Search

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]

Never before the nineteenth century had Europeans, especially in the south, adopted cordons sanitaires in such great numbers or at such a fast rate. This article aims to analyse the process of the rationalisation and militarisation of the cordons sanitaires imposed in the fight against epidemics during the nineteenth century on the Mediterranean island of Majorca (Spain). These cordons should be understood as a declaration of war by the authorities on emerging epidemics. Epidemics could generate sudden and intolerably high rises in mortality that the new liberal citizenship found unacceptable. Toleration of this type of measure was the result of a general consensus, with hardly any opposition, which not only obtained the support of scientists (especially in the field of medicine) but also of most of the local and provincial political elite, and even of the population at large.