Another Person’s Peril: Peanut Allergy, Risk Perceptions, and Responsible Sociality
通过分析美国交通部2010年禁止飞机上携带花生的提案公众评论，研究当共享空间中部分人面临更高风险时，人们对健康风险的感知以及责任边界的争论，揭示了物质、社会和情境三个维度的邻近性如何影响恐惧、信任、权利和道德义务的认知。
This article examines perceptions of health risk when some individuals within a shared space are in heightened danger but anyone, including unaffected others, can be a vector of risk. Using the case of peanut allergy and drawing on qualitative content analysis of the public comments submitted in response to an unsuccessful 2010 U.S. Department of Transportation proposal to prohibit peanuts on airplanes, we analyze contention over the boundaries of responsibility for mitigating exposure to risk. We find three key dimensions of proximity to risk (material, social, and situational) characterizing ardent claims both for and against policy enactment. These proximity concerns underlay commenters’ sensemaking about fear, trust, rights, moral obligations, and liberty in the act of sharing space with others, while allowing them to stake positions on what we call “responsible sociality”—an ethic of discernible empathy for proximate others and of consideration for public benefit in social and communal settings. We conclude by discussing the insights our case affords several other areas of scholarship attentive to the intractable yet timely question of “for whom do we care?”