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The sale of raw drinking milk from cows is banned in Australia due to regulatory requirements that all milk must be pasteurised. Such a prohibition is based on concern about public health and safety risks, and was upheld in the most recent review of raw milk product regulation undertaken by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). However, this decision is not one that is universally accepted, with some people challenging the conclusion that raw milk is dangerous, and choosing to still source and drink it. In this paper, the contested regulation of raw milk is examined by questioning the normative assumption that the object in question, raw milk, is a singular entity, and one which is always dangerous. Drawing on analysis of six FSANZ documents released as part of its raw milk review, this paper discusses the practices that stabilise raw milk as always risky; processes that are found to wash away the possibility of other, potentially safe, versions of raw milk. It concludes by finding that such stabilisation has tangible impacts for public health policy and regulation, including limiting the parameters within which debate can occur, and precluding the possibility that other versions of raw milk could exist, or be accounted for in food safety regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk identification has been at the heart of media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Less consideration has been paid to the way that the media itself has (re)produced these risk categories, and how this has changed over the course of the pandemic. The aim of this article is to understand how risk has been constructed in the Aotearoa, New Zealand news media over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reports findings from a longitudinal media analysis of mainstream news media articles (n = 388) published in the first week of March 2020, March 2021 and March 2022. Underpinned by a socio-cultural theoretical understanding of risk, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of the 22 most relevant articles from a week of coverage during each month of March. Our analysis identified three key themes by which we characterise the discussions of risk as these developed from 2020 to 2022: (1) Subjects of risk; (2) Spaces of risk; and (3) The nation facing risk. We conclude that the dominant frame surrounding risk was one of mutual risk and solidarity. We suggest future policies around pandemic risk mitigation must attend to both the range of competing risks as well as the different epistemologies (including scientific and indigenous worldviews) informing risk. We suggest that researchers, policy makers and reporters involve the voices of those 'at risk' into their publications. This analysis shows the value of taking a sociocultural analysis of risk as it is framed within a particular national-cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between risk and inequality has become a key area of research and theoretical debate in sociology and risk studies more broadly. My aim in this paper is to explore the role culture plays in the (re)production of inequalities of risk exposure. More specifically, I examine the ways cultural systems shape and animate judgements about acceptable standards of risk exposure for different groups within a society. The case study examines divergent policy judgements about acceptable risk exposure to road accident injury and death between a group of temporary visa workers and all other private passengers in Singapore. A key objective of the paper is to demonstrate the conceptual and empirical utility of Mary Douglas' cultural perspective for studying interconnections between risk and inequality. In particular, how taking up the problem of 'risk acceptability' is an effective way of approaching and studying the ways risk and inequality operate as mutually constitutive relations. In the discussion I show that what counts as risk and how acceptable or not risk is judged to be depends on the cultural system of classification used and the stratified social order it (re)produces. In the conclusion I consider the broader utility and significance of this critical approach for studying relations between risk and inequality through the problem of risk acceptability. A utility that may take on a particular significance in the present time of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective and efficient search methods are required to retrieve robust evidence to inform the study of risk communication such as in dementia care. In this article, we draw on a study which appraised 12 bibliographic databases and one online search engine for this purpose by measuring their ability to identify relevant papers published up to December 2013 when applying a consistent search strategy on the topic of research on risk concepts and risk communication in dementia. We also searched reference lists of literature reviews. We retrieved 31 relevant articles. We took measures of sensitivity (ability to retrieve relevant papers) and precision (ability to avoid retrieving irrelevant papers), and we identified unique articles and the dispersion of relevant results when using database relevancy-sorting functions. We found that Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health and PsycINFO had the highest levels of sensitivity; Social Services Abstracts, Social Care Online and Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts had the highest levels of precision. We rated Google Scholar (using the first 300 hits retrieved) third on sensitivity, seventh on precision, and found it had a more effective sort by relevancy function than any of the databases. We found that five databases and Google Scholar retrieved at least one study not identified by any other database. We found that none of the databases retrieved all of the relevant articles identified by that database within the first 25% of results when using the sort by relevancy function (where this was available). We concluded that it is necessary to use a number of databases for effective searching on this topic. The approaches we report in this article assist in creating a comprehensive search strategy and can be used by researchers to build social science risk knowledge methodically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public health and individual health care are increasingly oriented towards managing risks. This 'surveillance medicine' does not target present illnesses but aims to prevent possible future conditions, greatly expanding the number of people implicated in medical interventions. In this paper, I interrogate the everyday experience of being at risk of illness. First, I suggest that we lack a comprehensive account of this experience, because current ways to characterise this phenomenon tend to equate risk with (chronic) illness and patient status. I then report a case study designed to avoid this starting point. I conducted interviews with laypersons with varying levels of elevated cholesterol, a common risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, who were recruited from a consumer panel in Finland in 2015. I found three elements that structure the health risk experience: the intangible nature of risk, the probabilistic character of risk estimates, and the ambivalent status of risk in terms of health and illness. While these findings overlap with previous literature in many ways, detaching health risk from illness foregrounds health management instead of patient behaviour. These findings call for caution in approaching health risk uncritically through illness categories or patient status, and I invite researchers to critically examine such elements in other cases and contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'embodied' risk has been used to understand the experience of being at risk of cancer, yet there has been less engagement of the concept in relation to those who have been diagnosed and treated for the disease. In this paper, I draw on young women's accounts of living with breast cancer with the aim of developing analyses of embodied risk and expanding our understanding of the concept. Twenty women diagnosed with breast cancer while they were aged 18-44 took part in semi-structured interviews in the UK, and I analysed these interview data using social constructionist grounded theory. The findings illustrate how a sense of risk from within the body shaped the young women's experiences and perceptions of their bodies, and how their body as risky was relational, becoming salient in interactions with others. I also explore new dimensions of embodied risk related to the age and social circumstances of the young women. Although the fear of cancer recurrence is well documented, this paper explores it as an embodied experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs about works which explores and analyses how social processes influence the ways in which risks and uncertainties for health, and in healthcare, are identified, communicated, assessed, and/or managed. Topics include practice-oriented articles by social work and other disciplinary scholars that critically engage with contemporary debates about risk and social work; and flexibility or rigidity of social work boundary-making and its effects on risk assessment and management.

In the last 20 years, adolescents' heavy drinking in many western countries has declined. Simultaneously, researchers have identified an increased interest in health among young people. The paper compares adolescents' gendered discourses and practices on intoxication and health in order to clarify the role gender plays in their current low alcohol consumption. The data consists of semi-structured interviews about alcohol, health and leisure activities among adolescents aged between 15 and 19 (N = 56). In the coding of the material, we have singled out two approaches to health and well-being among the participants, which we name the 'social' and 'physical health' approaches. By drawing on Butler's work on 'gender as performativity', Connell's understanding of gendered identities as 'multidimensional' and Bourdieu's concept of 'habitus', we analyse how the participants align with, negotiate or oppose the hegemonic masculinities and femininities in these approaches, and examine the everyday practices that the two approaches are embedded in. Our analysis shows that the participants' gendered performances in the 'physical health' approach are more variable, reflective and critical than those in the 'social health' approach. Moreover, the physical health approach modifies young people's risk-taking practices of heavy drinking and helps to reinforce practices that favour young people's low alcohol consumption. We propose that the move from doing gender in relation to risk-taking by heavy drinking towards doing it more through health- and physical appearance-related activities may generate processes that narrow the gender gap between masculinities and femininities and encourage new kinds of interaction and gender blending between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world, used in farming as well as home gardening since the mid '70 s. For decades it was considered by regulators an 'ideal' pesticide: deadly to pests, respectful of humans. In 2015, it unexpectedly became highly controversial because of conflicting scientific assessments of its carcinogenic effects. On the one hand the UN International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as 'probably a carcinogen'; on the other the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that glyphosate should be classified as 'not a carcinogen'. In this I article I develop an explanation for differences in the assessments made by these two regulatory agencies. Whereas most sociological explanations for regulatory disagreements focus on cultural and organisational factors, in this article I advance a normative institutionalist explanation for differences in the outcome of risk assessments. Accordingly, I posit that formal norms regulating the procedures for appraisal directly affect the final outcome by establishing the criteria for the type, quantity and quality of evidence assessed. On the basis of the glyphosate case study, the article discusses advantages and shortcomings of different procedural norms for the selection and evaluation of scientific evidence, and their implications for the overall quality of risk assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an institutional ethnography that explored how risk discourse organised the experiences of pregnant women living with HIV and was reproduced in the work of healthcare providers operating in a 'high risk' prenatal clinic in Ontario, Canada. This inquiry began from the standpoint of pregnant women living with HIV, and made connections between women's experiences, the work of healthcare providers delivering prenatal care, and the ruling relations that organised women's experiences and healthcare providers' activities. The study revealed how risk was an omnipresent discourse in women's lives and became visible through the treatments women were prescribed, the prenatal clinic appointment schedule women were expected to follow, and the application of medical interventions. The discourse of risk coordinated the work of healthcare providers and was inextricably linked to practices that prioritised foetal health. Women's daily realities and experiences were overshadowed by the healthcare providers' focus on the foetus and mitigating perinatal risks. As a result, the work women did to organise their lives to participate in care, and the physical and emotional costs they experienced when attending their appointments, taking their medicines, and following clinical procedures were overshadowed within an institutional context where the primary goal was to reduce risks to their babies – even if women shared concerns and aspirations about preventing perinatal HIV transmission. Women's experiences reveal some important consequences regarding the current organisation of prenatal care that emphasises risk and possible ways to enhance prenatal care policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although uncertainty is a key characteristic of epilepsy, and despite the close relationship between uncertainty and risk, our understanding of individuals' experiences of childhood epilepsy in relation to risk is limited. In this paper I explore family members' perceptions of the risks associated with the condition by drawing on qualitative data collected during 2013 and 2014 from 24 families with a child with epilepsy (including data from 28 parents, 13 children with epilepsy and 14 siblings). The diagnosis of childhood epilepsy provided parents and children with a new framework that they used to evaluate risks posed by the physical environment. Indeed, roads, water and heights were reconceptualised when viewed through an 'epilepsy lens' and were seen to present more risk to the child with epilepsy in comparison to the level of risk the same hazards posed to their siblings or peers. Furthermore, while parents described prioritising new and reconceptualised physical risks to their child, the children with epilepsy were more concerned about being stigmatised by their peers. The children's discussions surrounding stigma suggest that this results from interactions with their peers, rather than stigma being learnt within the family, as previous studies have suggested. Overall, I demonstrate that risk is a central feature of contemporary experiences of epilepsy for children with the condition and their parents, but that parents and children perceive and prioritise risks differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to critical studies of risk and mothering by illustrating and conceptualising how risk is constructed in public health advice and mothers' accounts of weaning. Previous research points towards a gap between public health scientific definitions of risk and mothers' contextual understandings and experience of handling complex and often conflicting risks linked to food and feeding. It has been suggested that public health discourse misses out on or even silences risks defined by women in their everyday care practices. Therefore, our aim is to conceptualise and map various co-existing constructions of risk and discuss how an awareness of the multiplicity of risk can inform public health advice that take mothers' point of view into account. Using the concept 'riskscape', we explore and compare how public health and mothers' constructions of risk diverge and overlap. Our findings illustrate how mothers belong to a community of practice where weaning is understood and practiced in relation to their everyday life and eating practices involving multiple concerns that are not addressed in public health advice, especially the wider food and information landscape. The study also indicate that this divergence can provoke feelings of insecurity and anxiety among mothers and make public health advice seem less relevant. In sum, our findings suggest a need for public health to acknowledge mothers' experience of weaning as a compound practice similar to their own eating practices and to widen the present focus on risk as a domestic and individual responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demographic shift currently being observed across many Western countries towards older-parenthood has contributed to increasing concerns about the risks posed by age-related fertility decline, particularly in women. These concerns pertain to the increased risk of infertility, pregnancy loss, and genetic abnormalities occurring in the foetus as well as greater physical risks to the potential mother during pregnancy and birth. Concerns about the effects of reproductive ageing have occurred alongside the emergence of variety of 'fertility monitoring' and 'fertility extension' technologies (FMETs) such as ovarian reserve testing and social egg freezing. In this paper I will explore the emergence of these new FMETs and will demonstrate how these new technologies are part of, and are contributing towards, a shift in the way reproductive ageing is perceived and represented, not as a natural inevitability but as a pathological liability in need of monitoring and management. I will show how, by rendering fertility risk 'visible', new and highly gendered anxieties are emerging creating new burdens and responsibilities on women to consider drawing upon highly commercialised biomedical interventions in the pursuit of biogenetic motherhood. I will also examine how, in the current neoliberal moment, these fertility risk individualising technologies can be experienced as highly compelling for potential users due to the ways in which they offer women the opportunity to achieve the goals of hegemonic femininity whilst demonstrating ideals associated with reproductive citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine discourse in public deliberations in pre-development locales in the UK and US about advantages and disadvantages of future shale development ('fracking'). We aimed to understand how people anticipate potential health effects, broadly construed, of environmental toxicity and disturbance in the context of planned, but not yet implemented, energy development. In day-long deliberations with small, diverse groups in two cities in each country (London, Cardiff in the UK; Los Angeles, Santa Barbara in the US), participants discussed impacts on health and well-being using three main rubrics: 'It's money or health', 'Why take chances?' and 'Beyond the tipping point'. Throughout, participants framed health as an intrinsically moral issue, with collective responsibility as a dominant normative frame. We identify the concept of compound risk to underscore effects of multiple risks and hazards on people's sensibilities about anticipated future health and environmental harm. The findings demonstrate how and why diverse publics in pre-impact sites in both countries saw shale extraction as high stakes development that poses significant, often unacceptable, risks to human and environmental health and well-being. Risks extended beyond toxicity to broad threats to health, including, for some, the end of life as we know it on the planet. Overall, participants' discussions of health were more connected to social categories and their underlying moral principles than to technological details. This work contributes evidence of blurred boundaries between environment and health as well as the importance people place on social risks in the context of proposed energy system change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical devices occupy an increasingly important place in global medical care, and yet the risk management systems that govern them are largely overlooked in academic literatures. In the US, home to the largest medical devices market, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation allows most medical devices to enter the market based on analogy, or substantial equivalence, with previously marketed devices. Thus, risk assessment is administered without premarket clinical trials for safety and efficacy. This system represents a permissive regulatory regime based in neoliberal tenets, where risk, in the form of adverse events, is inherently tolerated within governance structures, evidencing risk colonisation. This paper employs a case study approach, examining market clearances of vaginal mesh surgical devices, which have been the subject of US multi-district litigation. We identified 266 devices cleared before 31 December 2017 and analysed the complicated web of device 'ancestry' whereby devices as disparate as cardiac patches and hernia mesh allowed clearance of surgical devices for urogynecology. Perhaps of greatest concern, 10 recalled or withdrawn devices influenced new device clearances for up to 17 years after their market-removal. While the FDA must balance its dual mandate to safeguard patients and promote innovation, we find that medical device regulation structurally favours innovation over safety. 'Light touch' risk assessment is not counterbalanced with postmarket mechanisms to safeguard against residual and developmental risks that are associated with medical devices, particularly permanent implants. The proportionality principle associated with a precautionary approach should inform medical device risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking risks is a part of everyday living, and a contributor to our sense of dignity. Yet as people age, or develop cognitive, mental or physical impairments, opportunities to take risks can diminish. A life without risks can erode a person’s dignity. The purpose of this narrative review was to explore the application of the concepts of the Dignity of Risk and Therapeutic Risk in literature pertaining to community-based support for people living with a range of physical, mental and/or cognitive constraints. We aimed to understand how these concepts are conceptualised, articulated, negotiated and enacted in theory and practice. During a period from October 2017 to January 2018, seven databases were searched for relevant literature. Thematic analysis techniques were applied to synthesise the data from 47 academic papers that met the inclusion criteria. Our analysis demonstrates persistent ethical tensions. There is widespread support for the application of both concepts across a range of discourses, but a number of long-standing ethical considerations pertaining to risk, safety, rights and negotiation persist. We argue that the way forward is to resist the temptation to simplify the issues, but instead to accept and accommodate ethical complexities while implementing evidence-informed solutions such as intersubjective risk negotiation strategies, community-centred relational approaches to decision-making, and education and training in communication skills and the positive potential of risk. Future research to examine the impacts of the implementation of these strategies would be timely, beneficial and welcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Western society, the concept of risk is mostly linked related to negative or undesirable outcomes and used to explain unusual or abnormal events that have harmful consequences. Working in a poststructuralist framework, in this article we examine how risk shapes interactions between midwives and pregnant women in the context of public hospitals in Australia. We draw on data from an observational study of clinical encounters in three Australian hospitals between October 2014 and July 2015. The research teams recorded 83 health encounters and in this paper we draw on data from the recordings of 10 clinical consultations between 8 midwives and 10 pregnant women at various stages of gestation. We used these data to explore how a discourse of risk was mobilised through rhetorical strategies and practices of ‘hunting’ for the abnormal and attempts to control the body. Our findings demonstrate how a discourse of pregnancy and birth as risky operates within public hospital midwifery consultations. We found that in the midwifery consultations we recorded, pregnancy was constructed as a period of vulnerability and unpredictability. It was normalised through discursive practices of hunting for the abnormal and rhetorical strategies of attempting to control the body. Within this discourse, midwives occupied conflicting positions. They asserted that women, with the right support, were capable of spontaneous and intervention-free (pregnancy and) birth. Yet, they acted to enable medical professionals to assess a woman’s ability to give birth (un)assisted, or the potential for an adverse event. The women, while positioned as passive within the public health system, were positioned as active in surveilling themselves and responsible for taking steps to mitigate against adverse events. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Commentators drawing on the concept of the Risk Society have argued that the proliferation of large-scale risks generates critical reflection on the modernistic logic and drives current societal changes. Critics have argued that this thesis neglects the centrality of mundane risks in shaping contemporary identities. However, such critics have not considered the dynamics of mundane risks and the possibility that these dynamics follow the predictions made by Risk Society theorists. In this article, I examine this issue using the recent history of cycling risk, focussing on expert knowledge in the Global North between 1970 and 2014. I draw on Actor–Network Theory to operationalise Risk Society, conceptualising accounts of cycling risk as the products of a dynamic network. I examine this network using scientometric analyses of scientific papers, analyses of influential texts and in-depth interviews with experts and activists. I argue that the dynamics of this network follow the predictions of Risk Society: bicycle helmets emerged as a technological fix for a specific risk, but are now described as the source of new risks to health and safety, due to their potential interactions with human psychologies and social behaviours. This encourages reflexivity on the conditions producing such risks, namely, the modernistic logic. Thus, mundane risks are both re-modernised and remain central to shaping identities and concerns. More specifically, the interaction between mundane risks and holistic conceptualisations of health is shown to contribute to the shift from first to second modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine how injection drug users who do not attribute their HIV infection to engaging in HIV risk behaviours take up and critique discourses of individual responsibility and citizenship relating to HIV risk and HIV prevention. We draw on data from a study in Vancouver, Canada (2006–2009) in which we interviewed individuals living with HIV who had a history of injection drug use. In this paper, we focus on six cases studies of participants whodid notattribute their HIV infection to engaging in HIV risk behaviours. We found that in striving to present themselves as responsible HIV citizens who did not engage in HIV risk behaviours, these participants drew on individually focused HIV prevention discourses. By identifying themselves in these ways, they were able to present themselves as ‘deserving’ HIV citizens and avoid the blame associated with being HIV positive. However, in rejecting the view that they and their risk behaviours were to blame for their HIV infection and by developing an explanation that drew on broader social, structural and historical factors, these individuals were developing a tentative critique of focus on individual responsibility in HIV transmission as opposed to dangers of infection arising from the socio-economic environment. By framing the risk of infection in environmental rather than individual risk-behaviour terms, these individuals redistributed responsibility to reflect the social-structural realities of their lives. In this article, we reflect on the implications of these findings for public health measures such as risk prevention messages. We argue that it is important that such messages are not restricted to individual risk prevention but also include a focus of broader shared responsibilities of HIV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I outline recent policy reforms to the General Medical Council (GMC) and how these are designed to promote greater public confidence in its management of the patient complaint and fitness to practise tribunal process. I explore how in spite of a decade of reform, potential for bias remains in relation to how issues of race and ethnicity, disability, age, class, gender and English language proficiency intersect with complaint making and case progression. I draw on reviews of and data from the GMC to examine the key issues surrounding the representativeness of the medical tribunal process, in terms of members’ age, gender and race and ethnicity. I note that, as in other high-income countries, there is a tendency within the United Kingdom (UK) for the risk-focused regulatory system to focus its reforming agenda on the more effective performance management of cost and risk, rather than on inculcating a more diverse patient presence and biographical profile within the day-to-day operation of regulatory regimes. I argue that this might unintentionally lead to the promotion of an optimism bias within risk-focused regulatory systems, potentially leading to a failure to communicate realistic perceptions of medical risk to patients and their families, and in doing so perhaps serving to further exacerbate the situation when instances of medical error and negligence occur. I conclude that current regulatory reforms in the UK are unlikely as a result to as fully promote the public interest and patient safety as they intend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine why risk-based policy instruments have failed to improve the proportionality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of healthcare quality regulation in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Rather than trying to prevent all possible harms, risk-based approaches promise to rationalise and manage the inevitable limits of what regulation can hope to achieve by focusing regulatory standard-setting and enforcement activity on the highest priority risks, as determined through formal assessments of their probability and consequences. As such, risk-based approaches have been enthusiastically adopted by healthcare quality regulators over the last decade. However, by drawing on historical policy analysis and in-depth interviews with 15 high-level UK informants in 2013–2015, we identify a series of practical problems in using risk-based policy instruments for defining, assessing, and ensuring compliance with healthcare quality standards. Based on our analysis, we go on to consider why, despite a succession of failures, healthcare regulators remain committed to developing and using risk-based approaches. We conclude by identifying several preconditions for successful risk-based regulation: goals must be clear and trade-offs between them amenable to agreement; regulators must be able to reliably assess the probability and consequences of adverse outcomes; regulators must have a range of enforcement tools that can be deployed in proportion to risk; and there must be political tolerance for adverse outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A central tenet in the sociology of risk is that risk-taking is inherently linked to masculinity. Recent research, however, demonstrates gender identity is only one of the many social contexts that influence professional risk-taking. The interaction between the various occupational social contexts – such as social class, occupational socialisation, institutions, and gender identity – contributes to the development of risk-taking occupational identities. These occupational identities are associated with unique understandings of risk which influence whether workers are likely to embrace or avoid risk. While there has been a plethora of research exploring how occupational identities encourage risk-taking, relatively little research has explored how occupational identities determine thetypesof risks embraced by workers. After all, there is substantial occupational variation in the types of risks workers take. In this paper I draw on data from a series of interviews conducted in 2010 and 2011 with US electrical construction workers to explore perceptions of job site safety procedures to understand how electrical workers view various job site hazards. I argue that the proximity of a hazard to the occupation’s core competencies determines the level of support the safety procedure receives from those within the occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this editorial I introduce a range of articles which constitute the second annual special issue of this journal focusing on social theories of risk and uncertainty. I explain and explore the underlying logic and theoretical location of the issue in terms of various tensions within the common association of risk with a very specific process of post-Enlightenment modernisation. I then explore a number of these concerns further in relation to and by way of introducing the guest editorial, a review article and five original research articles of the special issue. A few of the most pertinent and recurring themes across these articles – such as the combining of rational-technical approaches to uncertainty with traditional-magical ones, the salience of faith-based approaches and their agentic qualities, and the logic by which different strategies are combined, ‘bricolaged’ or syncretised – are denoted as especially salient for researching risk and uncertainty within northern European contexts, where the roles of faith, tradition and magic in dealing with uncertainty remain neglected topics. I conclude by linking these reflections to an introduction of the central topics for the 2016 theory special issue and point potential authors towards our call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we explore the risks associated with direct payments to users enabling them to purchase social care. These payments are intended to enable people with disabilities to make choices and increase their autonomy. However, there is little evidence in the existing literature about the risks involved in direct payments as seen by service users. In this paper, we draw on data from a qualitative study of direct payments for people with disabilities in a federal state of Germany. We interviewed 37 individuals involved in direct payment schemes including individuals receiving payments, care assistants, members of organisations providing care and the administrative officers of the local authorities between December 2011 and January 2014. In this article, we use a governmentality perspective to explore how individuals who received the payments saw and sought to manage the risks associated with the scheme. We found that while users reported that direct payments reduced the risk associated with being directly dependent on the care providers and hence increased their desired self-determination, they identified new risks linked to their liability for the transferred money, problems associated with their liquidity and cash flow, challenges presented by budget cuts, and sanctions resulting from violation of norms of ‘appropriate use’ and the difficulties of negotiating with the funders. To manage these perceived risks users indicated that they had subjected themselves to a new way of active self-control and self-management, normalising their behaviour. We note that risk to service users has been neglected in policy design and should be acknowledged more explicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of cycling studies, explicit and implicit theories of risk are frequently used for the purposes of research design, data collection, data analysis, and policy. In this article, we argue that this field may benefit from theories and concepts that speak to – but go beyond – theories of risk, and more directly focus on matters of right and recognition. Drawing on grounded theory research involving interviews with 28 cyclists in Dublin, Ireland, we analyse the 'risk talk' from five participant accounts through an application of the rights-orientated perspective of precarious entitlement theory. We argue for its utility as a theory, specifically as a complementary alternative to risk-focused approaches. First, we illustrate how precarious entitlement goes beyond the conceptual limits of understanding cycling experience from perspectives of 'risk' and 'safety', by consolidating a concern with 'right' and 'risk'. Second, we illustrate how interpreting particular cycling practices as patterns of submission and social struggle (privatising vulnerability and provoking responsibility) can transcend individualised interpretations of such practices as 'risk management' and 'risk-taking'. In the discussion, we consider the value of this theory in relation to existing research in this field, with reference to socio-cultural risk theory. In conclusion, we argue for a more transparently rights-based approach to cycle policy in light of the dominance of a specific variety of risk discourse that arguably obscures a consideration of rights to use public space and what a realisation of such rights might require from both the public and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how deaths related to mental health in England and Wales are investigated and the extent to which lessons are learned in their aftermath. It uses two concepts from academic literature to discuss organisational responses to these deaths: organisational learning, and organised irresponsibility. Organisational learning stresses the importance of learning lessons from data; in contrast, Beck's concept of organised irresponsibility states that organisational lesson learning is impeded by the fragmented and risk-averse nature of public institutions. The article considers 210 organisational responses to Reports to Prevent Future Deaths (PFDs) issued by Coroners. PFDs are sent to any organisation Coroners believe could act to prevent future deaths. The article identifies three findings: Firstly, organisations tend to produce generic responses rather than addressing specific issues raised by Coroners. Second, organisations tend to cite existing policies as responses to Coroners despite those policies not preventing specific deaths. Third, institutions seek to displace blame onto other organisations in attempting to avoid accepting responsibility for the death. The article adds to the canon of knowledge on deaths in healthcare, and in the care of the state by identifying significant structural weaknesses that impede organisational lesson learning about preventable deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses patterns of compliance with COVID-19 regulations in Southwest Norway. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and a series of interviews, we contrast grassroots discourses with the Norwegian government's own emphasis on 'trust' in its risk communication strategies. As opposed to the official claim that Norwegians complied with COVID-19 emergency regulations because they trusted the authorities, the evidence suggests that citizens complied more due to the informal pressure of their peers. Affective reciprocity and moral judgement, including the dynamics of kinship sociability in which they are expressed, here acquire a critical analytical dimension. In dialogue with dominant theories of trust in risk studies, we argue that such relational aspects of everyday life should be taken into consideration as essential factors for any health risk mitigation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a partisan issue rather than an independent public health issue in the US. This study examined the behavioural consequences of motivated reasoning and framing by investigating the impacts of COVID-19 news exposure and news frames, as apparent through a Latent Dirichlet topic modelling analysis of local news coverage, on state-level preventive behaviours as understood through a nationally representative survey. Findings suggested that the media effects on various preventive behaviours differed. The overall exposure rate to all COVID-19 news articles increased mask-wearing but did not significantly impact other preventive behaviours. Four news frames significantly increased avoiding contact or avoiding public or crowded places. However, news articles discussing anxiety and stay at home order triggered resistance and countereffects and led to risky behaviours. 'Solid Republican' state residents were less likely to avoid contact, avoid public or crowded places, and wear masks. However, partisan leanings did not interfere with the impact of differing local COVID-19 news frames on reported preventive behaviours. Plus, statements regarding pre-existing trust in Trump did not correlate with reported preventive behaviour. Attention to effect sizes revealed that news exposure and news frames could have a bigger impact on health behaviours than motivated reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on data collected from a qualitative study designed to assess the effectiveness of an early intervention programme aimed to raise awareness of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) among young people. The programme was implemented by a large police force area, referred to as Shireland. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with practitioners implementing safeguarding policies within the police service, youth and social welfare work designed to support young people, we focus on the mobilisation of perceptions of risk and vulnerability as they translate in professional practice via a specific preventative initiative. More specifically, we wish to examine the extent to which blurring occurs between constructions of 'risk' and 'vulnerability' in relation to practitioners' understandings of the dangerousness of young people's behaviour. In our analysis, we draw attention to a palpable tension apparent in the interview narratives of those involved in delivering the programme, between expressed understandings which on the one hand universalise vulnerability and, on the other, extricate specific risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disclosure of childhood sexual abuse is a process that is often laden with boundary testing, decision-making and, at times, risk. Disclosures tend to be delayed, often into adulthood and later life, with disclosures to authorities remaining relatively low. In the Republic of Ireland adults who disclose experiences of childhood sexual abuse are directed towards child protection services due to an interplay between jurisprudence, child protection policy design, and mandatory reporting obligations, requiring social work practitioners to balance the social and the legal. This article compares Foucault's concept of the confessional to current social work practices of engaging with adult victims and survivors of abuse. It is argued that thinking about these interactions as a confessional-like system highlights a process of knowledge creation that is taking place when a personal narrative of abuse is shared, willingly or via mandated reporting, with a child protection agency under the auspices of a modern state. This 'confessional-lens' helps us identify a tipping of the balance in this area of social work practice, away from provision of care and person-centredness, across a boundary, to legalistic practice. Narratives of childhood abuse are transformed into knowledge deemed necessary to assess current risk to children. A process that places the adult on the periphery, leading to a potential for harm and re-traumatisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social workers in England are key professionals involved in addressing safeguarding concerns affecting adults with learning disabilities, including the risk of harm from domestic abuse. This article reports the findings from an empirical study conducted with 15 social workers who participated in a 2-stage interview process. The findings and discussion examine social workers' approaches to risk management interventions in cases of domestic abuse against adults with learning disabilities. Informed by Beck's Risk Society theory, our analysis finds that interventions often focus on individuals taking responsibility for managing risk, with either the victim or the social worker becoming the risk decision-maker. Furthermore, in carrying out their work, social workers used bureaucratic tasks to protect the organisation and individual decision-makers from blame. The article concludes with recommendations for practice which explores more holistic understandings of risk and which seeks to promote more collective responses to risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial we introduce a special thematic collection of articles which focus on how risk operates, or is conceptualised, at the boundaries of social work practice. The collection includes theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented articles, each of which critically engages with contemporary debates about risk and social work and its complex intersections with boundary making in diverse fields. These fields include social work with older people, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and people with learning disabilities. We begin the editorial with a brief account of how social work can be defined and the competing ideological traditions that underpin differing forms of social work in practice, policy, and research. We also point to the contrasting nature of risk studies in relation to social work, ranging from the pragmatic concern with measuring and managing risk, to critical analysis of how and why risk is conceptualised and socially constructed in particular ways. We provide an overview of each of the five articles that comprise the special issue, their intersecting themes, and how they animate in different ways the idea of boundaries and boundary making. In the final section of the editorial, we consider the possibilities for the future direction of theoretical and empirical work in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a context where New Public Management [NPM] has become increasingly influential in shaping everyday working practices, social workers often handle risks in their everyday work using formalised bureaucratic procedures, among other strategies. As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, rapid changes occurred in Swedish elder care that social workers were required to address in their everyday work. Intra-professional case conferences amongst social workers provide one opportunity to discuss individual viewpoints and obtain suggestions from colleagues on how to proceed with a case. These discussions have so far received little scholarly attention. In this study we used a data set consisting of 39 audio-recorded case conferences to analyse social workers' intra-professional discussions about risks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case conferences, social workers discussed the risks that were accentuated by the pandemic, such as the risk of spreading COVID-19 to clients, the risk of unmet care needs amongst clients, risks related to accountability, and the risks pertaining to blurred boundaries between different organisations. The collegial discussions in case conferences included opportunities for social workers to use their collective professional experience and competency to establish creative solutions 'on the go' and to discuss various ways of handling and balancing different risks while continuing to carry out their work in the changing and unknown situation. Our findings highlight the importance of collegial support in social work in dealing with accentuated risks during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When making decisions about whether to transfer residents to hospital, care home staff consider the possible benefits and risks of different courses of action. However, to date, an in-depth and theoretically informed engagement with these decision-making processes and their associated behaviours has been lacking. We conducted an ethnographic study of care home staff's decision-making about resident hospital transfers in England between May 2018 and November 2019. We combined staff interviews at six care home sites, with 30 members of staff, with 113 hours of ethnographic observation at three care homes sites. 'Risk' and risk management emerged as important overarching themes. In this article we conceptualise staff decision-making about potential hospital transfers for residents as a form of risk work. In doing so, we identify the different forms of risk knowledge that staff used to conceptualise risk and explore the ways staff navigated tensions between different forms of risk knowledge. We highlight the ways individual understandings of risk were influenced by social interactions with others, both at an interpersonal and organisational level, before identifying strategies that staff use to manage risk. By understanding transfer decisions explicitly in terms of the different forms of risk that care home staff manage, our analysis provides new insights into hospital transfers from care homes and contributes to the wider literature around risk work, demonstrating the utility of this concept in researching organisations that fall under the umbrella of social care, which have been previously neglected in academic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we follow the approach taken by Riesch and Spiegalhalter in “Careless pork costs lives’: Risk stories from science to press release to media’ published in this journal, and offer an assessment of one example of a ‘risk story’. Using content and thematic qualitative analysis, we consider how the findings of an article ‘Fetal Alcohol Exposure and IQ at Age 8: Evidence from a Population-Based Birth-Cohort Study’ were framed in the article itself, the associated press release, and the subsequent extensive media coverage. We contextualise this consideration of a risk story by discussing a body of work that critically engages with the development and global proliferation of efforts to advocate for alcohol abstinence to pregnant (and pre-pregnant) women. This work considers the ‘democratisation’ of risk, a term used to draw attention to the expansion of the definition of the problem of drinking in pregnancy to include any drinking and all women. We show here how this risk story contributed a new dimension to the democratisation of risk through claims that were made about uncertainty and certainty. A central argument we make concerns the contribution of the researchers themselves (not just lobby groups or journalists) to this outcome. We conclude that the democratisation of risk was advanced in this case not simply through journalists exaggerating and misrepresenting research findings, but that communication to the press and the initial interpretation of findings played their part. We suggest that this risk story raises concerns about the accuracy of reporting of research findings, and about the communication of unwarrantedly worrying messages to pregnant women about drinking alcohol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the contextual factors mediating HIV transmission risk in barbershops using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with barbers (n = 16) in Nigeria. Barbers were aware of individual-level risk factors for HIV transmission. Accounts highlighted individualisation of risk responsibility, wherein the decisions and actions of individual barbers were seen as primary determinants of risk, while overlooking the role of factors beyond the individual in the production of risk. The implementation of HIV prevention measures (such as sterilisation of barbering equipment) was impeded by social and structural factors such as income insecurity and pressure and demands from clients. These exogenous factors interacted with individual-behavioural ones (fatigue, delay in restocking disinfectants) to create a risk environment for HIV transmission in barbershops. Barbers chose between competing risks when making decisions about HIV prevention. Concerns about maximising income by serving more clients often trumped HIV prevention through sterilisation of equipment. These findings contribute further insights and nuances to an existing literature which shows that risk is a highly contextualised phenomenon that reflects the different impacts of structural forces on lived experiences. The findings highlight a need for models that bridge cognitive and lived dimensions of risk understanding to optimise HIV prevention in barbershops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lay constructions of risk impact upon public health activities and underpin social reactions to experiences and understandings of infectious diseases. In this article, we explore the social construction of COVID-19 risk and responsibility by citizens of Jakarta and the Greater Jakarta Area, Indonesia. We draw upon digital diaries produced each week by 37 participants across a 5-week period from April to June 2020, a time of substantial policy flux in Indonesia. Key findings reflect the everyday construction of risk within the context of changing government restrictions regarding physical distancing. In the context of perceived confusion around government activity, the participants narrated individualised accounts of risk production, as they reflected upon the transmission of COVID-19. Our findings indicate the emergence of the concept of the 'ignorant imagined other' as underpinning how lay persons locate risks in unknowledgeable others and see themselves as socially protected through their own perceived knowledgeability of COVID-19. Our findings contribute to the literature on the social perception of infectious disease through the examination of the understudied context of urban Indonesia and by demonstrating the social location of risk in relation to a generalised imagined other, within a wider context of public health governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is a disease that is imbued with notions of risk, with individuals expected to avoid 'risky' behaviours and act swiftly when symptoms indicating a risk of cancer emerge. Cancer symptoms, however, are often ambiguous and indicative of a number of other conditions, making it difficult for people to assess when symptoms may, or may not, be the result of cancer. Here, we discuss interview data from a study examining the symptom appraisal and help-seeking experiences of patients referred for assessment of symptoms suspicious of a lung or colorectal cancer in the North-East of England. We explore how individuals draw upon ideas about cancer risks to assess whether cancer may be a possible explanation for their symptoms and to inform their decisions about help-seeking. In our analysis, we applied the concept of candidacy to the data, to highlight how lay epidemiology shapes people's perceptions of cancer risk, and their subsequent responses to it. We found that participants appraised their symptoms, and the likelihood that they may have cancer, in light of relevant information on risk. These sources of information related to lifestyle factors, family history of cancer, environmental factors, and importantly, the symptomatic experience itself, including the absence of symptoms that participants associated with cancer. The importance of experienced, and absent, symptoms was a core element of participants' everyday constructions of the 'cancer candidate', which informed symptom appraisal and subsequent help-seeking decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how older motherhood and older mothers are problematised and represented in key Canadian policy texts on 'delayed childbearing' and 'advanced maternal age'. Drawing on critical disability studies and feminist scholarship on motherhood, we identify three kinds of representations of older mothers in these texts: as risk-producing subjects, as unnatural mothers, and as irresponsible reproductive citizens. We argue that dominant discourses of older motherhood are structured by both ageism and ableism, which undergird policy documents. These discourses frame older women as disabled by the 'burden' of late parenthood and cast them as risky subjects who might give birth to 'abnormal' offspring. Within this discursive terrain, older women are not only othered: they are held responsible for their infertility and for their reduced propensity to reproduce 'healthy,' non-disabled offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on understanding and explaining the technologies that affect the governance of the risk of Covid-19 in Turkey. To assess how this risk is governed by individuals, the study focuses on discussions around this disease within a Turkish Facebook group. The aim is to understand how individuals conduct themselves and establish norms of conduct against the risk of illness that, in this case of an infectious disease, involves governing the self while managing others. The results show that the discourse created around the governance of infection risk is very much in line with notions of neoliberal governmentality, individual responsibility, citizens as consumers, and individuals as entrepreneurs. Governing the risk of Covid-19 is related to prevalent ways of prioritising or recognising economic explanations, and cost calculation and assessment of successful governance using quantifiable variables, such as the number of new cases and deaths. Concepts like herd immunity and natural selection are open to discussion. Individuals who believe that the government is primarily responsible for risk governance assert that they are paying taxes and advocate that, disciplinary measures should be taken by the government, whereas the opposing view states that individuals are responsible for the governance of Covid-19 risk. We interpret both these opposing views as illustrating neoliberal governmentality and representing contractual and familial state–citizen relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of risk permeate end-of-life (EOL) care contexts. In addition to the risk of bodily death, patients, family and healthcare providers face spiritual and communication risks during EOL care. The Western biomedical healthcare model is an objectivist, curative framework focusing on fixing the body; this cultural notion limits communication regarding physical illness. Existing work argues that Americans' reticence to discuss EOL can be considered a public health issue, due to high financial and relational costs, lack of education about treatment options, and avoidance of EOL discussions until decisions must be made during health crises. The current study applied risk orders theory in analysing chaplains' experiences of EOL care in the US, where medical practice is dominated by biomedical health models. Risk orders theory is used to examine risk discourses from a social constructionist perspective in response to dominant objectivist approaches to risk. The current study expands conceptions of third-order risks through exploration of the chaplaincy profession. Analysis of chaplain qualitative interviews and focus groups, totalling 48 participants across the US, suggest chaplains possess the potential to reframe cultural discourses about death and reinvigorate cultural imagination surrounding EOL care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During food-borne disease outbreaks, people get most of their information about food safety and risk from the news media. Best practice in risk messaging requires the rapid sharing of information to minimise harm, while expressing empathy, accountability, and commitment. The journalistic processes through which news is shaped can prioritise information differently, potentially limiting informed decision-making. The South African listeriosis outbreak (2017–2018) was the biggest in global history and generated considerable media attention. Using 'social attenuation of risk theory' and 'gatekeeping theory', combined with 'crisis and emergency risk communication best practices' as guiding principles, in this study we aimed to analyse which components of risk message content and which news factors were prioritised by news media during the outbreak. Content analysis of 91 listeriosis-related newspaper articles revealed that the most common risk messaging practices included were information about 'what is known' and 'which foods to avoid'. News factor analysis indicated 'relevance' was omnipresent, and 'controversy' was the second most frequently encountered factor. Overall, our findings suggest that only some best practices featured in the risk message media content, while others were mostly absent. This should be considered when developing future risk communication strategies related to food safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, national risk management scenarios took an unexpected course at different individual and collective scales. In France, in the field of occupational risk, long-established practices, rules, and categories have been disturbed and placed 'under stress'. The field of prevention of occupational risk, which has constituted a distinct field in health policies, with its own bodies, missions and approaches, was similarly disturbed. To describe and analyse these social phenomena, we propose using two complementary concepts: the British 'risk work' and the French 'prevention work' ['travail de prévention']. We show some of the empirical manifestations of risk work associated with prevention work and their effects on the boundaries instituted in the field of prevention at work. Our investigation used data from documentation and interviews in order to explore the experiences of two categories of professionals – physicians specialising in occupational health and home care aides – concerned with prevention during an acute phase of the pandemic. We point out that the question of protective means and equipment has been a central issue, in a context characterised by tensions between knowledge and available material resources. We also show that contradictions and points of tension between actors reveal the subjects under discussion and the more or less porous nature of the boundaries. Amid these processes, however, the principles underlying occupational health were reaffirmed, along with the need for a cooperation between workers and prevention professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the social representations of SARS-CoV-2 virus in Italy. We used the technique of free word association involving 1572 adults living in Italy. An open coding procedure and content analysis lead to the identification of 13 key topics representing the categorisation of concepts that emerged from the elicited words. The most common categories were spread of the virus, negative feelings, life during quarantine, and health consequences of the virus. Multidimensional scaling of co-occurrences of categories revealed these categories were grouped into four thematic areas. In addition, we found that the frequency of the categories of words was associated with gender, age, well-being, and mental health symptoms. By revealing complex and differentiated social representations, results from the present study provide a comprehensive insight on Italian people's perception of COVID-19 outbreak in the Spring of 2020. This early study of social representations forms a useful basis for later studies, in order to understand how collective understandings and framings of risk have evolved across the duration of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourses of HIV status neutrality have emerged in the wake of advances in biomedical technologies for HIV prevention and treatment of HIV. The combined effects of Treatment as Prevention (TasP) and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) give rise to the possibility of dramatically curbing new HIV infections and nurture fantasies about an HIV-free/risk-free futurity. In this article, we consider the possibilities of HIV neutrality as a social-material assemblage entangling different institutional investments and practices, discourses about HIV risk and prevention, historical memories, political rationalities, and as a generative point of contact between and across different actors, institutions and objects. We explore the different logics and sentiments that are being drawn together in three different sites where HIV neutrality is configured. Borrowing from cultural and social science approaches that grapple with emotions and feelings as 'distributed phenomena' that carry political and social significance, we interrogate the work of HIV neutrality in effecting new tensions in the affective economies underpinning gay sexual socialities' relation to HIV/AIDS and HIV risk. Our analysis suggests that as these new social-material strategies emerge to manage HIV risk, they entangle historically sedimented effects of HIV/AIDS. We ask to what extent these assemblages are productive of new intimacies and alliances, and possibly renewed entrenchments of bio-social boundaries cutting across gay male socialities in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon data collected within 20 focus groups with consumers from five European countries, in this article we investigate how perceptions of human health risk and current anxieties regarding agricultural food production affect citizens' acceptance of the use of an emerging biotechnology, synthetic biology, in the development of vaccines for animals bred for food production. In focus group discussions in Austria, the UK, Poland and Denmark, participants tended to value the positive potential of synthetic vaccines if they could solve existing problems. Participants argued that the technology could be beneficial for animal welfare and was a potential solution to the problem of risks to human health posed by the use of antibiotics on livestock. The perceived drawbacks of antibiotic use affected the discussions towards acceptance of synthetic biology and the use of vaccines in meat production despite concerns over the potential risks. The participants from Spain stood out in that their acceptance of the synthetic vaccine appeared to be disconnected from concerns about risks related to the use of antibiotics. Participants from all countries found the vaccine to have potential uses, but also expressed concerns about health risks for consumers. In general consumers were perceived as those bearing the heaviest burden of risk, while pharmaceutical companies were perceived as likely to benefit most from production of the vaccine. We found that institutional trust and national contexts of (dis)engagement with science influenced the participants' understandings of the degree to which the synthetic livestock vaccine had a fair risk-benefit balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is estimated that up to ten per cent of people with motor neurone disease (MND) have an inherited form of the disease. Families with a history of inherited MND may face specific issues around managing the condition in relatives and adapting to life knowing that they too could develop the disease, which we refer to as living 'at risk'. This qualitative study is based on a thematic analysis of posts from 37 threads shared on the MND Association Forum between 2010 and 2019. Through this analysis we explore how forum users make sense of, and negotiate, genetic risk in this online space. We unpack how risk is constructed through a tracing and reframing of family history in relation to MND; we draw out the different ways uncertainty is expressed by people living with the threat of the disease; and we outline how future decisions around genetic testing and reproductive choices play out on the forum. Genetic risk was articulated temporally, with posters reflecting on past, present and expected future experiences across posts. This was crosscut by profound uncertainty. How people understood and expressed experiences of living 'at risk' – and the responses they received from others – were grounded in different forms of experiential knowledge, intertwined with biomedical and genetic information. We propose the MND Association forum as an interactional site where uncertainties are negotiated and risk is made sense of by individuals with a family history of MND, alongside those affected by 'sporadic' forms of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk is a quotidian concept in public health, but there is little research on how 'health risk' is corporally experienced. In this article we apply sociological theories to analyse how a sample of 13 individuals made sense of embodied health risk. The data were collected through the adults sculpting, life-lining, and participating in interviews in Toronto, Canada in Autumn 2016. Through these activities we explored how participants related their embodied futures to their presents and pasts. Four approaches to how 'health risk' connects the body through time emerged from our analysis, focusing particularly on the interview data: the shit happens approach, the sequelae approach, the risk as heuristic approach, and the knowledge approach. These approaches elucidate how individuals make uncertain embodied futures stable through the different interpretations of the concept of risk. Our account of these four approaches builds on recent health risk research by providing individual, embodied accounts of risk that show how understandings of health risk connect individuals to broader systems. The four approaches have implications for considering pathways to achieving health justice, developing public health ethics, and understanding the role embodied risk plays in individual experiences of unequal health structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]