Abstract

Risk analysis is an extraordinarily diverse field of study. This thesis attempts to determine what are the philosophical underpinnings of some of the major writers on the subject of risk. It breaks these writings down into two major groups: those whose writings are positivist in nature and those whose writings are contextualist. Positivistic writings define the subject matter of risk analysis in unambiguous terms that are verifiable by experience. The contextualist adopts a broader approach. For a contextualist the meaning of an explanation for uncertainty is to be found in that explanations particular social context. The second task of this thesis is to consider more fully the concept of contextualism. This section will focus on writers such as John Law, Bruno Latour and Michel Callon who have expanded the term social to include such heterogenous intermediaries as money, texts, human beings and machines. The consequences of their expansion of the social for risk studies will be examined. The final task of this thesis is to apply this expanded contextualist notion of risk to a case study. The explanations provided by two investigatory teams involved in an outbreak of anencephalic births in Cameron County, Texas will be examined. These two groups possess differing conception of risk. It will be shown that these two epistemological positions are the result of differing social organizations. The social commitments of these two groups are responsible for their conceptions of risk