File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 33


Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 13:19:09 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: risk, schmisk


James Heartfield wrote:

>Right wing hacks, left wing hacks, what's the difference? I prefer to
>criticise what people say than to indulge in that cod Marxism that
>traces every opinion to a vested interest. As to LM's analysis of risk,
>it is second to none, on BSE, AIDS, crime panics or global warming.
>Indeed it is the only journal I know that goes to the science *before*
>it sounds off on the politics.

Let me phrase it a bit more precisely then. Instead of saying that LM turns
to "right-wing" scientists, I'll say that on ecological issues, LM and
Against Nature quotes scientists at odds with the thinking of their
colleagues, scientists who are so marginal that the only hearing they can
get is from right-wing publications and PR departments of Mobil and Ford.

And when I quoted from a review article on BSE in the New England Journal
of Medicine, James Heartfield pooh-pooh'd it. This from a writer and a
group who profess great admiration for science.

>However, as important as the science is in challenging the inflation of
>risk, it is no substitute for the sociological analysis of the ideology
>of risk. The real challenge, again, is to account for the divergence of
>risk and the perception of risk. (To say that you have a horror of AIDS,
>or CJD is only to beg the question, why do you have such a horror?)

Well, yes, let's do that. But before we can start, you have to admit that
the risks of global warming, AIDS, and maybe even BSE/CJD are not
irrational at all. They may be exaggerated in statistical terms, the
reflection of projected social anxieties; I also suspect that the U.S. and
British masses have a very poor understanding of notions of probability and
risk. (In fact, I wonder what share of the adult population in these two
countries can do basic percentage arithmetic.) But from what I've read in
LM, in the Against Nature transcripts, and from James Heartfield in these
forums, I see more denial of risk than any true sociological/psychological
analysis.

Doug




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