Risk

Question 1

First Modernity

Answer 1

An age of industrial progress where risks are calculable and knowledgeable

Transitioned to Late modernity around early 20th Century- a time when risk society began to emerge

Question 2

Late Modernity

Answer 2

Characterised by an increasing concern of the distribution of global risks in an uncertain world

Question 3

Beck

Answer 3

Risk is conceived as: Hazards or dangers with already destructive consequences OR potential dangers of the future

• First Modernity: Concerned with the distribution of wealth using a positive logic of acquisition
• Late Modernity: As living conditions improved distribution of wealth ceased to be the main area of concern, instead it moved to the distribution of risk, using a negative logic of disposition, denial, avoidance and reinterpretation

Question 4

Boomerang Effect

Answer 4

Those who produce/ profit from the risks of modernisation will eventually suffer from them

“Poverty is hierarchal, smog is democratic”

Question 5

Giddens

Answer 5

Risk society is a society that lives after 2 fundamental transformations:

1) The end of nature- human intervention on almost all aspects of the physical world
2) The end of tradition- Life is no longer lived as fate

Distinguishes between External and Manufactured risks:

• *External- refers to risks of first modernity that are calculable, largely predictable and insurable
• *Manufactured- are a characteristic of risk society. Refers mostly to incalculable and unknown risks of late modernity that are created by the progression of scientific technology.

Positive Risk Taking- Risk also has a positive connotation of risk-taking. In a society where tradition no longer tells people what to do, “people have to take more active and risk infused orientation to their relationships and involvements”

Question 6

Critcisms

Answer 6

*oversimplifying recent social developments
*overestimating the extent of social change
*but especially for arguing that we no longer live in a class society but in a society where inequalities became individualised and difficult to generalise into class positions
*Risk society thesis has been criticised for underestimating the significance of class in explaining differences in people’s experience of risks
*Risk society theory has also been criticised for presenting individuals as equally concerned by risk
And for ignoring the role of class in affecting the ways in which people can cope with risks
*focusing too much on technological and ecological risks at the expense of class specific risks such as unemployment and poverty
*ignoring the fact that class society inspired individualisation through market-based competition

Question 7

Relevance to Social Policy

Answer 7

The relevance of risk society thesis to social policy depends on whether we accept Beck’s and Giddens’ descriptions of contemporary society.
When tested empirically, certain aspects of this thesis, esp. claims about class society, become questionable…
risk society may thus exists as an idea but appears to have little basis in reality.