Risk and Trust

Including or Excluding Citizens?

Edited by Law Commission of Canada

In recent years politicians, academics and social commentators have discussed and debated aspects of the “risk society.” For some, embracing a risk frame fulfils a socially productive role in that it helps identify and manage a range of harms and fears. However, as this multidisciplinary collection illustrates, peeling back the veneer of this often highly technocratic discourse reveals a series of moral judgments about the constitution of risk and its role in organizingcontemporary society. Exploring a broad range of case studies—including young women in conflict with the law, child soldiers, welfare recipients, genetic testing, biotechnology and new technologies—the contributors explore whether the concept of risk has undermined our sense of trust in society, effectively eroding the definition of citizenship, marginalizing particular people and groups, needlessly heightening societal fears and rendering invisible social inequalities.

Contents

• Introduction: (Aaron Doyle) 
• Risk as a Technique of Governance in an era of Biotechnological Innovation: Implications for Democratic Citizenship and Strategies of Resistance (Dayna Nadine Scott) 
• A Paradigm of Exclusion: The Impact of the Risk society on Female Young Offenders (Christie Barron) 
• Growing Concerns: Prenatal Genetic Testing, Risk and Trust (Meredith Celene Schwartz)  
• From Universal to Conditional Risk Take-up: Welfare-to-Work and Its Impacts on Citizenship, Agency and Trust (Mark A. Schann)  
• Risk Management Related to New Technologies: the Case of Spam in Canada (Ghislain Thibault) 
• Children as Risk or Children at Risk? International Law, Child Soldiers and Citizenship: the Case of Sierra Leone (Augustine Park)

Excerpt

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