Futurizing Risk Management: A Review Essay

In writing this review article, I began by looking across my office at more than six metres of related books and even more shelf-space devoted to planning, control cybernetics and, more generally, public policy. As an initial statement of appreciation to Volume 1 of this work of significant scholarship, I can only say that Bell's erudition will allow me to discard much of the top `futures' shelves, though not necessarily the lower: this important distinction will be discussed below as it constitutes the most general level of the many strengths and few weaknesses of this publication. My second reaction was to ponder, for a much longer period, how to condense such erudition, indeed highly eclectic scholarship, into a review article. A conventional book review could never do adequate justice to this major contribution to three fields of study: `futures' itself, the social and `human' sciences and, perhaps less directly and generally, `public policy'. Bell's title includes the first two terms quite deliberately but (as the review will show), I have added the public policy theme. This addition is deliberate as part of an editorial injunction ± write the review relevant to the readers of this journal. In so doing, perhaps the ordering of the journal's title should be re-arranged temporarily to: The Journal of Crisis Management and Contingencies. Bell's book is replete with examples of both terms, so the task of reviewing becomes less onerous. Finally, in relating the three key concepts futures, `sciences' and public policy to the journal and its main topics of interests, it should be recognized at the outset that this last issue is not necessarily a part of Bell's original agenda. However, to deny the potential public policy importance of this book would be, at best, disingenuous. He is, from the first section of the study, wholly determined to relate `futures' studies' (note the apostrophe) to what he cites as a major purpose in writing the book: