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The intangibility of risks and victimization mean that all knowledge is contestable and dependent upon interpretation. According to Adam and van Loon (2000), the ontology of risk does not favour one form of knowledge over another. In practice, however, expert knowledge concerning risks has dominated public perceptions, but how this translates into influencing lay perceptions of risk is not well understood. As the exponents of the governmentality approach emphasize, since the sixteenth century, there has been a birthing of a huge network of expert knowledges, “accompanied by apparatuses and institutions build around the construction, reproduction, dissemination and practice of these knowledges” (Lupton, 1999b: 4). Foucault's theory of biopower, as highlighted above, is based on harnessing expert knowledge, such as medical expertise, to construct discourses around risk, prevention and management. The rise of neo- liberalism has inculcated a shift in self-regulation based on these authoritative expert discourses.

Picking up on Foucault's thesis, Blais (2006) argues that intuitive local knowledge has become irrelevant, relegated to a lesser status as the promotion of expert knowledge has become the authority.

Chez Foucault, les savoirs profanes, ordinaires, sont des "savoirs locaux" qui ont été "ensablés", "ensevelis"; cela de deux façons. Ensablés parce que ce sont, d'une part, des savoirs assujettis, disqualifiés par la hiérarchie des connaissances et des sciences: "toute une série de savoirs qui se trouvaient disqualifiés comme savoirs non conceptuels, comme savoirs insuffisamment élaborés: savoir naifs, savoirs hiérarchiquement inférieurs, savoirs en dessous du niveau de la connaissance ou de la scientificité requise" (Foucault 1997 in Blais, 2006: 156).

The supremacy of expert knowledge and the subjugation of lay knowledge have become hallmarks of the modern society. According to Boyne (2003), “experts are recognized for their specialized knowledge and skills, and the ability to apply them in establishing processes or in solving problems within them” (82), and are intimately tied to the processes of modernity. Giddens (1991) argues

expert systems bracket time and space through deploying modes of technical knowledge which have validity independent of the practitioners and clients who make use of them. Such systems penetrate virtually all aspects of social life in conditions of modernity – in respect of the food we eat, the medicines we take, the buildings we inhabit, the forms of transport we use and a multiplicity of other phenomena. Expert systems are not confined to areas of technological expertise. They extend to social relations themselves and to the intimacies of the self. The doctor, counsellor and therapist are as central to the expert systems of modernity, as the scientist, technician or engineer (18).

one of the most important, but least recognized implications of Foucault's discussion of biopolitics is that it involves the radical claim that the desire to ground truth in rational forms of knowledge (law, medicine, social science, etc.) results in extending the normative power of knowledge in such a way as to produce the paradox that each step towards advancing the health of populations at the same time empowers and expands the institutional mechanisms of control (3).

Thus, the supremacy of expert knowledge is upheld and reinforced because of this assumption that the knowledge is value-free, thus indisputable. However, expert opinions are not neutral, apolitical, nor only rationally-based devoid of context or moral underpinnings. Some have argued that expert discourses are heavily based on moral regulation.

Moral regulation... takes the following general form that employs discourses which have a common structure. Moral discourses link a moralized subject with some moralized object or practice in such a way as to impute some wider socially harmful consequences unless both subject and practices are subjected to appropriate regulation. Moral regulation involves 'moralization' rather than 'morality,' and this is relational (whether to others or to the self) in asserting some generalized sense of the wrongness of some conduct, habit or disposition (Hunt, 1999: 280).

Risk epistemologies are inevitably mediated through social, cultural, and political frameworks of understanding and motivations as are lay risk knowledges. However, by framing risk discourses in a seemingly neutral and apolitical manner it gives the illusion of fact-based evidence that cannot be countered, and the "expert knows best" approach is maintained. Tulloch and Lupton (2003) argue that all risk epistemologies are socially constructed, including those of ‘experts’:

Rather than drawing a distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ (or ‘accurate’ and ‘biased’) risk assessments, we prefer to concentrate on the meanings that are imputed to risk and how these meanings operate as part of people’s notions of subjectivity and their social relations (12).

Risk society theorists content that as nature becomes industrialized and traditions become less sacred and optional, new types of uncertainties - manufactured uncertainties – arise (Beck, 2000). These ‘manufactured uncertainties’ “presume a threefold participation of scientific experts, in the roles as producers, analysts and profiteers from risk definitions” (Beck, 2000: 216). Lupton (1999a) argues that it is rarely lay people who play a major role in the construction of risk objects at the level of public debate.

Rather, ‘expert’ knowledges – particularly those emerging from science, medicine, the ‘psy’ disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, counselling), social work, the law and economics – are embedded within organizational contexts and often mediated through the mass media, are central to the construction and publicizing of risk (Lupton, 1999a: 32).

Similarly, research on victimization and deviancy has been founded on the observations, categorizations, and findings of ‘experts’. Moreover, Wynne (1996) argues that the ‘experts’ from the risk society theorists have typically not acknowledged the situated and localized nature of their risk assessment and analyses, instead they have portrayed their results as objective universal truths devoid of any social or cultural context. As Lupton (1999a) so neatly sums up:

If a ‘risk’ is understood as a product of perception and cultural understanding, then to draw a distinction between ‘real’ risks (as measured and identified by ‘experts’) and ‘false’ risks (as perceived by members of the public) is irrelevant. Both perspectives are ways in which these understandings are constructed and acted upon that is considered important, not the extent to which one perspective may be considered to be more ‘accurate’ or less ‘biased’ than the other, for this distinction is also considered to be irrelevant (33).

Similar to ideas expounded in the risk society of the apocalyptical nature of risk, Joffe (1999) argues that precisely because so many contemporary dangers cannot be seen, smelt, tasted, or touched, there is a heightened level of anxiety. In this sense, because people cannot rely on sensory information to detect them, risks may lurk everywhere and can only truly be identified by experts.

Only the experts can recognize them…The combination of a high level of awareness of risk, and a lack of trust in the experts who might be relied upon for protection, creates an era of uncertainty and unease… One of the ways in which contemporary societies have tried to seize control over these circumstances is by making every attempt to calculate and to regulate dangers. Risks are represented as if they are systematically caused, statistically describable and, consequently, somewhat predictable (Joffe, 1999: 3).

By relying on expert knowledge to try and assess, regulate and minimize risks, through insurance and surveillance systems, an attempt is made to ‘colonize the future’ (Giddens, 1991). “Under conditions of modernity, the future is continually drawn into the present by means of the reflexive organization of knowledge environments” (Giddens, 1991: 3). However, this assertion may not be as evident for a disenfranchised group as homeless youth who, in their marginalized existences, may not be as inundated by expert agendas and knowledges as mainstream society. It is well documented that homeless youth do not typically reach out for help (Novac et al., 2009a; Gaetz, 2004; Karabanow, 2004; Kurtz et al., 2000) and frequently do not heed professional advice (Haldenby et al., 2007).

By examining lay people’s understanding of risk in their everyday lives we can begin to detach from these expert agendas, and witness the organic richness of context, individuality, history,

locality, and the dynamic nature of risk knowledges. Lay people generate their own ideas and do not only respond to expert agendas, and this is particularly true for homeless youth who rely on peer support and informal networks and are not as engaged in mainstream society (conceptualized for our purposes here as the Self). In this light, it could be hypothesized that they are not as governed by Foucault's totalitarian ideology of self-regulation, as they are not in line with the norm. Acknowledging a more diminutive view of the influence of expert systems Furedi (2006) attests that “peer pressure is a far more powerful influence on individual behaviour than the workings of formal institutions” (7). However, peer influences are rarely discussed in these social theories of risk. There is an assumption that expert knowledges are paramount to individual’s understandings of risk. The idea that there is a plurality of risk knowledges and that there is not one monolithic public reaction to risk manufacturing necessitates further investigation. One of the major contributions of this study is that it examined the plurality of risk knowledges and uncovered that individual responses to risk shifted over time, were often based on intuition and experience, and were not significantly impacted by expert apparatuses as risk theorists have pontificated. One of the cultural transformations that is engendered by the construction of these expert apparatuses is the manifestation of an emphasis on the individualization or privatization of risk. With the increase of individualism in Western society there has been a prominence of personal accountability in managing risk. Again, another rationale for this study was to examine how a disenfranchised group such as homeless youth, who tend to live more collectively, respond to these notions of individualism and competition, by examining their responses to risk and responsibilization.