The politics of urban climate risks: theoretical and empirical lessons from Ulrich Beck’s methodological cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In the face of global climate risks, world cities increasingly figure in academic and policy discourse as strategic spaces for harnessing the expertise and governance capacity needed to steer societies toward more sustainable and low-carbon futures. This article reviews existing approaches to the study of urban climate politics, by way of asking what contribution Ulrich Beck’s theory of world risk society – and principles of methodological cosmopolitanism – make to such epochal conversations? Three main analytical frameworks stand out: low-carbon transition literature highlight generic processes of socio-technical ‘greening’ of urban infrastructures; urban policy mobility work documents growing intercity networks around climate and sustainability; and actor–network theory-informed takes on urban controversies engage the localized politics of specific city-based ‘riskscapes’. While each framework makes valuable contributions, this article suggests that all of them remain under-theorized from the point of view of the specific dynamics of local–global interdependencies in urban climate risk politics. In response, the article draws on Beck in outlining the contours of new urban–cosmopolitan risk communities. To this effect, empirical studies into large-scale East Asian and European port cities is used to illustrate how a shared transnational risk imaginary (e.g. of future sea-level rises) may help spur collective action and new forms of trans-boundary solidarity. Reflecting on such research practices, the article ends by pointing to the need for reworking methods of (multi-sited) ethnography and comparison as central parts of realizing Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology in the domain of urban climate risks.     

Vegetarian Utopias: Visions of dietary patterns in future societies and support for social change

The current study draws on the collective futures framework to examine how visions of future societies where most people consume plant-based, vegetarian or vegan diets are related to current support for social change towards plant-based diets. Participants were 506 university students in Aotearoa New Zealand invited to imagine a society in 2050 where most individuals consume a plant-based, vegetarian, or vegan diet. A thematic analysis was conducted on responses to an open-ended item asking how these future societies would be different to today. Participants reported a variety of potential positive and negative outcomes for individuals and wider society. Subsequent analyses of attitudes scales investigated the relationships between the collective dimensions of plant-based future societies and support for policies to promote plant-based diets. For a vegetarian future, the strongest predictor of current support for social change was the expectation that widespread vegetarianism would reduce societal dysfunction. For a vegan future, the strongest predictor of support for social change was an expectation of increased warmth in a vegan society. Implications for theory and advocacy are discussed.     

Failures to enact the future—A social practice perspective

To be successful, organisational foresight requires a multitude of perspectives and faculties. We have adopted a social practice perspective, which we base within an interpretative world view, to better understand how organisational foresight is enacted. This offers a reading of the phenomena, of which the essential contribution is that organisational foresight is more than an organisational property; it is something that reflective people do as they engage with various inputs from the outside and as a result of the continuous interaction between activity systems and their constituting elements. A longitudinal case study illustrates the importance of understanding the construction of collective and individual meaning in working with organisational foresight. The study shows how the inherent rigidity of the existing activity system and the weak ties between these diverse subsets of the organisation may block the interaction between emerging social practices and organisational intentions resulting in ongoing failures of understanding and enactment. A model is developed to include these parameters in an augmented activity systems model. Based on this we have identified the linking of organisational levels as one of the key dimensions to be considered for which the social practice perspective holds significant explanatory strength.     

Visualizing risk: using participatory photography to explore individuals’ sense-making of risk

Although the field of risk research is increasingly alert to new theoretical and empirical perspectives, it is still the case that few studies take a visual approach, despite its obvious worth in capturing people’s experiences of everyday life. This paper considers how a visual approach can be used to deepen our knowledge of sense-making of risk, particularly young people’s views on risk. It presents empirical findings from a study that uses participatory photography to capture what individuals define as serious risks in everyday life and how these risks are expressed (722 participants in Sweden, aged 5–33, mostly children or adolescents). The conclusion is that focusing on stories embedded in images independently contributes new knowledge about how the individual makes sense of risk in everyday life, and especially that visual methods of data collection and analysis illuminate how individual sense-making of risk is intertwined with other aspects of meaning-making in everyday life. In other words, it is time for a visual turn in risk research.     

Enterprise resource planning systems, management control and the quest for integration

This paper analyses how two companies pursued integration of management and control through enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We illustrate how the quest for integration is an unending process and it is produced concurrently and episodically. Integration is not only about ‘mere’ visibility and control at a distance. ERP systems do not define what integration is and how it is to be developed, but they incur a techno-logic that conditions how control can be performed through financial and non-financial representations because they distinguish between an accounting mode and a logistics mode. A primary lesson from our cases is that control cannot be studied apart from technology and context because one will never get to understand the underlying ‘infrastructure’—the meeting point of many technologies and many types of controls. ERP systems are particularly interesting for what they make impossible, and our cases illustrate how the two organizations in the quest for integration mobilized a number of ‘boundary objects’ to overcome systems-based ‘blind spots’ and ‘trading zones’. The paper points out that management control in an ERP-environment is not a property of the accounting function but a collective affair were local control issues in different parts of the organization are used to create notions of global management.     

Effectiveness of Macroprudential Policies in Developing Asia: An Empirical Analysis

Before the 2008 global financial crisis, bank monitoring focused primarily on risks to individual institutions, or what are generally referred to as prudential risks. Regulators thus failed to consider that a buildup of macroeconomic risks and vulnerabilities could pose systemic risk to the financial sector. The global credit crisis showed the inadequacy of purely prudential surveillance systems and the need for bank supervisors to better detect the buildup of macroeconomic risks before they can threaten the financial system. This article presents an empirical framework for analyzing how effectively macroprudential policies control credit growth, leverage growth, and housing price appreciation. Two significant findings emerge. Broadly, macroprudential policies can indeed promote financial stability in Asia. More specifically, different types of macroprudential policies are proved effective for different types of macroeconomic risks.     

供应链金融的研究框架及其发展

文章在文献研究的基础上从追问供应链金融之本质出发,探讨了供应链金融的研究框架及其具体组成和功能。供应链金融体系主要由机构参与者、供应链管理特性和金融功能三个关键部分构成。面对成功实施供应链金融所面临的挑战,文章认为供应链金融将会越来越重要,其应用也会越来越广泛,而抓住这一机遇的法宝在于获得相关知识、综合运用关键融资活动、掌握运用相关技术、采用适合国际环境的融资方案。     

Beliefs underlying chlamydia risk appraisals: the relationship with young adults’ intentions to use condoms

Risk appraisals are identified by many theories of health behaviour as primary motivators of intention and action. However, limited evidence is available on the beliefs underlying risk appraisals. The nature of these beliefs must be understood in order to optimally modify risk appraisals in ways that motivate positive behaviour change. This study uses Cameron’s illness risk representations framework to examine the extent to which beliefs about chlamydia predict risk appraisals and intentions to use condoms with casual sexual partners. A cross-sectional design was used. N?=?921 secondary school and university students aged between 16 and 24?years completed the assessment of illness risk representations which includes measures of illness risk representation components namely identity, cause, timeline, consequences and control. As hypothesised, appraisals of the likelihood of chlamydia infection were positively associated with beliefs that symptoms of infection were present (identity), that exposure to chlamydia had occurred (cause) and that chlamydia affected young people (timeline). Severity appraisals were positively associated with beliefs that chlamydia would lead to pain, psychosocial and fertility consequences (all consequences scales). Contrary to hypotheses, severity appraisals were positively associated with beliefs that infection could be prevented (control over prevention) and cured (control over cure), and not associated with the belief that infection could be treated (control over treatment). Intentions to use condoms with casual sexual partners were predicted by beliefs about control over prevention. In conclusion, Cameron’s framework appears to be useful for examining the content of risk appraisals and isolating beliefs to be targeted through health promotion interventions. The findings have provided new evidence about the basis for young adults’ appraisals of the risk of chlamydia infection. They point to ways in which intentions to use condoms with casual sexual partners could be increased, through for example, developing skills around how to initiate condom use.     

Genetic risk assessment from an ethical point of view

This contribution provides analyses of four ethically problematic issues in genetic risk assessment and management. First, should we require a positive risk-benefit balance for each concerned individual, or is it sufficient that the total sum of benefits outweighs the total sum of risks? Secondly, should sensitive groups have special protection, and in that case with what types of measures? Thirdly, what types of measures should be taken to protect against the risks associated with teratogenic, embryotoxic and foetotoxic agents? Fourthly, how should we deal with the new issues relating to equity and to group-based risk assessment that genomic medicine gives rise to?     

Re-conceptualizing community in risk research

Community is an important concept for determining the factors that influence peoples’ perceptions of and actions surrounding risk. However, there are multiple and conflicting definitions for the concept of community and scholars operationalize it in various ways. In this paper, we argue for a renewed focus on community as a guiding consideration in discussions of risk management and the related concepts of resilience, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. We outline classic and current conceptions of community to articulate how its conceptualization in ongoing risk research might lead to different outcomes, foci, or recommendations about collective adaptation. This includes a discussion of how historic and emerging methodological approaches for studying risk make implicit choices about what community is or how it influences collective response. We close by providing a set of potential axioms that can help researchers better integrate the complexity of community into studies of risk and understand how populations respond to it. Better integrating community into studies of risk could promote policies and communication that are tailored to the unique local context of diverse populations. Such tailoring is more likely to promote adoption of risk mitigations among local populations and perpetuate adaptation as a part of local culture. We contend that a more holistic and systematic approach to documenting local context better encompasses the variable influences that community can have on collective ability to respond to risks.     

Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy

The great moderation lulled macroeconomists and policymakers alike in the belief that we knew how to conduct macroeconomic policy. The crisis clearly forces us to question that assessment. In this paper, we review the main elements of the precrisis consensus, identify where we were wrong and what tenets of the precrisis framework still hold, and take a tentative first pass at the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework.     

Risk cultures and dominant approaches towards disasters in seven European countries

This paper builds upon the risk culture concept started with Mary Douglas’ and Aaron Wildavsky’s seminal work on risk and culture. Based upon the empirical results of a qualitative sociological study on sociocultural factors affecting risk perception and crisis communication in seven European countries, a theoretical model, illustrating how differences in disasters framing imply diverse approaches to risk and disaster management, is suggested. According to this framework, culturally bounded assumptions and conventions strongly influence how communities make sense of risks and hazards and how these communities consider some ways of dealing with disasters more appropriate than others. The framework suggested in this article distinguishes between risk cultures of a given society, which do not necessarily respond to nation states. In order to explain differences in how cultures deal with risks and disasters, and to define the main features of our typology, three main interrelated dimensions have been selected: disaster framing, trust in authorities and blaming. By analyzing differences and similarities in how people perceive and interpret disasters, as well as to whom the responsibility for risk prevention and crisis management is attributed, in seven European countries, three specific ideal types of risk cultures emerged: state-oriented risk culture, individual-oriented risk culture and fatalistic risk culture. Implications for crisis management and communication in case of a disaster will be addressed for each of these risk cultures.     

Strategy options and cognitive freezing: The case of the Dundee jute industry in Scotland

Drawing on extensive archival research, this article analyses the ‘soft systems’, such as logic and thinking, inherent in the Dundee jute industry post its world domination in the 1880s into its final demise and eventual reduction to a fringe competitor in the 1970s. Evidence for the existence of powerful individual firm and collective industry recipes that resulted in “cognitive freezing” is provided and, drawing on the earlier work of MacKay and McKiernan [The role of hindsight in foresight: refining strategic reasoning, Futures (2004) (3) 161-179], a theoretical framework that explains the formulation of these recipes is posited. The article argues that cognitive freezing on past recipes within the individual firm soft systems and the collective soft systems of the industry resulted in the industries’ managers missing existing strategy options that could have triggered industry renewal.     

Modeling contagion in the Eurozone crisis via dynamical systems

We recently (Castellacci and Choi, 2013) formulated a theoretical framework for the modeling of financial instability contagion using the theories of dynamical systems. Here, our main goal is to model the Eurozone financial crisis within that framework. The underlying system comprises many economic agents that belong to several subsystems. In each instantiation of this framework, the hierarchy and nesting of the subsystems is dictated by the nature of the problem at hand. We describe in great detail how a suitable model can be set up for the Eurozone crisis. The dynamical system is defined by the evolution of the wealths of the individual agents and can be estimated by solving a nonlinear programming problem that incorporates features of prospect theory. Contagion is formulated in terms of how the market instability indicators for the different subsystems and the global system behave. We present several scenarios tailored to recent financial developments in the Eurozone and discussed within our model. These all point to the key role played by the elasticity coefficients of the wealth dynamical system. Accordingly, we put forward general recommendations on how regulators or other super-systemic agents may act to prevent and forestall the spreading of financial distress.     

A conceptual development of Simons’ Levers of Control framework

The management control literature has been criticised for having concepts that are ill-defined. This causes mixed empirical results and makes it difficult to build a coherent body of knowledge. The paper addresses this issue by developing an important framework, that of Simons’ Levers of Control, which has been criticised in the past for its vague and ambiguous definitions. Using methods of concept analysis, the paper analyses prior literature to identify ambiguities with the different levers of control and uses examples from prior field studies to illustrate these ambiguities. The paper also analyses the positive and negative dimensions of controls, which, although part of Simons’ framework, have remained unexplored. For each ambiguity identified, the paper proposes a solution to improve concept definitions or to clarify the relationship between concepts. The result is a revised framework that explicitly separates managerial intentions for controls and employee perceptions of controls. Managerial intentions are comprised of three levels: 1) types of controls (social and technical) 2) which are organised as four control systems (strategic performance, operational performance, strategic boundaries and operational boundaries) and 3) which can be used diagnostically or interactively, have an enabling or constraining role and can lead to either reward or punishment. Finally, after defining the framework's concepts and explaining how they interact, the paper concludes by offering avenues for future research.     

Framing shared services: Accounting,control and overflows

During the last decade there has been an increase in the use of horizontal organizational relationships (HORs) such as strategic alliances, shared services, and outsourcing. Studies accentuate the unstable, fragile nature of HORs and the importance of directing attention to how these arrangements are formed and how and why they change. The aim in this study is to explore control problems of HORs and to discuss how different problems are related to accounting and control initiatives. A theoretical framework with the core concepts of framing and overflow is used as a theoretical point of departure. The empirical study is a longitudinal case study of the organization of a shared service center. In this study, we observe the problems of risk and coordination often discussed in the literature. However, guided by our theoretical framework, we also observe how many problems were formative and related to the forming of actors, relations and products. This study adds to the literature by conceptualizing how accounting and control not only functioned as framing devices, but also became sources of overflows, causing destabilization. Following the conceptual framework, we observe how overflow was caused both through reconnecting what had previously been separated and through cutting off relations in the process of disentangling the HOR.     

Systemic risk spillovers in the European banking and sovereign network

We propose a framework for estimating time-varying systemic risk contributions that is applicable to a high-dimensional and interconnected financial system. Tail risk dependencies and systemic risk contributions are estimated using a penalized two-stage fixed-effects quantile approach, which explicitly links time-varying interconnectedness to systemic risk contributions. For the purposes of surveillance and regulation of financial systems, network dependencies in extreme risks are more relevant than simple (mean) correlations. Thus, the framework provides a tool for supervisors, reflecting the market's view of tail dependences and systemic risk contributions. The model is applied to a system of 51 large European banks and 17 sovereigns during the period from 2006 through 2013, utilizing both equity and CDS prices. We provide new evidence on how banking sector fragmentation and sovereign-bank linkages evolved over the European sovereign debt crisis, and how they are reflected in estimated network statistics and systemic risk measures. Finally, our evidence provides an indication that the fragmentation of the European financial system has peaked.     

Does prudential regulation contribute to effective measurement and management of interest rate risk? Evidence from Italian banks

This paper contributes to prior literature and to the current debate concerning recent revisions of the regulatory approach to measuring bank exposure to interest rate risk in the banking book by focusing on assessment of the appropriate amount of capital banks should set aside against this specific risk. We first discuss how banks might develop internal measurement systems to model changes in interest rates and measure their exposure to interest rate risk that are more refined and effective than are regulatory methodologies. We then develop a backtesting framework to test the consistency of methodology results with actual bank risk exposure. Using a representative sample of Italian banks between 2006 and 2013, our empirical analysis supports the need to improve the standardized shock currently enforced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. It also provides useful insights for properly measuring the amount of capital to cover interest rate risk that is sufficient to ensure both financial system functioning and banking stability.     

APX: An Integrated Knowledge-Based System to Support Audit Planning

Auditors who must express an opinion on the financial statements of publicly held enterprises must perform a series of risk assessments as the basis for selecting appropriate audit procedures to be performed. Although many auditing expert systems have been developed for individual components of the audit risk assessment process such as inherent and control risk assessment, none integrate these assessments to arrive at the ultimate objective of assessing the allowable level of detection risk which drives audit procedure selection. This paper discusses critical design concerns for audit planning expert systems in light of the integrated nature of the steps involved in the audit planning process. The design and development of an integrated audit planning expert system called APX (Audit Planning eXpert) is also discussed. A distinguishing feature of APX is that it not only performs the individual types of risk assessments but it also integrates the resulting assessments to arrive at allowable detection risk. The knowledge acquisition and system development process are described to illustrate some of the mechanics of developing such a system.