and maintaining rapport with research respondents in conditions characterized by danger and crisis; a situation made worse by the murder of one of our key gatekeepers. We develop…
Analysis of a normative framework for evaluating public engagement exercises
Over recent years, many policy-makers and academics have come to the view that involving the public in policy setting and decision-making (or “public engagement”) is desirable. The theorized benefits of engagement (over traditional approaches) include the attainment of more satisfactory and easier decisions, greater trust in decision-makers, and the enhancement of public and organizational knowledge. Empirical support for these advantages is, how…
Communities of risk research and risk practice
This short commentary paper provides a critical, but supportive, discussion of the paper by Löfstedt and 6 (L&6). Three suggestions are made. First, that L&6 make certain unsatisfactory assumptions about the underlying problems faced by risk communication initiatives. Second, that one should not be too surprised about the lack of dissemination of risk communication knowledge across different substantive risk areas, given the diversity of the risk…
On interpretative risk perception research
The use of risk communication as a policy tool has become increasingly important in areas as diverse as emergency planning and health communication, and including aspects of many of the leading issues of the day. Its use, as a part of institutional attempts to inform and influence lay behaviour, is predicated upon a variety of models of how people make sense of risk-related issues. Many such models are based upon a cognitive information-processin…
Finding a way between nihilism and romanticism
This editorial argues that aspects of a number of contemporary debates within the sociology of risk, including those concerned with the nature of expert knowledge, the capacity of theory to address practical real-world issues, and the appropriate political stance of the scholar, were pre-figured in helpful and insightful ways in the work of the British medical sociologist Philip M. Strong (1945–1995). The recent publication of a selection of Stro…
Investigating the degree of “stigma” associated with nuclear energy technologies
The extent to which nuclear energy technologies are, in some sense, “stigmatised” by historical environmental and military associations is of particular interest in contemporary debates about sustainable energy policy. Recent claims in the literature suggest that despite such stigmatisation, lay views on such technologies may be shifting towards a “reluctant acceptance,” in the light of concerns about issues like anthropogenic climate change. In …
Taking the Bundle Apart
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Public relations (12 works) · Risk Perception and Management (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Business (10 works) · Engineering (9 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works)