risk society

is a knowledge society because scientific knowledge and technologies are sources of major risks and the primary basis of security efforts aimed at controlling such risks.

also a producer of new risks. The risk society is a knowledge society because scientific knowledge and technologies are sources of major risks and the primary basis of security efforts aimed at controlling such risks. That is, science is now called on not only to scientize nature, people, and their institutions, but also its own effects (Stehr and Ericson 1992).

is a new social form not merely as a society which is preoccupied with risk avoidance and control, but as one which 'increasingly governs its problems in terms of discourses and technologies of risk.

The 'risk society' thesis defines the new social form not merely as a society which is preoccupied with risk avoidance and control, but as one which 'increasingly governs its problems in terms of discourses and technologies of risk. (O*Malley, 1998: xi).

is a new stage of modernity that 'frees itself from the contours of the industrial society.

Freeing itself from the contours of the classical industrail society and forging a new form-- the (industrial) 'risk society'' (Beck 1992:9).

is a set of paradoxes: Dis/trust, goods/bads, risk/opportunity.

is a society in which ontological security is threatened doubly: First, insofar as, in modern life, pervasive exposure to risks threaten our sense of the continuity and stability of our lives... and, second, in that in modern societies the social networks of human life have been eroded.

Beck argues that modern society, through the use of scientific technologies, has created large-scale social and environmental risks that cannot be understood without scientific expertise. For him, the risk society is one in which ontological security is threatened in two different ways: first, modern life means pervasive exposure to risks that threaten our sense of the continuity and stability of our lives... and, second, in modern societies the social networks of human life have been eroded. For community members in Bygdaby in 2000-2001, both these threats to ontological security were visible concerns.

is a society in which the unintended consequences of the hidden (yet pervasive) hazards of overproduction have become a dominant force.

Beck goes so far as to argue that although the pervasive hazards of overproduction frequently escape observation, their unintended consequences have become a dominant force in history and society (Draper 1993:641)

is a society where we increasingly live on a high technological frontier which absolutely no one completely understands and which generates a diversity of possible futures.

a risk society is a society where we increasingly live on a high technological frontier which absolutely no one completely understands and which generates a diversity of possible futures'

is about control such that mastery substitutes for morality.

Mastery, in other words, substitutes for morality... to be able to control one's life circumstances, colonise the future with some degree of success and live within the parameters of internally referential systems can, in many circumstances, allow the social and natural framework of things to seem a secure grounding for life activities. Even therapy, as the exemplary form of the reflexive project of the self, can become a phenomenon of control an internally referential system in itself'

risk society, n.Definitions

risk society