The Rise of Risk

The Rise of Risk

Description

Anthony Giddens likes to begin public lectures by posing some version of the following question: ‘What do the following have in common? Mad cow disease; the troubles at Lloyd's Insurance; the Nick Leeson affair; genetically modified crops; global warming; the notion that red wine is good for you; anxieties about declining sperm counts’. The answer, of course, is that they are all about ‘risk’ and how it has come to permeate our lives and our politics. Each item on Giddens's list illustrates the impact of science and technology on our daily lives and material environment. Each one reflects the new tensions and ambivalence of our relationship to scientific expertise. Each one is an exemplar of what Giddens and Beck mean when they talk of ‘the risk society’ and claim that risk is a defining characteristic of the world in which we live. I would like to start this chapter by posing a somewhat different question. ‘What do the following have in common? (a) the social theories of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens; (b) Peter Bernstein's worldwide best-seller, Against the Gods; (c) the cultural anthropology of Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky; (d) the Foucauldian analyses of power produced by Francois Ewald and Robert Castel; (e) the historical studies of tort and legal regulation of George Priest and Theodore Lowi; (f) the law and economics analyses of Guido Calabresi and Mark Geistfeld; (g) the normative jurisprudence of Steven Perry and Jules Coleman; (h) the welfare state studies of Peter Baldwin and Pierre Rosanvallon; (i) the prediction studies of John Monaghan and Peter Greenwood; (j) the “prospect theory” developed by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky; (k) recent work in the sociology of insurance, of accounting, of governance, and of social control; (1) all of the chapters contained in this volume.’ The short answer to my question is that they have nothing much in common. Each group of authors on this list is engaged with a separate set of questions and forms of inquiry. Each has its own research agenda, its own disciplinary affiliation, and its own distinctive object of analysis. The list could be a page from Borges's Chinese encyclopedia, with no obvious theme linking its oddly disparate items. Except, of course, that all the authors listed here write about something called ‘risk.’ I am struck by the fact that what is sometimes referred to as ‘the risk literature’ is in fact several distinct literatures, involving different projects, different forms of inquiry, and different conceptions of their subject matter, all linked tenuously together by a tantalizing, four-letter word that has, out of nowhere, come to stand centre stage in contemporary politics and social theory. The convergence of these various works on the concept of risk, in spite of their theoretical and disciplinary diversity, reinforces my impression that, suddenly, everyone seems to be talking about risk. If Raymond Williams were still alive and minded to update his classic account of the culture's Keywords (1983), the word ‘risk’ would be at the top of his list for new inclusions. The idea of risk has come to appear indispensable for understanding our times. As Giddens puts it, 'this apparently simple notion unlocks some of the most basic characteristics of the world in which we now live.' Yet only ten or fifteen years ago, ‘risk’ had barely a marginal place in the vocabularies of social thought or cultural commentary and was rarely discussed outside of scientific journals and managerial reports. Today's accounts of risk are remarkable for their multiplicity and for the variety of senses they give to the term. Risk is a calculation. Risk is a commodity. Risk is a capital. Risk is a technique of government. Risk is objective and scientifically knowable. Risk is subjective and socially constructed. Risk is a problem, a threat, a source of insecurity. Risk is a pleasure, a thrill, a source of profit and freedom. Risk is the means whereby we colonize and control the future. ‘Risk society’ is our late modern world spinning out of control. Whatever one makes of these claims, it seems clear that risk and its management have outgrown the domain of the technical specialists and are becoming increasingly pervasive features of the contemporary world. Risk continues to be a major focus of scientific, economic, and managerial concern, but it has also become the subject of a whole variety of cultural, historical, and political inquiries, as well as a prominent theme of the social theories we generate to interpret our world. In this chapter I aim to do three things: (i) clarify the terms of discussion; (ii) speculate about why so many intellectual and political currents nowadays converge around the idea of risk; and (iii) discuss the most influential account of the place of ‘risk’ in modern society—Ulrich Beck's ‘risk society’ thesis.

Source Publication

Risk and Morality

Source Editors/Authors

Richard V. Ericson, Aaron Doyle

Publication Date

2003

The Rise of Risk

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