Abstract

In recent decades, scholars and policy makers have taken notice of questions relating to the definition, perception and communication of risk. This article explores these questions from a socio-anthropological perspective, ranging from approaches that identify risk as a milestone of late-modernity to those that frame it as a morally oriented way of ordering reality, even in contemporary societies. Particular attention is paid to theories of risk that privilege culturally shaped elements but rely on reified understandings of identity. A case study on environmental risks in Sicily introduces the situated approach: an ethnographic perspective that draws on social relationships, power hierarchies, cultural values, trust in institutions, embodied memories and daily practices. Defining risk calls into question the ability of social actors to act upon the world. Rather than inferring structural and cultural frames, current anthropological approaches are interested in understating the very social relations that define risk within specific contexts. Communication is thus intended as situated practices through which the social construction of risk takes place rather than the transmission of objective data to laypeople