relations of definition

is a term that is analogous to marx's relations of production. It highlights how risks are brought into being by the very rules, institutions, and capacities that identify, define, and manage risk.

The concept of 'relations of definition' (Beck claims to introduce the concept, analogous to Marx's relations of production) essentially says that risks are produced by all the specific rules, institutions, and capacities that structure the identification and assessment of risk in a specific sociocultural context. They are brought into being within the legal, epistemological, and cultural power matrix in which risk politics is conducted (Beck 1999: 149). Therefore Beck understands risks or hazards as 'man-made hybrids' (1999: 146) or' 'quasi-subjects, whose acting-active quality is produced by risk societies' institutional contradictions' (1999: 150). For example, it was not the risk of BSE itself which brought the political crisis to Britain, but the institutional and political understanding, construction, or denial of possible harm which caused the crisis of its institutions later on, when BSE spread and the possibility of a link to the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease became known. This said, BSE was produced by a specific mode of industrialized production of beef, which enables the illness to spread uncontrolled in the first place. But BSE's explosive character for the institutions involved was caused precisely by the institutional framework which failed to manage BSE properly. (zinn 2008: 26)

relations of definition, n.Definitions

relations of definition