Course description
Uncertainty has become a matter of great concern among scholars, policy makers, and activists that aim at facing the global, epochal and complex changes closely or loosely related to the current crisis in which sanitary, economic and ecological issues overlap to a large extent. A growing number of reports, policy recommendations and initiatives from expert groups, governments, and international organizations highlight that a wide range of phenomena increasingly interact with each other, whose potential cascade effects are not yet accounted for. They underline an inconvenient truth: our knowledge cannot predict such uncertain future by extrapolating existing data, a range of values and extended time series according to conventional risk management techniques. The idea of ‘unknown unknowns’ was popularised in the public sphere by the former US Secretary of Defence Ronald Rumsfeld. Yet it also prompts fierce scientific debates in political science, economics, or environmental studies.
This course aims at introducing students to the theoretical foundations on which rest the study of risk and uncertainty and providing thematic illustrations related to the major challenges of the 21st century. The course also makes use of Venice as a case-study with on-sites meetings with officials and activists involved in how Venice can reinvent itself in response to the crossroad at which it finds itself regarding the sustainability of its model.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
• discern the specificities and added value of different social sciences theories accounting for the future;
• explain the difference between the concepts of risk and of uncertainty
• identify the main prospects and issues related to the concepts of risk and uncertainty;
• identify the main prospects and issues related to a range of methods used to respond to the problems of risk and uncertainty;
• discuss a text and its main arguments or concepts in an informed, critical and straightforward language;
• conducting and organising collaborative research, writing and communication work, integrating a diversity of points of view;
• decentralise and develop a reflexive view of the co-construction of knowledge from different socio-political and historical contexts, and broaden one's international and intercultural communication skills;
• have some awareness of the specificity of the risks and the uncertainty to which a global city like Venice has to respond.

Teaching and Evaluation Method
Teaching is conceived as a space for presentations and exchanges around readings and students' essays. It offers a space for critical discussion, to become familiar with the theories of risk and uncertainty, their tools of analysis, their methods and some of their central themes. The texts indicated in the programme are to be read before the sessions by all students. While the professor will provide a substantial introduction on the theme of each session, students are expected to be active during the class answering various questions. To facilitate reading and discussion, a list of questions is attached to the texts studied each class. Each student is expected to have answered to them in preparing the class. After background provided by the professor, the class will break out in small groups in order to first compare answers developed individually. Then, each group will report back to the whole group and open the group discussion.
On two occasions, students will have a written home assignment which consists of an individual written essay (1500 words; ± 5%) on the basis of the list of questions for the texts studied.
The final exam will consist of an essay (4000 words, ± 10%) written in groups of two students on a thematic issue of risk and uncertainty, making use of the readings discussed in class and, where possibly, with illustration on the case of Venice.

1. Students’ home assignments (2X) (40%)
2. Class participation (20%)
3. Final essay (40%)
A mid-term grade will be communicated to the SHSS office based on students’ home assignments and class participation.

Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction & brainstorming: Living in uncertain times
After introducing the course, an exchange of experience and prior understanding on the topic will help to build a preliminary collective mapping and scoping of risks likely to range from natural hazards and geopolitical threats to global pandemic and ecological collapse. This mapping and scoping exercise will be reviewed at the end of the course.

Week 2: The risk management of everything
Consultancy firms, think-tanks and management gurus join forces to provide tools aimed at understanding and mitigating present and future risks. The classes reflect on the early mapping and scoping exercise of the previous week with a dive into these analyses targeting decision-makers, as well as a classic text of the critique of such explosion of risk management in all areas.
Readings:
WEF. 2022. ‘The Global Risks Report 2022’. Geneva: World Economic Forum (extracts).
Jain, Ritesh, Fritz Nauck, Thomas Poppensieker, and Olivia White White. 2020. ‘Meeting the Future: Dynamic Risk Management for Uncertain Times’. McKinsey & Co. (extracts).
Power, Michael. 2004. The Risk Management of Everything. London: Demos (extracts).

Week 3: How risk differs from uncertainty
This week, we disentangle the core concepts of the course in order to understand how the objectivation, anticipation and calculation of risks stands in sharp contrast to uncertainty, which involves a situation in which information, knowledge, and calculation techniques are considered as insufficient to assess or measure the future.
Readings:
Kay, John, and Mervyn King. 2020. Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making beyond the Numbers. New York: W W Norton (chap. 1 & 3)
Maechler, Sylvain, and Jean-Christophe Graz. 2022. ‘Is the Sky or the Earth the Limit? Risk, Uncertainty and Nature’. Review of International Political Economy, 29(2), pp. 624-45

Week 4: Risk, uncertainty and the sociology of expectations
The classes introduce classic authors of German social theory known for their forward-looking conceptualisation of the concept of risk and critical analyses of how capitalism responds to uncertain futures.
Readings:
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Theory, Culture & Society. London: Sage (extracts).
Beckert, J. (2013). Imagined futures: Fictional expectations in the economy. Theory and Society, 42(3), 219‑240

Week 5: Radical and true uncertainties: back to John Maynard Keynes and Frank H Knight
Analysis of original writings – both published in 1921 – of the two major figures of the political economy theory of risk and uncertainty.
Readings:
Keynes, John Maynard. 2009 [1921]. A Treatise on Probability. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (extracts).
Knight, Frank H. 1971 [1921]. Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. Chicago: The University of Chicago press (extracts).

Week 6: Critical mid-term review and preparation of meetings with Venice officials and activists
This week will be the occasion to review what we have learned so far and to prepare the meetings with Venice officials and activists in the week after the Autumn break. It will also be the opportunity to discuss the essays to be written as part of the course requirements. The readings (to be completed) provide examples of risk management and resilience achieved by Venice in the past as well as in the more contemporary time (outbreaks of the plague; floods, etc.).
Suggested readings (to be completed):
Linkov, Igor, Cate Fox-Lent, Jeffrey Keisler, Stefano Della Sala, and Jorg Sieweke. 2014. ‘Risk and Resilience Lessons from Venice’. Environment Systems and Decisions 34 (3): 378–82.
Maria Fusaro, Andrea Addobbati, and Luisa Piccinno (Eds.). 2022. General Average and Risk Management in Medieval and Early Modern Maritime Business. London: PalgraveMcMillan (extracts).
Chris Allnutt. 2021. ‘With the tourists gone, residents are being lured back to the city by falling rental prices’, Financial Times, 26 February.
Davide Ghiglione. 2021. ‘Venice counts cost of mass tourism as cruise ship conflict rages’, Financial Times, 25 June.

Week 7: How to anticipate the future of Venice
Meeting with officials and activists involved in campaigning on how Venice can reinvent itself in response to the crossroad at which it finds itself regarding the sustainability of its model.
Potential contacts (to be confirmed):
Marco Gasparinetti, spokesman for Gruppo 25 Aprile, a residents’ rights campaign.
Simone Venturini, Assessore alla Coesione Sociale, al Turismo, allo Sviluppo Economico, al Lavoro e alla Residenza presso Comune di Venezia.

Week 8: Doubling security: insurance and standardization
The classes explore how insurance companies are key actors in the informal governance of risk and uncertainty. They focus in particular on the standards developed by the insurance industry to control, transfer and distribute risks across borders, let alone to steer clear of state intervention as far as possible. They illustrate the importance of insurance and standardization with cases of different lines of business across the north-south divide.
Readings:
Doyle, Aaron, and Richard Ericson. 2010. ‘10. Five Ironies of Insurance’. In The Appeal of Insurance, ed. by Geoffrey W. Clark, Greg Anderson, Christian Thomann, and J. Matthias-Graf von der Schulenburg. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (extract).
Graz, Jean-Christophe. 2019. The Power of Standards: Hybrid Authority and the Globalisation of Services. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (extract).
Perticone, Yannick, Graz, Jean-Christophe and Rahel Kunz. 2022-forthcoming. ‘Datanalysing the uninsured: the coloniality of inclusive insurance platforms’. Unpublished manuscript.

Week 9: The anticipatory power of probabilities & metrics
The classes discuss the evaluation techniques of probabilities, statistics and metrics used to substitute risk for uncertainty and to tag a price on risks. They introduce classical writings and critiques from economists, statisticians and sociologists.
Readings:
Friedman, Milton, and L. J. Savage. 1948. ‘The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk’. Journal of Political Economy 56 (4): 279–304 (extract).
Desrosières, Alain. 2002. The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press (extract).
Mennicken, Andrea, and Wendy Nelson Espeland. 2019. ‘What’s New with Numbers? Sociological Approaches to the Study of Quantification’. Annual Review of Sociology 45 (1): 223–45.

Week 10: The anticipatory power of institutions and conventions
This week we discuss approaches that highlight the social, political and cultural considerations that influence a society's views on risks, their assessment techniques and their legal and economic implications.
Readings:
Orléan, André. 2010. ‘The Impossible Evaluation of Risk’. Prismes, no. 18.
Salais, Robert. 2012. ‘Quantification and the Economics of Convention’. Historical Social Research (Köln) 37 (4 (142)): 55–63.
Katzenstein, Peter J, and Lucia A Seybert. 2018. ‘Protean Power and Uncertainty: Exploring the Unexpected in World Politics’. International Studies Quarterly 62 (1): 80–93.

Week 11: Accounting for a future made of global warming and loss of biodiversity
A review of how we anticipate the full range of uncertainties arising from the global ecological crisis, in particular biodiversity loss and climate change.
Readings:
Bolton, Patrick, Morgan Despres, Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, Romain Svartzman, and Frédéric Samama. 2020. The Green Swan: Central Banking and Financial Stability in the Age of Climate Change. Basel: Bank for International Settlements (extracts).
Keen, Steve. 2021. The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change. Globalizations, 18(7):1149-1177 (extracts).
Maechler, Sylvain and Valérie Boisvert. 2022 forthcoming ‘Incantations and the Performance of Valuation: Manufacturing Natural Capital Accounting’ Unpublished Manuscript.

Week 12: De-risking, anticipatory governance and rebuilding resilience
These final classes examine a range of responses taking their distance from conventional market solutions to risk management. They span from so called ‘de-risking’ strategies, in which financial institutions terminate or restrict business relationships with their customers, to anticipatory governance that underline the political and contested nature of uncertainty reduction strategies, or resilience emphasizing the need to keep options open recognize our ignorance.
Readings:
Fan, Irina, Thomas Holzheu, and Clarence Wong. 2020. ‘De-Risking Global Supply Chains: Rebalancing to Strengthen Resilience’. Sigma, no. 6 (extracts).
Aykut, Stefan C, David Demortain, and Bilel Bebouzid. 2019. ‘The Politics of Anticipatory Expertise: Plurality and Contestation of Futures Knowledge in Governance: Introduction to the Special Issue: The Politics of Anticipatory Expertise’. Science & Technology Studies. 32 (4): 2–12.
Holling, C S. 1973. ‘Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems’. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4 (1): 1–23.

Exam week: Presentation of the essays on a thematic issue of risks and uncertainty, making use of the readings discussed in class and, where possibly, with illustration on the case of Venice.

Co-curricular activities
Meetings with officials and activists involved in campaigning on how Venice should respond to current risks and uncertainties (see week 7).
Lecture from one of the authors of the texts analysed.