A Critical Look at the “Risk Culture”: France’s “Plan Rhône”

Abstract

The “risk culture,” an expression that has enjoyed much success in both academic and management circles, has been the source of some confusion when one considers relations between the authorities and local populations in the context of natural hazard prevention policy. Rather than retrace this category’s journey from the world of scholarship to that of public action, the methodological approach I have chosen here begins with local uses of the expression in order to examine the issues it puts into play. On-the-ground observation of flood risk management in the Rhône valley reveals discrepancies between the intentions associated with the discourse of the risk culture—which promotes exchange and consultation between experts and laymen, decision makers, and residents—and its conditions of discursive enunciation, which are characterized by a marked asymmetry between author (institutional actors) and audience (the population). To better understand this discrepancy and grasp the issues involved in it, it is therefore useful to consider the implementation and consequences of this discourse by closely observing interactions between managers and populations for whom the risk culture constitutes an a priori frame of reference. In such circumstances, the investigative methodology must allow the investigator access to both institutional actors and the population by way of ethnographic immersion.