Risk Society On The Last Frontier: Indigenous Knowledge And The Politics Of Risk In Oil Resource Management At Alaska's North Slope

Abstract

This thesis assesses the role of modern environmental risks and their institutionalized management in the subpolitics of North Slope stakeholder groups. It draws primarily on the concepts developed by Ulrich Beck and the literature that has grown out of his Risk Society thesis. The purpose of this research is to determine whether the current designs for knowledge production and management inside Alaska's oil management regime are inclusive of the indigenous knowledge (IK) of North Slope residents during the mediation of environmental risks, and whether the extent of inclusion is in proportion with the risk exposures of these communities. The premise of the thesis is that Alaska's oil politics is influenced by risk society conditions, and inclusion of North Slope residents' IK in environmental risk mediation has failed to match the scope of risks imposed upon local communities by negative externalities of oil development policies. Consequently, this trend has resulted in a technocratic hegemony of administrative agencies over risk definitions and disputes over the legitimacy of expert risk-decisions. The thesis is supported by an extensive literature on the politics of science and risk, an examination of the public process at state agencies, and a qualitative analysis of knowledge management initiatives both at the state and at the subpolitical level. The findings of this study support the idea that a new knowledge management model for risk mediation is needed to effectively include stakeholders' cultural rationalities on the acceptability of risks.