Increasingly, governmental responses to incalculable, but high-consequence, threats to life and security are framed by what has been described as the `precautionary principle' (Ewald), `preparedness' (Collier, Lakoff & Rabinow) or `pre-emption' (Derrida). This article redescribes features common to these characterizations as the paradigm of prudence and examines how this approach to risk management is playing out in the context of fears that feature within the Australian political imaginary. We explore how the approach to the future entailed in the paradigm enframes `life' and stifles democratic participation and innovation in ways of living. Three case studies (in biosecurity, bioecology and biomedicine) demonstrate not only how the paradigm pervades the government of everyday life, but also how it is challenged by human `agents', material `life' and the dynamic relations between these two. By formulating what this involves, we point to a concept of the political more conducive to democratic pluralism, diversity of life and innovative culture.
ABC News Online, 2007. Murray-Darling Farmers Face Water Shut-Off, Australian Broadcasting Corporation , 19 April; transcript available at http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1901202.htm (accessed 29 December 2007 ).
2.
Agamben, Giorgio, 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
3.
The Age (Melbourne), 2007. $150m Plan To Tackle Ice "Epidemic", 22 April; available at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/04/22/1177180462291.html (accessed 23 December 2007).
4.
Barry, Andrew, 2001. Political Machines: Governing Technological Society . London & New York: Athlone .
5.
Bashford, Alison, 2002. At the Border: Contagion, Immigration, Nation, Australian Historical Studies33(120): 344-358.
6.
Beck, Ulrich, 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter . London: Sage.
7.
Beck, Ulrich, 2001. World Global Risk Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
8.
Bijker, Wiebe E., 2006. The Vulnerability of Technological Culture, in Helga Nowotny, ed., Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation. New York & Oxford: Berghahn (52-69).
9.
Collier, Stephen & Andrew Lakoff , forthcoming. The Vulnerability of Vital Systems: How "Critical Infrastructure" Became a Security Problem, in Myriam Dunn, ed., The Changing Logics of Risk and Security. London & New York : Routledge.
10.
Collier, Stephen; Andrew Lakoff & Paul Rabinow, 2004. Biosecurity: Proposal for an Anthropology of the Contemporary , Anthropology Today20(5): 3-7.
11.
Cooper, Melinda, 2006. Pre-empting Emergence: The Biological Turn in the War on Terror, Theory, Culture & Society23(4): 113-136.
12.
Davis, Mark, 2005. The Monster at the Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu . New York & London: The New Press.
13.
Dean, Mitchell & Barry Hindess, eds, 1998. Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
14.
Derrida, Jacques, 2003. Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides, in Giovanna Borradori, ed., Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (85-136).
15.
Diprose, Rosalyn, 2002. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. New York: State University of New York Press.
16.
Diprose, Rosalyn, 2006. Derrida and the Extraordinary Responsibility of Inheriting the Future-To-Come, Social Semiotics16(3): 435-447.
17.
Diprose, Rosalyn, forthcoming. The Political Technology of RU486, in Bruce Braun & Sarah Whatmore , eds, The Stuff of Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (000-000).
18.
Ebright, Richard, 2005. BioWar, Background Briefing, Australian Broadcasting Commission radio programme, 4 September.
19.
Elbe, Stefan, 2008. Risking Lives: AIDS, Security and Three Concepts of Risk , Security Dialogue39(2-3): 177-198.
20.
Ericson, Richard & Aaron Doyle, eds, 2003. Risk and Morality. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
21.
Ewald, François, 1993. Two Infinities of Risk, in Brian Massumi, ed., The Politics of Everyday Fear. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (221-228).
22.
Ewald, François, 2002. "The Return of Descartes Malicious Demon": An Outline of a Philosophy of Precaution, trans. Stephen Utz, in Tom Baker & Jonathan Simon, eds, Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (273-301).
23.
Fearnley, Lyle, 2005. From Chaos to Controlled Disorder, ARC Working Paper no. 5; available at http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/publications/2007/08/workingpaperno5.pdf (accessed 20 December 2007).
24.
Foucault, Michel, 1980. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage.
25.
Foucault, Michel, 1994a. Dits et écrits [Sayings and Writings], edited by Daniel Defert & François Ewald, Paris: Gallimard .
26.
Foucault, Michel, 1994b. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in James Faubion, ed., Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, Volume Two: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. London : Penguin (369-391).
27.
Foucault, Michel, 2000. Subjectivity and Truth, in Paul Rabinow, ed., Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume One: Ethics. London: Penguin (92).
28.
Foucault, Michel, 2002. The Subject and Power, in James Faubion, ed., Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, Volume Three: Power. London: Penguin (326-349).
29.
Foucault, Michel2003. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-76, trans. David Macey. New York: Picador.
30.
Hamilton, Clive & Sarah Maddison, eds, 2007. Silencing Dissent: How the Australian Government Is Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate . Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
31.
Haraway, Donna, 1991. The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse, in Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.New York: Routledge (203-230).
32.
Haraway, Donna, 2004. Ecce Homo, Aint (Arnt) I a woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-Humanist Landscape, in Donna Haraway, ed., The Haraway Reader. New York & London: Routledge (47-61).
33.
Hardt, Michael & Antonio Negri , 2005. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London: Penguin .
34.
Hawkins, Gay, 2006a. The Ethics of Waste. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
35.
Hawkins, Gay, 2006b. Waste Matters: Rethinking Recycling, in Elsbeth Probyn, ed., Creating Value: The Humanities and Their Publics. Canberra: Australian Academy of Humanities (97-103).
36.
Heidegger, Martin, 1977. The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays . New York: Harper & Row (3-35).
37.
Hoy, David, 2004. Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post-Critique . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
38.
Howard, John, 2007. Australia Rising, Address to Queensland Media Club, Sofitel Hotel, Brisbane, 23 April 2007; transcript available at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21606060-601,00.html (accessed 20 December 2007).
39.
King, Nicholas, 2002. Security, Disease, Commerce: Ideologies of Postcolonial Global Health, Social Studies of Science32(5-6): 763-789.
40.
Kippax, Susan & Kane Race, 2003. Sustaining Safe Practice: Twenty Years On, Social Science and Medicine57(1): 1-12.
41.
Latour, Brian, 2004. Politics of Nature: How To Bring the Sciences into Democracy, trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
42.
Lawlor, Leonard, 2006. The Implications of Immanence: Toward a New Concept of Life. New York: Fordham University Press.
43.
Lazzarato, Maurizio, 2002. From Biopower to Biopolitics, trans. Ivan Ramirez , Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy13: 100-111.
44.
Lederberg, Joshua, 1996. Infection Emergent, Journal of the American Medical Association275: 243-245.
45.
Luhmann, Niklas, 1993. Risk: A Sociological Theory. New York : Aldine de Gruyter.
46.
Mendieta, Eduardo, 2006. Biopiracy and Bioterrorism: Banana Republics, NAFTA, and Taco Bell, Peace & Change31(1): 80-89.
47.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1988. In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. John ONeill. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
48.
Mills, Catherine, 2003. Contesting the Political: Foucault and Butler on Power and Resistance, Journal of Political Philosophy11(3): 253-272.
Morris, Kelly, 2007. Dispute Resolved over Sharing Avian Influenza Virus Samples , The Lancet Infectious Diseases7(5): 310.
51.
Murphie, Andrew, 2005. Differential Life, Perception and the Nervous Elements: Whitehead, Bergson and Virno on the Technics of Living, Culture Machine7; available at http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j007/Articles/murphie.htm (accessed 20 December 2007).
52.
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 2000. Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert Richardson & Anne OByrne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
53.
Nato, 2005. Policy Implications of the Risk Society, Draft Report 171 ESC 05 E, NATO Parliamentary Assembly; available at http://www.nato-pa.int/Default.asp?CAT2=1159&CAT1=16&CAT0=576&shortcut=798 (accessed 20 December 2007).
54.
Nowotny, Helga, 2006. Introduction: The Quest for Innovation and Cultures of Technology, in Helga Nowotny, ed., Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation. New York & Oxford: Berghahn (1-23).
55.
NSW Ombudsman, 2006. Review of the Police Powers (Drug Detection Dogs) Act 2001, Report of New South Wales Government Parliamentary Ombudsman, Sydney, Australia; available at http://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/show.asp?id=431 (accessed 20 December 2007).
56.
OMalley Pat, 1999. Consuming Risks: Harm Minimisation and the Government of "Drug Users", in Russell Smandych, ed., Governable Places: Readings in Governmentality and Crime Control . Aldershot: Dartmouth (191-214).
57.
Oxford, John, 2005. Preparing for the First Influenza Pandemic of the 21st Century, The Lancet Infectious Diseases5(3): 129-131.
Rabinow, Paul, 1996. Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
60.
Rabinow, Paul, 2003. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
61.
Rabinow, Paul & Nikolas Rose, 2006. Biopower Today, Biosocieties1(2): 195-217.
62.
Race, Kane, 2004. Drugs and Domesticity: Fencing the Nation, Cultural Studies Review10: 62-84.
63.
Race, Kane, 2005. Recreational States: Drugs and the Sovereignty of Consumption , Culture Machine7; available at http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_f1.htm (accessed 20 December 2007).
64.
Rose, Nikolas, 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ & Oxford: Princeton University Press .
65.
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2005. Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon. London & New York: Verso.
66.
Sassen, Saskia, 2005. When National Territory Is Home to the Global: Old Borders to Novel Borderings, New Political Economy10(4): 523-541.
67.
Southgate, Erica & Max Hopwood , 2001. The Role of Folk Pharmacology and Lay Experts in Harm Reduction: Sydney Gay Drug Using Networks, International Journal of Drug Policy12(4): 321-335.
68.
Stenekes, Nyree; Hal K. Colebatch, T. David Waite & Nick J. Ashbolt , 2006. Risk and Governance in Water Recycling, Science, Technology and Human Values31(2): 107-134.
69.
Stephenson, Niamh, & Dimitris Papadopoulos , 2006. Analysing Everyday Experience: Social Research and Political Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
70.
Waldby, Catherine, 1996. AIDS and the Body Politic: Biomedicine and Sexual Difference . London: Routledge.
71.
Waldby, Catherine & Robert Mitchell , 2006. Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
