Surviving the Turbulent Future

Abstract

In neoliberal societies, the future is increasingly being cast as unpredictable and dangerous, reason to fashion new ways of managing hazard and risk. In the process, a culture based on providing comprehensive risk avoidance and protection from an authorised centre is being displaced by one in which the authorities, experts, and publics are expected to work in concert to do the best they can to resist adversity. Two emerging keywords are preparedness and resilience, intended to strengthen the human capacity to anticipate, resist, and recover from adversity. Building on an earlier critique of the neoliberal calculus of risk mitigation, this paper turns to the machinery of urban maintenance and to the trysts of embedded welfare democracy to propose a counterposition. In recognising the entanglements between humans and nonhumans in the management of urban unpredictability and emergency, and also the settlements of social contract between state and citizen in social democracies such as Sweden, the paper both redefines and displaces ideas of risk management through human resilience.