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Climate change is an increasingly salient issue for societies and policy‐makers worldwide. It now raises fundamental interdisciplinary issues of risk and uncertainty analysis and communication. The growing scientific consensus over the anthropogenic causes of climate change appears to sit at odds with the increasing use of risk discourses in policy: for example, to aid in climate adaptation decision making. All of this points to a need for a fundamental revision of our conceptualization of what it is to do climate risk communication. This Special Collection comprises seven papers stimulated by a workshop on "Climate Risk Perceptions and Communication" held at Cumberland Lodge Windsor in 2010. Topics addressed include climate uncertainties, images and the media, communication and public engagement, uncertainty transfer in climate communication, the role of emotions, localization of hazard impacts, and longitudinal analyses of climate perceptions. Climate change risk perceptions and communication work is critical for future climate policy and decisions.

Three interrelated questions are posed. First, what is the significance of culture for theories of institutional resilience and vulnerability? Second, what are the cultural possibilities for organizational safety and learning? Third, can a theory of institutional vulnerability to disaster and crisis be translated into one of practical resilience? The paper explores these issues with reference to Barry Turner's seminal Man‐Made Disasters model of system vulnerability together with more recent extensions and critiques.Attempts to move from this framework to a theoretical characterization of the 'safe' organization are outlined, as is parallel research on high reliability organizations. Critique of this work in the debate over the limits to safety in complex organizations has focused in particular upon the political processes which corrupt possibilities for organizational learning. It is argued that such political problems, and in particular that of blame in organizations, ultimately require political solutions. Examples are given of solutions in aviation monitoring systems.

In the UK there has been a gradual transition in both the framing of flooding as a policy issue and the strategies employed to achieve policy objectives. This has involved a widely recognised shift from policies of 'flood defence' to 'flood risk management' (FRM), entailing both changes in approaches to FRM—such as greater advocacy of soft flood management approaches—and redistributions of responsibility—including more emphasis on the responsibilities of private citizens. In this paper, we utilise interviews with professionals working in flood risk (total participant n = 44) and discussion groups (participant n = 50) with public(s) that live in one of three UK cities which experienced major flooding in 2007 (Sheffield, Oxford, Gloucester) to examine some of the ways in which these policy transitions are being defined, negotiated, and contested. Drawing on governmentality theory, we reexamine contemporary shifts in FRM and open up discussion around the potential for emergent difficulties connected to the contemporary emphasis on relations of responsibility.

Historical and contemporary developments in feminist thinking on theory and method are considered. The critique of positivism is outlined, together with the affinity between feminist research and qualitative methods. Dilemmas are raised concerning: a false dualism between quantity and quality; ethical concerns; and writing in the personal. There are contradictory positions within the contemporary argument for methodological pluralism, such that it does not resolve tensions surrounding issues of women's experience and the warranting of interpretations. Epistemological debates involving feminism and post-modernism have created a changed intellectual landscape for reconsidering the link between qualitative research and standpoint theory. These raise issues of grounding, depth and evaluating knowledge by appeals to a notion of strong (or feminist) objectivity, together with the need to mitigate against appropriation of the `other'. Exemplars of qualitative feminist analysis are presented.