S. Jasanoff (ed.), Learning from Disaster: Risk Management After Bhopal. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1994) pp. 133-57
Abstract
The December 1984 disaster in Bhopal, in which upwards of 3,500 persons were killed and as many as 150,000 seriously injured, invites our reflection on many matters. I shall examine the strikingly differ- ent role played by tort law in the risk-management complexes of India and the United States, the two sites of the ensuing legal battle. Flows of capital, goods, people, and information mean that injurious events may be transnational in significant ways. What do the national dif- ferences displayed in the aftermath of Bhopal imply for the trans- national traffic in legal services and legal remedies? To place tort law in some perspective, I begin by imagining the introduction of a new productive technology'for example; the pro- duction of pesticides'into a new setting'for example, India. This new technology brings with it new risks. At the same time, it effects a reduction of the risks of starvation, malnutrition, and harms associ- ated with older agricultural technologies. Let us assume that the over- all quantum of risk in the recipient society is now less than it was before the advent of the new technology. But now there are new risks that impinge on the workers in the pesticide plants, on those who live near the plants, on those who transport' the product, use it in the fields, ingest it, and so forth. At least some of these new risks are more focused, more visible, and more controllable than the old risks that they have replaced. And they are apprehended in a very different way, for they are palpably the result of identifiable human inter- ventions, associated with particular human agencies.
