A Report That Examines The Role Of Expert And Lay Knowledge In Understanding And Managing Risk

This report is going to examine how risks we face in our daily lives rely on different forms of knowledge to create an understanding of them and their consequences. This report will examine how people use expert and lay knowledge about risks in order to live with them. A brief description of risk is provided. The discussion focuses on how we live with risk and interpret expert and lay knowledge regarding risk and risk avoidance. It is also suggested that people make their own choice as to what and how they use information and to what degree of risk they consider acceptable in their lives. This is influenced by the knowledge they have and how they interpret that. Clearly an expert will be in a stronger position to accurately assess risk compared to a lay person. 1. Expert Knowledge – someone that has knowledge, skill and is qualified in a particular subject. 2. Lay Knowledge – someone who does not have specialized knowledge or training in a subject. This report will examine three examples of risk and will detail not only expert information but it will review lay opinion as well. 1. Firstly the cycling and the benefits of wearing helmet will be assessed. 2. Then a case study that detailed an allotment and the hazardous substances found in the soil. 3. The last risk to be observed will be sun exposure, sun tanning and risks and how consumerism can play apart in forming our choices. 1. Our Risky Lives 1. Risk – a state in which there is a possibility of known danger or harm, which if avoided may lead to benefits (Carter and Jordan, 2009). Almost everything we do in life comes with some degree of risk. It is how we interpret the risk that determines how we live. Some risk is taken without thinking, some risk is unavoidable, and in other cases we can reduce the risk or avoid the risk all together. 1. Cycling and the benefits of wearing a helmet Cycling will introduce the idea of risks and risk management in our material lives. Cyclists manage their risk with lights, occasional hand signals and helmets. Cyclists have to negotiate the use of the helmet, whether or not to wear one but not doing so means any injury sustained may be the cyclist’s own fault. One study shown 85 per cent reduction in the risk of head injury among cyclists who wore helmets (Thompson et al., cited in Carter and Jordan, 2009). Other research found that, when car overtakes a cyclist, the car comes significantly closer to a cyclist who wears a helmet (Walker, cited in Carter and Jordan, 2009). Taking both studies into account seems to suggest that if you wear a helmet then you are more likely to have an accident but if you have an accident then you are less likely to have head injuries. 1. Hazardous substances found in the soil Soil on an allotment will show how knowledge of an invisible risk is produced by experts but can be contested and how the allotment users used knowledge to manage the risks. The benefits of a social activity such as gardening were suddenly brought into question by publication of a scientific test on the soil. The material environment changed from being good into something that was dangerous. The soil was safe then became poisonous and then become safe again, all without the soil itself being changed. The existence of two soil tests confirms that even within science there are debates over how best to assess risk. In the case study, the same soil shifted from being safe to dangerous and back again solely as a result of different measurement practices (Carter and Jordan, 2009). This shows how the expert knowledge may or may not influence the decisions people make about managing risk. Gardener did not listen to expert knowledge about safe soil, because two contrasting results of the tests did not feel quite trustworthy. 1. Sun Exposure and expert knowledge of sun risk The last risk to be assessed will be sun exposure and sun tanning and risks. Increasingly over the last number of years dangers of sun exposure and tanning have come to the fore. Even though advice and evidence which has been produced people still continue to expose themselves to the harmful UVA rays. In this section we can look at a second case study of risk and risk management concerning holidaymakers and their attitudes to a tan. To understand the apparently risky practices connected with sun exposure we have to take seriously the ways in which people make sense of expert advice, and measure it against their own knowledge and experiences of the material world in which they live (Carter and   Jordan, 2009). The research conducted by Simon Carter used a mixture of interviews and focus groups with tourist aged 20 and 35 years of age who regularly travelled abroad for holidays. The first thing that this search found was that people could recall health education advice by seeking shade, using a sunscreen or covering the body. People knew what the expert advice said about the dangers of sun. However, people did not fully follow this advice because they had their own ways of understanding and making sense of the healthy and risky elements of their material lives. The knowledge produced by experts was different from that produced by holidaymakers. This distinction between expert and lay knowledge meant that expert knowledge was interpreted rather than followed to the letter by the public (Carter and Jordan, 2009). The expert knowledge does not straightforwardly determine public opinion. 1. Lay knowledge of symbolic risk The effects that the sun has on the body are both a source of material risk, from cancers, and of symbolic risk, such as being peely-wally (Carter and Jordan, 2009). Suntan became a material sign or symbol that is for the visual consumption of other tourists. 1. Beck’s thesis . The examples of sun exposure and of poisoned soil demonstrate how we may have entered into a particular kind of relationship to risk in society today. German sociologist Ulrich Beck examined the move from the Industrial Society in which political deliberations where concerns with the distribution of wealth to a Risk Society that focuses on the distribution of harm (cited in Carter and Jordan, 2009 p. 80). Beck also argues that we have become dependent on external information usually expert knowledge to assess the risks we face, instead of using personal experience or common sense. For example, the allotment holders could not determine the risks contained in their soil, they were told about potential danger by scientific experts. Similarly, the possible risk from sun exposure has to be made clear to people by expert evidence. One of Beck’s main concerns is the role of expert knowledge in defining the risks, whether that risk is nuclear radiation, arsenic in the soil or the sun. 1. Conclusion In modern society much more effort is being put into measuring risk. Experts aim to examine potential hazards and produce evidence that will allow us to make informed decisions. Assessing risk often relies on science and expertise. These are practices which involve choices and assumptions that can create debate. A risk society is one in which calculations of risk become increasingly prominent. Many modern risks are invisible and need experts to make them visible to the public.