As ultimate threat to human existence, risks have been key objects for governmental interventions in the Anthropocene. Departing from technocratic models of risk assessment and management, this research project problematizes a depiction of risks as natural processes «out there» that can be assessed and managed. It rather suggests an analysis of risk governance within shifting human-environment relations - with facts and values about risks being co-produced within social and institutional networks. The following questions are at the core of this project: How is knowledge around risks (and security) produced in situated practices? How are choices and decisions around risks made and legitimized? And, how does the uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that characterize risks affect the ways they are governed and contested? Addressing these questions through theoretically-inspired empirical research on risk governance in Switzerland, this research project aims at contributing to a critical and reflexive engagement with and of an advancing «risk society».
