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Alaszewski, A., & Burgess, A. (2007). Risk, Time & Reason. Health, Risk & Society, 9(4), 349-358.

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Over time, a number of alternative approaches to risk have developed and, while these co-exist, they structure time in different ways and are grounded in different combinations of cognitive rationality and affect. The initial conceptualization of risk, which remains prominent, was based on the use of knowledge from past events to provide the context for choices which minimize harm in the future. It underpins structured approaches to decision making based on use of statistics as a means of calculating the probability of future outcomes. This approach has been challenged by the development of a more forensic approach in which the emphasis is on identifying the specific causes of disasters using hindsight and from the analysis of specific cases making recommendations to prevent future disasters. While this approach has a rational basis, it also addresses the collective emotional responses to disaster and provides a cathartic function. In the late twentieth century a more precautionary approach has emerged, in which the fear of future is given precedence over evidence or lack of evidence of past harm. The precautionary approach is future oriented and casts the future principally in negative, potentially catastrophic terms.

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Amoore, L. (2013). The politics of possibility: Risk and security beyond probability. Duke University Press.‏

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Since September 11, 2001, the imagination of "low probability, high consequence" events has become a distinctive feature of contemporary politics. Uncertain futures—devastation by terrorist attack, cyber-crime, flood, financial market collapse—must be discerned and responded to as possibilities, however improbable they may be. In The Politics of Possibility, Louise Amoore examines this development, tracing its genealogy through the diverse worlds of risk management consulting, computer science, commercial logistics, and data visualization. She focuses on the increasingly symbiotic relationship between commercial opportunities and state security threats, a relation that turns the trusted, iris-scanned traveler into "a person of national security interest," and the designer of risk algorithms for casino and insurance fraud into a homeland security resource. Juxtaposing new readings of Agamben, Foucault, Derrida, Massumi, and Connolly with interpretations of post–9/11 novels and artworks, Amoore analyzes the "politics of possibility" and its far-reaching implications for society, associative life, and political accountability.

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Aradau, C., & Van Munster, R. (2007). Governing terrorism through risk: Taking precautions,(un) knowing the future. European journal of international relations, 13(1), 89-115.‏

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The events of 9/11 appeared to make good on Ulrich Beck's claim that we are now living in a (global) risk society. Examining what it means to ‘govern through risk’, this article departs from Beck's thesis of risk society and its appropriation in security studies. Arguing that the risk society thesis problematically views risk within a macro-sociological narrative of modernity, this article shows, based on a Foucauldian account of governmentality, that governing terrorism through risk involves a permanent adjustment of traditional forms of risk management in light of the double infinity of catastrophic consequences and the incalculability of the risk of terrorism. Deploying the Foucauldian notion of ‘dispositif’, this article explores precautionary risk and risk analysis as conceptual tools that can shed light on the heterogeneous practices that are defined as the ‘war on terror’.

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Hannerz, U. (2015). Writing Futures An Anthropologist's View of Global Scenarios. Current Anthropology, 56(6), 797-818.‏

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Toward the end of the twentieth century, the Cold War ended, and globalization became a key word in public discourse. In the new situation people could ask, with relief or anxiety, what might happen next? So a small but lively intellectual industry rose to the challenge, creating scenarios for a born-again world. As the world turned, there would be more of them. With 9/11 there was another wave of global commentary. There were hot wars in Central Asia and the Middle East, and then, with economic upheavals spreading rather unevenly over the world, there were shifts in the global centers of gravity. This again generated more scenarios for the world. Often, the future visions could be encapsulated in striking catchphrases: the end of history, the clash of civilizations, jihad versus McWorld, soft power, and others. The Eric Wolf Lecture of 2014 scrutinizes world scenarios as a genre of creative writing but also considers their role as a set of representations of the world that are now circulated, received, and debated in a worldwide web of social relationships. As a contemporary sociocultural phenomenon, the scenarios come out of a zone of knowledge production where academia, media, and politics meet. The authors are global public intellectuals. While anthropology has contributed little to them directly, these writings deserve attention for the way they offer the Big Picture of the world and, at times, for their use of cultural understandings.

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O'Brien, S. (2016). ‘We Thought the World Was Makeable’: Scenario Planning and Postcolonial Fiction. Globalizations, 13(3), 329-344.

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This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyze the discourse of scenario planning. I argue that scenario planning, a strategy of speculation about possible futures, elides history—specifically the intertwined processes of colonialism and capitalism—in favor of the idea of globalization as an inexorable unfolding of the world as a complex system. Following a brief genealogy of the discourse of scenario planning that highlights its Cold War origins, and ongoing function in imagining, and helping to secure, the future of global capitalism, I offer as counterpoint a postcolonial reading of Animal's People. A fictional exploration of the aftermath of the 1984 Union Carbide factory gas leak in Bhopal, India, the novel contests (thematically and formally) the hegemonic temporality of globalization that informs scenario planning and the model of risk management it inspires.

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Schoch‐Spana, M. (2004). Bioterrorism: US public health and a secular apocalypse. Anthropology Today, 20(5), 8-13.

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This analysis was prepared for the ‘Bioterrorism: Historical contexts, long‐term consequences’ conference held at the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, on 8 May 2002. A revised version was presented at the panel ‘A plagued future? Emerging diseases, bioweapons, and other anticipated microbial horrors’ at the 2002 American Anthropological Association Meetings, 23 November. I thank meeting participants for their comments, as well as Nick King, Joe Masco and the anonymous referees for AT. I am indebted to colleagues D.A. Henderson, Tara O'Toole, Tom Inglesby and Michael Mair for their reflections on the humanitarian and public policy dilemmas posed by bioweapons, and to Onora Lien and Ari Schuler for research assistance.

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Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Vol. 17). SAGE.‏

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This panoramic analysis of the condition of Western societies has been hailed as a classic. This first English edition has taken its place as a core text of contemporary sociology alongside earlier typifications of society as postindustrial and current debates about the social dimensions of the postmodern.

Underpinning the analysis is the notion of the `risk society′. The changing nature of society′s relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict.

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Beck, U. (2009). World at Risk Cambridge: Polity.‏

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Twenty years ago Ulrich Beck published Risk Society, a book that called our attention to the dangers of environmental catastrophes and changed the way we think about contemporary societies. During the last two decades, the dangers highlighted by Beck have taken on new forms and assumed ever greater significance. Terrorism has shifted to a global arena, financial crises have produced worldwide consequences that are difficult to control and politicians have been forced to accept that climate change is not idle speculation. In short, we have come to see that today we live in a world at risk. A new feature of our world risk society is that risk is produced for political gain. This political use of risk means that fear creeps into modern life. A need for security encroaches on our liberty and our view of equality. However, Beck is anything but an alarmist and believes that the anticipation of catastrophe can fundamentally change global politics. We have the opportunity today to reconfigure power in terms of what Beck calls a 'cosmopolitan material politics'.

World at Risk is a timely and far-reaching analysis of the structural dynamics of the modern world, the global nature of risk and the future of global politics by one of the most original and exciting social thinkers writing today.

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Douglas, M., & Wildavsky, A. (1983). Risk and culture: An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Univ of California Press.‏

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Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do. Some dangers are unknown; others are known, but not by us because no one person can know everything. Most people cannot be aware of most dangers at most times. Hence, no one can calculate precisely the total risk to be faced. How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore? On what basis are certain dangers guarded against and others relegated to secondary status?  This book explores how we decide what risks to take and which to ignore, both as individuals and as a culture.

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Elbe, S. (2008). Risking lives: AIDS, security and three concepts of risk. Security Dialogue, 39(2-3), 177-198.‏‏

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This article analyses the conjunctures of risk and security that have recently emerged in the securitization of HIV/AIDS. Although these partially corroborate Ulrich Beck's notion of risk society, important elements of the securitization of HIV/AIDS resist his understanding of risk as a 'danger of modernization'. The article therefore turns to François Ewald's alternative theorization of risk as a 'neologism of insurance', and shows that insurance is a risk-based security practice widely used to manage the welfare of populations. Such a biopolitical approach to risk is also valuable for analyzing the securitization of HIV/AIDS, which, even though it is unfolding outside the domain of insurance, similarly draws upon multiple risk categories ('security risks', 'risk groups' and 'risk factors') in efforts to improve the collective health of populations. Analyzed through a wider concept of risk as a 'biopolitical rationality', the conjuncture of risk and security in the securitization of HIV/AIDS thus emerges as a principal site where the institutions of sovereign power in international relations are being absorbed and integrated within a wider biopolitical economy of power.

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