Customer Reviews

Searching for Safety

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Wildavsky starts out with the jogger's dilemma. A small, acute risk is taken for granted for the purpose of staying healthy. Tha author points out two strategies to cope with risk: resilience versus anticipation. A society without risk is a society that doesn't learn (and therefore shows no progress). Wildawsky is a strong supporter of the strategy of resilience (organising for flexibility). Anticipation is preferable in cases where there is a predictable risk and at the same time there are possibilities to reduce the risk or to prevent the danger (for example nulear plants). Most of the time Wildavsky is in favor of resilience (unknown and unsure risks and no specific measures known). Society shows a tendency towards risk-aversion, which leads the author to the conclusion that society limits itself. Brilliant and very readible book on the subject of risk and the way society handles it.

I first read this book in 1994, when it was new, and it has influenced my thinking about safety and risk more than any other single source. It is very sad to think that Wildavsky is gone. What a loss!

I remember this book, it was an assigned text in a college class of mine. It was awful so I wrote a paper which resulted in the book being dropped the very next semester. The bookstore had already ordered them so that did not go over well, but I was proud to do my part in removing what this book promotes from the public conscience. I looked for my paper but could not find it. Without spending a lot of time reconstructing it, let me say that this book was not what it could have been. I wish it railed more against idiot-proofing the world... though its point that a simple yellow line seems insufficient to keep people off the train tracks, yet works well for its purpose, is appreciated. The book promotes building the cheapest nuke plant possible, and with the money saved, the standard of living will increase, offsetting the inevitable disaster that will result from our risk taking, but at least our emergency response teams will be more resilient for having cleaned up the mess. And how can you put a value on this increased preparedness? I am afraid the true goal of this book is to package a shift from the corporate costs of prevention to a government / socialized cost of clean-up in a yummy way whereby you dont realize that your are drinking the cool-aid. Yes, that is this book in a nut shell. To conclude from a study of adding safety features to nuke plants, that the enemy is "counterproductive safety measures" (P.140), and not safety features AS IMPLEMENTED BY a bloated, inefficient government is unexplainable. Check out this extreme comparison from page 25, "Poisons are an integral part of nature. So is chemical warfare among plants, animals and insects. To ban carcinogenic substances, therefore, is to ban life." Excuse me? Is there another creature that can create non-biodegradable carcinogens on anything like the scale of human beings? If not, then perhaps this is why humans were given BRAINS. So we can perceive how dangerous we can be if left only to the motives of warfare or profit. A true "search for safety" would properly factor in the irreversibility of the risk like genetic experiments gone awry. To this concern, the author simply uses the 'it hasn't happened yet' defense (P.40) Considering that 'killer bees' were a only breeding experiment, think of the possibilities of cauliflower virus markers jumping species. Why does the media concern itself with a possible viral transmute of bird flu, and ignore the same risk we intentionally subject to the vegetables we eat? I would suppose the author would praise the mere spot checking of beef for mad cow disease, as do I. But to defend the risks being taken with the genetic engineering of food crops? Regulation is the only safe method, and it is not being done. But then again, the world's soybean crop has not been wiped out by a heretofore cauliflower only virus - yet.