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accident, to question the distinction between lay and expert knowledge. He argues
that expert scientifi c knowledge about radioactivity in the soils of Cumbria and
possible courses of action was culturally problematic, based on inadequate models
of human society, denigrated 'specialist lay' knowledge, and was known by the lay
public to be problematic for these reasons. The public - Cumbrian farmers in this
case, therefore treated expert knowledge with much more ambivalence than Beck
is willing to give them credit.
In addition to these new approaches to understanding environmental hazards,
the nascent post-structuralist trend has also generated work on non-traditional
hazards, such as war (Hewitt, 1997) and terrorism (e.g., Mustafa, 2005 and Hewitt,
2001). In both cases, a particular concern has been discourses that legitimise prac-
tices of state and non-state terror and spatiality of that terror. Hewitt (2001) dis-
cusses the linkages between the spatiality of the Chilean state's self-image and its
practice of terrorising certain spaces like plazas, shopping areas and streets. Mustafa
(2005), in the same vein as Hewitt (2001), calls for empirically based research to
fi nd patterns in the spatiality of terrorist targets and the terrorists' (state and non-
state) discursive construction of spaces as sacred and profane.
For all the insights provided by drawing on political economy and post-structural
understandings, these radical strands of hazards research have had little impact on
environmental and technological hazards policy. Part of the diffi culty is that they
are questioning the fundamental assumptions and praxis of contemporary society
and its global capitalist economy. Therein lies their both greatest strength and the
cause of their, hopefully limited, short-term impotence in the policy realm.
Conclusion: Key Geographical Contributions to
Hazards Research
Hazards research is fi rmly embedded within the human-environment interactions
research tradition of geography. Beyond the topical importance of hazard mitigation
to human well-being and safety, hazards have been treated as special cases that
illustrate wider problems within human societies and their interactions with, and
understandings of, the non-human environment. Hazards research has helped
broaden the policy agenda and move beyond simply controlling nature through
scientifi c study of its underlying physical processes, to broader concerns with human
exposure to hazards under the behaviourists, vulnerability under the political ecolo-
gist/radical geographers, and the nascent focus on hazardous socio-nature by the
post-structuralists. Throughout, geographers have been attentive to both the con-
ceptual and practical potentialities of hazards research. The attention to theory and
social structures, with no immediately obvious practical or practicable guides to
action, may seem indulgent and even frivolous when dealing with a subject of such
profound importance for human life and well-being. But the review of different
traditions above, illustrates the critical and long-term vision of the discipline of
geography. Furthermore, the review also shows how geography's critical insights
simultaneously confront the material basis and destabilise the legitimising discourses
of dominant vulnerability producing social systems. The concern for immediate
results in terms of safety and resilience does not distract geographical inquiry from
seeking longer-term objectives of socially just, environmentally friendly, and materi-
ally sustainable human societies, because only such societies could be sustainably
resilient in the face of environmental extremes.
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