Risk as present futures

Peter Pelzer

Risk has a special, somewhat paradoxical relationship to time. It is a look from the present to the future with the experience, the data of the past. Driving by looking into the rear mirror, so to speak. Risk is, so the use in different areas, something which can be identified, measured, quantified in classes, abstracted, and then the overall risk situation be reported, evaluated and managed. Risk is a danger for the present situation, it is a potential harm which may take place in the future. This understanding seems to be so self-evident that definitions of the term risk are only very rarely given in the literature about risk and risk management. In this paper I would like to explore the concept of risk from a different perspective. Risk is not a given, a characteristic of future events. It is an attempt of humans to handle uncertain events in the future today. Risk is an act to order chaos. It names, qualifies a part of the chaotic environment to master it. Understood in this way the concept can be opened for a very different approach. Inspired by Hartmut Böhme's huge study on "Fetishism and Culture" (2006) the not so modern ingredients of risk management come into view and observations by Power on the audit society (1998, 2007) can be seen from a different, and, as I would claim, illuminating perspective.