政治系统与法律系统对于技术风险的决策观察

德国社会学家尼古拉斯·卢曼的社会系统论和二阶观察理论所提供的社会建构论框架,有助于我们从技术、时间、知识、决策等维度厘清技术风险形成的复杂社会机制,促进我们对政治系统和法律系统中的技术风险管制活动进行反思性观察。政治系统通过政策性决策活动规划和控制技术风险的努力,本身也会导致决策风险,政治系统因此发展出令规制失灵而被社会遗忘的应对能力;法律系统内部发展出来的风险预防原则,其功能不在于增加社会的安全水平,而是作为一种程序性反应机制,吸收因科学技术后果的不确定性所导致的环境复杂性。     

关注文化重心促进社会和谐发展

人类社会在其发展进程中,面对不同的时代特征,社会的关注点的不同,文化重心不同,潜移默化的使社会主题、实践的方向、评价标准的不同。然而社会的文化重心往往是以隐性价值存在于人们的观念中,所以它对社会发展的影响也表现为隐性的,但却是实实在在的,文化重心的评价标准是社会评价的价值导向,社会评价的导向,可能会使社会异化为相反的趋势。本文以认识文化重心,以正确的文化导向,寻求今天中国社会的发展进入有效的政治决策和切实的实践轨道。     

Future risk communication

Science and technology have transformed risks and communications in the last century. Smallpox is gone, and polio is fading fast, thanks to vaccines. Communications, commerce and risk have gone global. Wireless networks, wideband communications and immersive interfaces are already in some homes. In the future, ubiquitous communications aids in the form of smart risk agents could tailor both the medium and the message, placing a risk in context for a specific person. By sensing physical risk characteristics and collecting and synthesizing risk information, weighted by judgments about the sources of that information, and conveying these in the media of choice, a smart agent or active technology could provide the ultimate risk communication. Yet theories of risk communication are in their infancy, with some emphasizing cognition and risk control, others social and affective responses that drive behavioral change. To create moral agents, we need to understand how our own and others’ values and goals arise and change in this increasingly information intense society, and how virtual realities can evoke or displace affect, cognition, and social context—that is, life as we know it. Otherwise, we may cross the divide from informed decision making to persuasion without reason.     

Sobre la alienación subjetiva en la organización del trabajo actual. Una observación participante en el comercio de la alimentación al detal

This paper presents the findings of the first stage of a case study of pleasure and suffering at work, whose fieldwork is one participant observation of a Canadian chain of retail. The purpose is to make available to students of organizational analysis, management and human resources, some definitions are finding from some bibliography resources (theoretical and methodological) from clinical sociology, the psychodynamics of work and sociology of emotions. Is about the dimensions social and technical of the work organization and one form of current subjective alienation. The most important premises that can be shows is that the current organization of work tent to be perceives by the employee like a potential threat and, unknowing, they prefers to protect themselves from the subjective alienation.     

Perception of technological risk: insights from research and lessons for risk communication and management

Technology has become a familiar companion in all areas of life. Production consumption, administration, education, communication, and leisure activities are all shaped by the use of technologies. However, people often associate with the term ‘technology’ attributes, such as catastrophic and potentially dangerous, and tend to take the benefits of technological products for granted. This asymmetry in risk–benefit perception is one of the main reasons why many consumers are concerned about ‘hidden’ risks of technologies and why they demand stringent regulatory actions when they feel unduly exposed to potential emissions or waste products associated with the lifecycle of technologies. This situation is often aggravated by social amplification processes, by which even small risks receive high media attention and are blown out of proportion in the public arena. At the same time, however, one needs to acknowledge that many technologies have the potential to harm the human health and the environment. The purpose of this article is to review our knowledge about risk perception with respect to technologies, in particular emerging technologies, and to suggest possible strategies to use this knowledge for improving our risk management practice. Technological risk perception is defined in this article as the processing of physical signals and/or information about a potentially harmful impact of using technology and the formation of a judgment about seriousness, likelihood, and acceptability of the respective technology. Based on the review of psychological, social, and cultural factors that shape individual and social risk perceptions, we have attempted to develop a structured framework that provides an integrative and systematic perspective on technological risk perception and that may assist risk management and regulation in taking perceptions into account.     

The role of annual reports in gender and class contradictions at general motors: 1917–1976

This paper argues that studies of female exploitation frequently pay too little attention to the broader social context; particularly alienation and crises in the development of late capitalism. This criticism applies with equal force to the domestic labor/housework studies and labor process studies and labor process studies where male domination is often advanced as the primary explanatory variable in accounting for female oppression. Even where labor process researchers have emphasized mediating affects on partiarchial influences (technology and control processes for instance; c.f. Milkman, Politics and Society, pp. 159–203, 1983), we argue that the broader context of alienated capitalist social relations is frequently understated.Female subordination under capitalism is traced to two primary sources in this study: First, that part of the labor process where the existence of female labor facilitates surplus value appropriation by playing the part of an “industrial reserve army” (sometimes “latent”, at other times “floating”). Second, in times of overproduction and underconsumption, capital has invented a consumerist ideology about women to help resolve its crisis of realizing surplus value. Only by seeing these different instances of female oppression as part of a larger, mutually reinforcing configuration of “instances” — emanating from capitalist social relations — are we likely to begin to adequately comprehend the resilience of social ideology concerning women and develop effective political and social counter-strategies.In this research, the above considerations are explored using evidence from a longitudinal study of General Motors where the annual reports are used to monitor the evolution of managerial ideology vis-a-vis women over some sixty years. We see in this study how the manner of women's exploitation changes with changes in the crises facing capitalism.The implications of the study are severalfold: Firwt, we see how a socially “unreflective” view of “management” and “management control systems” may lead to practices that are oppressive and exploitative. Second, we find “the labor process” to be an important but insufficient conceptual terrain for understanding women's oppression; instead we propose that the starting point of any analysis should be capitalist alienation. Third, this work has implications for the various controversies about class essentialism and the primacy of class. (Wright, New Left Review, pp. 11–36, 1983; Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis, 1979; Miliband, New Left Review, pp. 57–68, 1983; Tinker, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, pp. 1–20, 1984). as well as the relation between male domination and class oppression (Fox-Genovese, New Left Review, pp. 5–29, 1982, Goldelier, New Left Review, pp. 3–17, 1981) in that it examines the interplay between class and other forms of domination. Lastly, we see how annual reports may contribute to a general “world view” that aids social appropriation and domination.     

分配权能对应与会计行为异化

企业财务报告舞弊是企业会计行为异化的结果, 在自利需要、动机驱使与约束缺失的情况下, 会计行为异化就会发生。分配权力和分配能力的对应是扼制会计行为异化的有效制度安排, 这一制度安排与现代企业的“共同治理”模式相结合, 就产生了会计行为应当公平反映、计量各企业利益相关者的要素贡献与剩余索取权的基本要求。现实中各类利益相关者分配权力与分配能力之间的配对错位和冲突, 就会导致会计行为的异化和财务报告舞弊的发生。     

Risk and safety in large-scale socio-technological (military) systems: a literature review

Contemporary military practice relies more and more on technology and its artefacts and seem to have become, thereby, large-scale socio-technological systems; systems in which the social and the technological are closely tied together. An important issue in these kinds of systems, especially military ones, is how to safely use this technology. This paper reviews the literature for research on risk and safety in large-scale socio-technological systems for their ability to account for the complex dynamics from which safety in these kinds of systems tends to emerge – or not. After this, it evaluates some current accounts of risk and safety in the military specifically, so as to assess the ‘status’ – or analytical strength – of accounts of risk and safety in this domain. More rigour is needed in evaluations of risk and safety of technology in the military so as to provide analyses with sufficient analytic strength. This rigour, it turns out, can often be found in the interdisciplinary STS (science, technology and society) literature that, until today however, does not often seem to address risk and safety of large-scale socio-technological systems directly, and which seems to pay even less attention to risk and safety in the military.     

Consumer reactions to unfamiliar technologies: mental and social formation of perceptions and attitudes toward nano and GM products

Abstract

Using focus groups, the research analyses the mental and social processes through which consumers form perceptions and opinions about unfamiliar technologies and the derived products, taking the perception of nanotechnology and nano-products, GM and GM products as example. Our findings suggest that limited understanding of the technological principles and lack of (visible) products prevent the formation of experience-based attitudes and behavioral intentions. In this context, consumers interpret and assess cognitive interventions such as product labels or product information, as well as the trustworthiness of unfamiliar information sources, based on heuristic clues, association, mutual reassurance and previous attitudes. The established determinants of technology risk perception (e.g. knowledge, social norms, perceived risks and benefits and controllability) were the subject of constant deliberation and negotiation among participants. Consequently, the perception of risk and technology communication interventions might vary greatly across different locations and segments of the public, complicating risk communication and trust-building.     

我国再分配逆向调节的成因及对策探析

再分配逆向调节是再分配调节国民收入差距的异化现象。当前,我国再分配无论是财富的归集还是财富的支出都出现了逆向调节,加剧了初次分配所形成的收入差距。以税收、社会保障、转移支付为主的我国再分配调节机制没有正常发挥缩小收入分配差距的作用的原因,既包括再分配调节机制本身的缺陷,也包括作为再分配调节机制运行基础的体制性因素。因此,在完善我国再分配机制的过程中既要考虑健全调节机制本身,同时要改革作为再分配调节机制运行基础的体制性因素。     

As Time Goes By: The Beginnings of Social and Behavioural Science Risk Research

Attempts at studying risk issues in the social and behavioural sciences have now been going on for about 30 years. A brief summary of the first Swedish project, launched in 1975, and now available on the Internet site www.dynam‐it.com/risk, is presented. It was a fairly large‐scale attempt to review work then available or in a start‐up phase in several disciplines, mainly in the social sciences, but also in some of the humanities and in technology. The usual problems of interdisciplinary work were met with, and are briefly noted here. However, there was also a philosophical rift between empirical and theoretical/conceptual approaches which surfaced in requirements of “a theory of risk” and an accompanying and integrated analysis of risk generation in society. These requirements are as difficult to meet today as they were in the 1970s, and in some quarters they are just as demanding. However, the quest for “a theory of risk” is arguably meaningless, and fruitful research on risk topics is hardly to be expected to be the result from merely analysing the meaning of the word. Risk is just a four‐letter word.     

人脸识别支付用户使用意愿研究

基于用户个人角度,依据问卷调查数据,运用结构方程模型,考量人脸识别支付用户使用意愿。结果表明：社会影响、感知风险、感知易用性和感知有用性对使用意愿有直接影响;使用情境和个人创新对使用意愿有间接影响,其中使用情境通过感知易用性和感知有用性间接影响使用意愿的影响因素,个人创新通过感知易用性间接影响使用意愿。     

Reliability rating and reflective questioning: a case study of extended review on Australia's risk assessment of Bt cotton

The governance of emerging technologies is frequently constructed around risk assessment processes. However, when risk assessment as a decision‐making tool is applied to controversial fields such as genetic modification, stem cell research and nano‐scaled science and technology, inherent uncertainties and conflicting social values arise to challenge the adequacy of traditional approaches. In this paper, I propose a framework through which risk assessments may be exposed to a process of ‘extended review’, incorporating both natural and social science quality criteria and modes of reflection. I call this framework ‘Reliability Rating and Reflective Questioning’. The framework is developed through a detailed case study review of a particular risk assessment document. The case study risk assessment reviewed in this paper is that performed by an Australian governmental authority on the impact of genetically modified ‘Bt’ cotton on non‐target organisms. Through highlighting errors, misrepresentations, assumptions and embedded value judgements within the risk assessment document, I argue that the framework of ‘Reliability Rating and Reflective Questioning’ can serve as a useful tool for gauging and improving the quality of risk assessment, especially when used as a decision‐making tool for emerging technologies with high levels of uncertainty and strongly conflicting values.     

The Efficiency of Categorical Discrimination in Insurance Markets

Crocker and Snow (1986) show that banning categorization based on risk‐related characteristics such as gender or race in pricing insurance policies is inefficient whenever categorization is costless. Their analysis, by contrast, suggests ambiguous welfare effects of banning costly categorization. I show that this latter conclusion is incorrect: categorical pricing bans are inefficient even when categorization is costly. Whenever the ban‐imposing government can instead provide breakeven partial social insurance, it can remove its ban in such a way that the insurance market will choose to employ the categorizing technology only when doing so is Pareto improving.     

The Impact of Corporate Social Performance on Financial Risk and Utility: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study focuses on the wealth‐protective effects of socially responsible firm behavior by examining the association between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial risk for an extensive panel data sample of S&P 500 companies between the years 1992 and 2009. In addition, the link between CSP and investor utility is investigated. The main findings are that corporate social responsibility is negatively but weakly related to systematic firm risk and that corporate social irresponsibility is positively and strongly related to financial risk. The fact that both conventional and downside risk measures lead to the same conclusions adds convergent validity to the analysis. However, the risk‐return trade‐off appears to be such that no clear utility gain or loss can be realized by investing in firms characterized by different levels of social and environmental performance. Overall volatility conditions of the financial markets are shown to play a moderating role in the nature and strength of the CSP‐risk relationship.     

Sociology,risk and the environment: a material-semiotic approach

Abstract

Sociology has made significant contributions to the conceptualisation of risk and critique of technical risk analysis. It has, however, unintentionally reinforced the division of labour between the natural/technical and social sciences in risk analysis. This paper argues that the problem with conceptualisations of risk is not a misplaced emphasis on calculation. Rather, it is that we have not adequately dealt with ontological distinctions implicit in both sociological and technical work on risk between material or objective risks and our socially mediated understandings and interpretations of those risks. While acknowledging that risks are simultaneously social and technical, sociologists have not, in practice, provided the conceptual and methodological tools to apprehend risk in a less dualistic manner. This limits our ability both to analyse actors and processes outside the social domain and to explore the recursive relationships between risk calculus, social action and the material outcomes of risk. In response, this paper develops a material-semiotic conceptualisation of risk and provides an assessment of its relevance to more sociologically informed risk governance. It introduces the ideas of co-constitution, emergent entities and enactment as instruments for reconciling the material and social worlds in a sociological study of risk. It further illustrates the application of a material-semiotic approach using these concepts in the nuclear industry. In deconstructing social–material dualisms in the sociology of risk, this paper argues that a material-semiotic conceptualisation of risk enables both technical and social perspectives on risk not only to coexist but to collaborate, widening the scope for interdisciplinary research.     

Understanding public attitudes to technology

The social context which surrounds technology is likely to be one of the most important determinants of its future development and application. The application of repertory grid techniques (n = 26) in conjunction with generalized Procrustes analysis identified important psychological constructs which determine attitude. A larger survey study (n = 227) examined the reliability and predictive capacity of these items in quantifying attitudes to technology. Factor analysis identified two sub-scales, which appeared to assess perceptions of technological risk and benefit. Internal reliability of the two sub-scales was high, and had pleasing face validity and predictive capacity. An inverse relationship between perceived risk and benefit was found, consistent with previous research in risk perception. Discussion is made of reducing inappropriately high risk perceptions through effective communication of benefits, and vice versa, with the caveat that such an effect is only likely to be observed for technologies where public opinion is uncrystallized and knowledge is low.     

Post-truth or agnogenesis? Theorizing risk and uncertainty in a neoliberal nature

In the aftermath of the great recession, many have investigated the characteristics of life in a ‘neoliberal nature’. In more recent months, we have also seen an apparent erosion of truth, the ‘post-truth’ moment. This paper argues that there are important and undertheorized links between the risk centrality of life in neoliberal nature and the post-truth moment. We begin by reviewing some treatments of risk from different fields, coming to the general conclusion that neoliberal nature is a place characterized primarily by its heightened risk(s). We then undertake a Foucauldian interpretation of neoliberal governmentality to demonstrate that the strategy of recasting society as atomized agents of risk is the source of a great deal of alienation and discontent, manifesting in an apparently post-truth citizen/society relationship. Next, we relate each of these concepts to the study of culturally induced ignorance, or ‘agnotology,’ to demonstrate that neoliberal governmentality in fact requires the systemic production of ignorance. We then propose an extension of agnotology to argue that a seemingly innocuous post-truth moment is better understood as an outgrowth of the deliberate production of targeted ignorance, especially in the context of environmental injustices. Finally, to provide an illustration of the trends described in this paper, we conclude with a section on the historic use of leaded gasoline in the U.S.     

Understanding risk disclosures as a function of social organisation: A neo-Durkheimian institutional theory-based study of Burmah Oil Company 1971–1976

This paper draws on neo-Durkheimian institutional theory to identify patterns of social relations within the Burmah Oil Company Limited (BOC) in the period 1971–1976 and to assess whether the risk perceptions and the approaches to risk management discussed within the risk disclosures for the BOC annual reports are consistent with the patterns of social relations. Using archival sources the dominant pattern of social relations in the period 1971–1973 is identified as hierarchical and in the period 1974–1976 as isolate; the change in the pattern of social relations resulting from the BOC tanker fleet crisis in 1974. Significantly, the annual report risk disclosures are found to be consistent with the dominant patterns of social relations. Much prior risk disclosure research has focused on examining the principal characteristics of risk disclosures and testing for associations between volumes of risk disclosures and firm characteristics. This study suggests neo-Durkheimian institutional theory may offer a causally-based explanation for annual report risk disclosures.