Notes: Risk Society by Ulrich Beck

Writing against the backdrop of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, Ulrich Beck first published Risikogesellschaft in Germany in 1986.

The book’s English translation, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, by Ulrich Beck, was released in 1992. The book is centred around two concepts: the notion of “reflexive modernisation” and “the issue of risk” (Beck 1992, 4).

Risks are defined as the probability of harm and not the harm itself. It is the probability that matters. Since the risk is seen as the “scientific realism” that needs to be studied in laboratories by scientists with their naïve understanding of the lived realities, it has been primarily left to the scientific community to define agendas and impose risk-aversive discourses.

However, Beck’s reflexive modernisation attempts to dispute this classification—risk as something professionals can handle. Beck seeks to bridge the gap between the public and the scientific community to address risk in this work.

He describes reflexive modernisation as “accommodating” the innate propensity for “tension between human indeterminacy” and the modernist leaning for “objectification and naturalisation of the institutional and cultural production” (Beck 1992: 5). It is the human’s ability to reflect upon their past experiences and knowledge to deal with the challenges posed by the future.

For Ulrich Beck, a risk society is “a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernisation itself” (Beck 1992: 13). Anthony Giddens, a fellow sociologist and a contemporary of Ulrich Beck, wrote that a risk society is “a society increasingly preoccupied with the future, which generates the notion of risk” (Pierson and Giddens 1998).

Harriot Bulckeley has noted, “In a risk society, risks arise not from a lack of modernity, as hazards associated with poverty and underdevelopment might be conceived, but rather as the side-effects of modernisation” (Bulkeley 2001: 432). Therefore, for Beck, society needs to work together and become “risk aware” to tackle the challenges posed by modernisation—more generally, by globalisation.

These risks include climate change, health pandemics, natural calamities, technological dangers, and the use and abuse of nuclear energy, chemical plants, and processed food supplies.

Premodern societies ascribed such hazards to God or divine force, whereas, in today’s world, we consider such disturbances in nature as a scientific phenomenon with a particular cause and effect. In this regard, Beck cautions us that humanity must either “cooperate or fail”. Beck argues that we must shed our distinctions of “us” and “them”, as the global risks require “enforced cosmopolitanization”.

Since global issues affect people worldwide, Beck’s imperative is either “cooperate or fail”. In his book World At Risk, Beck notes that we must stage the reality to think of risk as an “anticipated catastrophe” that needs real solutions (Beck 2009). Beck notes that “globalisation; individualisation; gender revolution; underemployment; and global risks (e.g., ecological crisis and the crash of global financial markets)” are the products of modern society, which have placed individuals at more significant exposure to risk (Jarvis 2007). Beck writes,

A fate of endangerment has arisen in modernity, a counter-modernity that transcends all our concepts of space, time, and social differentiation. What yesterday was still far away will be found today and, in the future, at the front door.

(Tooze 2020)

As an offshoot of modernity, globalisation aims to unite people globally while obliterating nation-states’ geopolitical borders and fostering greater interstate collaboration. Since the late 1980s, globalisation has increased economic output and made it easier for people to move around the world. The process of globalisation brings several challenges of its own.

It increases inequality between the affluent and the weak, climate change, pollution, technological inequalities, and massive unemployment. The widespread industrialisation and mechanisation of social life have brought newer risks unknown to humankind. These risks are global, not limited to a specific social cluster, like a nation-state.

For instance, increased globalisation also results in climate change and global warming. The impact of climate change is felt in our everyday lives in the form of natural disasters, infections, rising sea levels, melting of glaciers, etc., irrespective of where we live across the globe.

To tackle such risks, the world must come together to face them. These risks are dealt with at the global level by global cooperation. At the international level, these challenges create a risk society in the form of conventions on climate change, among other things. In the cosmopolitan view, societies—and their members—come together to deal with such challenges, forming risky societies.

We are by-products of globalisation. It has created an interdependent system among nation-states. It can be argued that a risky society is both an offshoot of globalisation and challenges the risks that globalisation brings to the fore. In this context, we can propose that COVID-19 has caused the formation of a risk society in dealing with the risk the health pandemic posed.

References:

1. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Theory, Culture & Society. London ; Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications.
2. ———. 2006. “Living in the World Risk Society: A Hobhouse Memorial Public Lecture given on Wednesday 15 February 2006 at the London School of Economics.” Economy and Society 35 (3): 329–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140600844902.
3. ———. 2009. “Critical Theory of World Risk Society: A Cosmopolitan Vision.” Constellations 16 (1): 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2009.00534.x.
4. Bulkeley, Harriet. 2001. “Governing Climate Change: The Politics of Risk Society?” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26 (4): 430–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5661.00033.
5. Jarvis, Darryl S.L. 2007. “Risk, Globalisation and the State: A Critical Appraisal of Ulrich Beck and the World Risk Society Thesis.” Global Society 21 (1): 23–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600820601116468.
6. Tooze, Adam. 2020. “The Sociologist Who Could Save Us From Coronavirus.” Foreign Policy (blog). August 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/01/the-sociologist-who-could-save-us-from-coronavirus/.

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