- Home
- Companies
- Inderscience Publishers
- Articles
- Revolution or passing fashion? ...
Revolution or passing fashion? Reassessing the precautionary principle
Courtesy of Inderscience Publishers
Precaution has been for years a controversial issue. Some regard it as a major regulatory innovation, others as an inherently flawed concept. Some consider it an approach still in its infancy, others believe it is a passing fashion. A narrow understanding of its relationship with knowledge and its distributional effects may explain why discussions on the US-EU divergence and on Europe's own ambivalence about precaution fail to provide a consistent picture. This paper makes a case for a broader perspective: the issue of precaution is related to the social division of labour, namely the intimate connection between knowledge and power. The modern narrative, drawing a sharp divide between (science-based) production and use of knowledge, has faced growing public criticism. The controversy on precaution mixes up tradition and innovation in an ambiguous way, gaining special saliency in Europe vis-a-vis the elaboration of its social model. If tradition is increasingly in trouble, innovation has perils of its own.
Keywords: precaution, precautionary principle, knowledge, risk management, uncertainty, power, narrative, politics, division of labour, social solidarity, transatlantic divide, European social model, disenchantment of science
-
Most popular related searches
Customer comments
No comments were found for Revolution or passing fashion? Reassessing the precautionary principle. Be the first to comment!