Risk society and Current Sociology

http://csi.sagepub.com/ Current Sociology http://csi.sagepub.com/content/60/4/1.3 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0011392112447706 2012 60: 1Current Sociology Seantel Anaïs and Sean P Hier Current SociologyRisk society and Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: International Sociological Association can be found at:Current SociologyAdditional services and information for http://csi.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts: http://csi.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: What is This? - Jul 12, 2012Version of Record >> at UNIV OF BRAZIL on April 28, 2014csi.sagepub.comDownloaded from at UNIV OF BRAZIL on April 28, 2014csi.sagepub.comDownloaded from Current Sociology 1 –3 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0011392112447706 csi.sagepub.com CS Risk society and Current Sociology Seantel Anaïs and Sean P Hier University of Victoria, Australia Articles selected Ekberg M, The parameters of the risk society: A review and exploration. Current Sociology, May 2007; 55(3): 343–366. Jensen M and Blok A, Pesticides in the risk society: The view from everyday life. Current Sociology, September 2008; 56(5): 757–778. Laraña E, Reflexivity, risk and collective action over waste management: A constructive proposal. Current Sociology, January 2001; 49(1): 23–48. Mythen G, Reappraising the risk society thesis: Telescopic sight or myopic vision? Current Sociology, November 2007; 55(6): 793–813. In the early 1990s, Ulrich Beck’s theory of the risk society became a sociological force to reckon with. Beck argues that industrial modernity’s rule-enforcing logic of prediction, intervention and control is being undermined by the realization that indus- trially produced risks (be they environmental, chemical, or political in nature) are not only human-made but also uncontrollable and global in reach. With the growing reali- zation that manufactured risks are unknowable (and thereby uninsurable), the indus- trial modernization process is becoming an issue and problem for itself. The latter produces a reflexive, rule-altering (rather than enforcing) orientation to human exist- ence that is at once global and experiential in scope. As the once-latent side effects of first modernity unleash their destruction, industrial modern sensibilities (conditioned by class, gender, nationalism, etc.) are being replaced by new collective cosmopolitan identities articulated in a global public sphere. These shifting modern sensibilities and collective identities are a testament to the contributing role of a risk ethos in present social formations. The risk society thesis offers a viable counter-narrative to existing sociological accounts of modernity in light of the increasing realization that the line- arity of progress can no longer be verified and that the promise of democracy remains largely unkept. 447706 CSI0010.1177/0011392112447706Anaïs and HierCurrent Sociology 2012 Guest editorial at UNIV OF BRAZIL on April 28, 2014csi.sagepub.comDownloaded from 2 Current Sociology If nothing else, Beck demonstrates the courage and the tenacity to reset the terms of reference for the sociological imagination. Beck’s concept of ‘reflexive modernity’ cap- tures – among other things – a shift towards increasingly adaptable individualized approaches to the insecurities and vulnerabilities that characterize risk society. By theo- rizing simultaneous transformations in the structural and experiential economy of the world risk society, he aims to explain how individuals increasingly seek biographical remedies to systemic contradictions. The superlative explanatory aims of Beck’s metatheory notwithstanding, reaction to the risk society theory has varied from the time it was introduced into English-speaking sociology to the present. The risk society thesis has been debated and revised in the pages of Current Sociology over the past decade. At least a dozen papers have analytically engaged with Beck’s ideas about risk, industrialism, modernity, individualization, globalization, cosmopolitanism, subpolitics and reflexivity. We revisit four of these papers in this special 60th anniversary issue to demonstrate how the risk society thesis has contributed to sociological debates in the new millennium. Despite their differences, and irrespective of the particular cri- tiques they offer, the pieces we selected are a testament to the power of the risk society thesis to guide sociological enquiry as it moves forward into the 21st century. Moreover, these articles draw attention to at least five ongoing debates being staged in current sociological discourse. First, each paper contributes to understandings of risk society by opening up impor- tant questions for research and enjoining readers to reflect upon and ask questions about current social formations. Together, the papers offer insight into how sociologists might account for shifts in the ways that risk is managed, governed, evaluated and negotiated as the conceptual coordinates of first modernity increasingly fail to account for our shared social experience. Second, the papers in this issue attempt to negotiate what Van Loon (2000) calls the ‘science and technology paradox’ (i.e. the idea that the scientific bodies most capable of identifying and measuring risk are increasingly delegitimized by their radical failure to address catastrophic risks). Ekberg’s review of the risk society thesis, for instance, addresses the science and technology paradox by offering a model that distinguishes six parameters of the risk society. Mythen interrogates the macroscopic and largely theoreti- cal focus of the risk society thesis by engaging with ‘micropolitics’, ‘new terrorism’ and ‘guilty pleasures’ as important sites of analysis. In a similar vein, Jensen and Blok’s empirical study of risk perceptions concerning pesticides addresses the paradox by assessing how people act and react to risk-based claims-making activities. Finally, Laraña addresses the science and technology paradox in terms of debates concerning the incineration of waste in Spain. Third, each paper attempts to mend a critical disjuncture in the literature on risk by addressing tensions between realist and social constructivist epistemologies of risk. The papers collectively offer empirical contributions to risk, resisting the temptation to search for empirical falsehoods in scholarship that is fundamentally theoretical. It may be an empirical falsehood that technologically induced hazards are inaccessible to the human senses or that anthropogenic risks are uninsurable. Stephen Collier (2008), for instance, contends that insurers do offer catastrophe coverage and that terrorism is now an insurable risk. Nevertheless, none of the authors claims that risk society theory is at UNIV OF BRAZIL on April 28, 2014csi.sagepub.comDownloaded from Anaïs and Hier 3 anti-empiricist or unsuitable for situated empirical testing. To the contrary, each author offers an important contribution to the risk society’s empirical foundation. Fourth, each paper advances important critiques without arguing for a wholesale dis- missal by recognizing that critical efforts are a testament to the important theoretical contributions of risk society theory. By recognizing the importance of Beck’s work to 21st-century sociology and its influence on a number of cognate fields (criminology, political science and anthropology, to name a few), the papers pose critical questions about how our scholarly community might engage in conversation rather than argumen- tation about the value of risk society thinking. Fifth, and most importantly in our view, this selection of papers locates risk society as a historical moment of great importance to 21st-century social theory by offering situ- ated analyses of the social, scientific and political forces that animate the human condi- tion. Ultimately, our aim in choosing these pieces for the special 60th anniversary issue of Current Sociology is to demonstrate how Beck’s contribution to 20th-century sociol- ogy has been adapted to confront 21st-century realities. References Collier S (2008) Enacting catastrophe: Preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization. Economy and Society 37(2): 224–250. Van Loon J (2000) Virtual risks in an age of cybernetic reproduction. In: Adam B, Beck U and Van Loon J (eds) The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory. London: Sage. at UNIV OF BRAZIL on April 28, 2014csi.sagepub.comDownloaded from