Q: Is risk just probability times consequences?

A: No, it’s about politics.

In Risk and Blame, anthropologist Mary Douglas writes that danger is never just out there waiting to be measured. What we fear, who we blame, and how we respond to misfortune are not neutral decisions. They are 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭, 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴.
For years, we assumed that modern societies had moved past the symbolic thinking of taboos and spiritual blame. But Douglas challenges this assumption. She shows that we haven’t abandoned blame; we’ve just rebranded it in the language of risk management, liability, and regulatory logic. When something goes wrong, our systems ask: Whose fault? Not: What does this say about how we’re organized?

Douglas writes that 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭, a way to assign blame that reflects how a society holds together, or doesn’t. In highly cohesive cultures, misfortune becomes moral failure. In competitive ones, it becomes personal incompetence. In adversarial systems, every accident becomes a legal case. Modern risk analysis may claim objectivity, but it very often ignores the social forces that influence how risk is perceived, reported, and acted upon. The human factor is not simply about error-prone individuals, but about institutional structures, power, and trust.

Douglas shows that culture influences cognition, and institutions influence what counts as information. Blame is about keeping a group together. Maybe the real risk is thinking we’ve outgrown blame.

Source:
Douglas, M. (1992), Risk and Blame - Essays in cultural theory, London/New York: Routledge.