Emeritus professor of sociology Charles Perrow from Yale is visiting CBS

The 17th of September 2012 CBS Public-Private Platform and IOA give you the opportunity of meeting one of “the grand old men” within CBS related research areas. The acknowledged professor emeritus of sociology Charles Perrow from Yale visits CBS to a public lecture focusing on among others his research regarding catastrophes and the issue of Fukushima.

Charles Perrow is educated from University of Washington, Black Mountain College (N.C.) and UC Berkeley. In 1960 he received his Ph.D. in sociology from Berkeley and in 2000 he became emeritus from Yale. Besides his work at Yale he is functioning as visiting professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, in the winter and spring quarters.

Charles Perrow is one of the leading sociologists in the 20th century and is the author behind no less than 6 books and more than 50 academic articles. His interests include the development of bureaucracy in the 19th Century; the radical movements of the 1960s; Marxian theories of industrialization and of contemporary crises; accidents in such high risk systems as nuclear plants, air transport, DNA research and chemical plants; protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure; the prospects for democratic work organizations; and the origins of U.S. capitalism

Abstract Risk and denials: exploring energy risk possibilities and probabilities from 1945 to 2012:

Nuclear denials parallel other denials such as climate change and the link between smoking and cancer, aligning state and corporate interests. The US and the Soviet Union utilized denial and secrecy with respect to radiation damages from atomic bombs, bomb factories, and nuclear power plants in order to legitimate the bomb and its bad seed, nuclear power plants. When obvious damages unmasked denial and secrecy, risk analysis was employed. Probability Risk Analysis ignored possibilities, and favored probabilities, which were always found to be low.  Since they were not zero, the risk analysis trope blamed the victims for their lifestyles or unreasonable fears, with terms such as “radiophobia” accounting for morbidity and mortality.  These dynamics are emerging in Fukushima where the radiation effects are said to be trivial but the psychological effects potentially deadly. Powerful state and corporate interests are involved in this social construction of risk. 

Time: 17.09 2012, 16.15 -17.45

Place: Copenhagen Business School

Solbjerg Plads

2000 Frederiksberg

Room: SP201

Registration: Register by emailing CBS Public-Private Platform (publicprivateplatform@cbs.dk) before the 10th of September