SO4C9      Half Unit
Risk Governance

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course introduces students to sociological perspectives on economic and societal risks. Topics include the social theory of risk and uncertainty, and markets as risk-governing actors, scientific expertise and knowledge production, and transnational and systemic risks. The course will draw upon a broad international literature in economic sociology and the sociology of risk, as well as case studies from the environmental, financial, and public health domains.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

Presentation

Abstract (1000 words)

Formative presentations will take place during classes.

• Aspers, P & Dodd, N (eds) (2015) Re-Imagining Economic Sociology (Oxford University Press);
• Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity);
• Baker, T & Simon, J (eds) (2002) Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility (University of Chicago Press);
• Bernstein, P L (1996) Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Princeton University Press);
• Hutter, B.M. (ed) (2010) Anticipating Risks and Organizing Risk Regulation, Cambridge University Press;
• Smesler, N. & Swedberg, R. (eds) (2005) The Handbook of Economic Sociology;
• Bulkeley, H (2014) Transnational Climate Governance (Cambridge University Press);
• Klinenberg, E (2002) Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press);
• Ericson, RV, Doyle, A & Barry, D (2003) Insurance as Governance (University of Toronto Press);
• Hacker, J & O’Leary, A (eds) (2012) Shared Responsibility, Shared Risk: Government, Markets and Social Policy in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford University Press);
• Krippner, G (2011) Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance (Harvard University Press);
• Beckert, J. (2016) Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics (Harvard University Press);
• MacKenzie, D. (2006) An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (MIT Press). 

Quiz (10%) weekly

Essay (90%, 4000 words) in May

The weekly reading quizzes will be administered in class during Weeks 4-11 of Winter Term (7 quizzes total). Quizzes can be run on Moodle or with pen and paper. Students will be given 10 minutes to answer 5-8 questions. Their summative mark will represent the average of their best 5 quizzes. The final essay will be a 4000-word prospectus due during the Spring Term. It will outline a potential research project. It will (1) identify a case related to risk and governance; (2) discuss the phenomenon and justify its empirical relevance and theoretical importance; and (3) identify data sources and propose an analysis method. 

 Attendance at all seminars, completion of set readings and submission of set coursework is required.