ABSTRACT
Learning in risk governance is typically viewed as positive because accurate and shared understandings are presumed to lead to agreement, less conflict, more trust, and more competent solutions. The promotion of learning as a goal of risk governance processes highlights a conundrum for risk managers and stakeholders. Learning may intensify risk controversies. Early approaches to risk governance, risk communication, and public participation emphasized persuasion and the "correction" of inaccurate understandings or inappropriate judgments, often with the aim of changing attitudes or behaviors. A central claim of socio-cultural approaches is that human action cannot be analyzed by reductive approaches that isolate individuals (or groups) from how they carry out an action. The approach can be used to assess learning among participants in risk governance by considering their abilities to use cultural tools in contexts of complex, uncertain, and inconsistent information about a socio-ecological system, multiple perspectives of other participants, and uncertainty about likely performance of management actions.
