Managing Risk beyond the pandemic
So, there is no vaccine yet. Testing and tracing is patchy at best. But economies are tanking and jobs are slipping away. In other words, life in the new normal has to continue with a deadly virus in our midst. Risk is an important organising feature of modern governance practices, as Ulrick Beck had explained around four decades ago in Risk Society:Towards a New Modernity (1986) . Some risks are known knowns (like the possibility of hacking a government database) and others are unknown knowns (like a natural calamity) and still others are unknown unknown (risks that we don’t know of but can appear). The pandemic was a known unknown - history tells us that there was always a possibility of an “untreatable contagious disease” spreading globally.
In fact modern transport systems and modern life and lifestyles in general were the “super spreaders” of the corona virus. Beck had argued that in the advanced capitalist age, a new risk society is evolving as part of managing risks systematically produced through the modernisation process. He added that the old problem of the modern capitalist system - unequal distribution of wealth would evolve into a new and emerging problem of unequal distribution and management of risk. Today, as life with the virus is emerging distributional inequality and risk inequality overlap. This means that risk is differentiated as it presents itself, is embodied and managed across class and status inequalities. For some, working from home and online learning for their children was feasible in the throes of the pandemic and is tenable for the foreseeable future. For others the same poses risks of survival and exclusion. So, how is risk managed by governments?
The first level of managing risk is to manage individual behaviour. This is modern liberal governmentality, which is a form of rule that an only be exercised through the freedom of the individual. Individual freedom is a limit on ‘liberal power’ and simultaneously ‘liberal power’ has to find a way of balancing self-interest and desires of free individuals with achieving what is good for all of modern society. In the context of managing the risk of a contagious disease, therefore, liberal governments have to eventually ease the lockdown and restore individual freedoms even at the risk of infection. Ali and Keil (2008) have described this as a “small pox model” where risk is managed by collecting data, compiling statistics and launching medical/non medical campaigns. So, put somewhat crudely if the lockdown was a totalitarian ‘plague model; where under the surveillance of a panopticon individuals are confined in cells (their homes) so that communication, association and infection are prevented then easing the lockdown involves restoring individual freedom while managing risk through contact tracing apps, statistical modelling and healthcare.
State power, however, does not operate like a pendulum oscillating from the totalitarian to the liberal. Rather, it operates on a continuum with varying degrees between the totalitarian plague model on the one end and the liberal small pox model on the other end.. Citizen’s trust in public institutions is a key determining factor for how effectively states can restore individual freedom while ensuring security for all. Technocratic interventions such as, contact tracing apps, location monitoring to check if you are at home self-isolating, data analytics, for example can enable individual freedoms to travel, meet families and get to work but where trust is weak states can take recourse to coercive use of data to monitor and discipline bodies. The difference between contact tracing apps in Germany and India for, example.
The second level of managing risk is to externalise it. This can occur, as living with risk eventually leads to anxiety, stress and inability to envisage a way out. Individuals and groups then take recourse to reactionism. Venting their anger and frustration on others who symbolise a threat to existence of the self. Why do people externalise threats without self-reflection? After all the pandemic as suggested earlier is a consequence of modern life and needs reflection on how we do things and what we can change. Well, reactionism happens - psychologically as fears get translated on to an externalised threat that can be separated or removed. The racialisation of infectious diseases, for instance, strikes at the heart of multicultural cities. Trump’s declaration of “Chinese virus”, the immoral labels attached to the behaviours of migrants in Singapore and London, are likely to lead to spatial strategies of control. Isolating neighborhoods, keeping people out of mainstream society. With the pandemic we can expect that in times of uncertainty and fear some people will suffer the consequences of structural racism, class and gender differences.
The third level of managing risk is built around communities. This means taking decisions and enabling the resources to change spaces and access to essentials in ways that are much more inclusive. Take mobility for example. Our modern approach to public transport is focused on speed but are very fragmented and exclusionary. Streets focused on cars but not on multiple uses for pedestrians, cyclists and so on on. As social distancing is implemented a genuinely inclusive ways of managing public transport would be to localise movement. Instead of isolating neighbourhoods from big road and rail networks, inner streets should facilitate movement so that people can walk to local amenities like schools, groceries and clinics. Thus, empowering workers and users, so that they can travel safely.
This kind of change is transformative. It means finding local solutions for local problems. It means empowering communities first. In other words, managing risk in the new normal means taking long-standing recommendations for inclusive planning more seriously.
London, 16 June 2020
