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Lecture 1The Parameters of the Risk Society: A Review and Exploration
Merryn Ekberg
Abstract
This article offers a review and exploration of the parameters of the risk society. The primary focus is on the
theoretical works of German sociologist Ulrich Beck and British sociologist Anthony Giddens, and in particular,
their claim that we are living in a second, reflexive age of modernity, or risk society, characterized by an
omnipresence of low probability–high consequence technological risks. The article concludes that the theorists
of the risk society succeed in their goal of raising important questions for reflection and for future research. The
risk society thesis succeeds in describing the emergence of a risk ethos, the development of a collective risk
identity and the formation of communities united by an increasing vulnerability to risk. It draws attention to how
the essentialist nature of risk has been transformed and how the origins and impact of risk have been reassessed.
The theory points to a reconfiguration in the way risk is identified, evaluated, communicated and governed. The
risk society expands the traditional concept of risk understood as the sum of the probability of an adverse event
and the magnitude of the consequences, to include the subjective perception of risk, the intersubjective
communication of risk and the social experience of living in a risk environment. Finally, the theorists of the risk
society succeed in iterating that it is not just health and the environment that are at risk, but in addition, the
fundamental socio-political values of liberty, equality, justice, rights and democracy are now at risk.
Theory of the risk society
• Encompasses a new social ontology of the social in the era of uncertainties and crises.
• The ethos of wealth creation that characterized industrial modernity has been overshadowed by an ethos
of risk avoidance, class consciousness has been displaced by a risk consciousness and the increased
awareness of living in an environment of risk, uncertainty and insecurity has become a major catalyst
for social transformation.
The parameters of risk
Beginning with the omnipresence of risk and travelling in a clockwise direction, each parameter adds to the
previous one, ultimately culminating in the final parameter, the politics of risk. In the politics of risk, risk is a
function of power and a catalyst for social transformation.
Six parameters of risk society
1. The omnipresence of risk: emergence of a collective risk consciousness. Omnipresent means the
quality of being everywhere.
2. Different understandings of risk: includes the shift in emphasis of risks.
3. The proliferation of risk definitions: create
obstacles to effective risk communication.
Proliferation means a rapid increase in the number
or amount of something.
4. The reflexive orientation to risk: reflexivity as an
individual and institutional response to risk issues
and risk events.
5. Risk and trust: the inverse relationship between
risk and trust, which examines the paradox of why
science and technology have become ever more
pervasive in modern society.
6. The politics of risk: links risk with power and
knowledge and with the political values of liberty,
equality, justice, rights and democracy.
,Parameter 1: The omnipresence of risk
• Collective risk consciousness, risks are everywhere.
• A general consensus of vulnerability has emerged in reflexive modernity and this shared sense of
insecurity has given rise to the new ethos of a risk culture.
• Relationship between media consumption and risk awareness (e.g., covid, priming effects).
• Reflexive modernity: is primarily defined by an increase in the awareness of risk, uncertainty,
contingency and insecurity and by an increase in attempts to colonize and control the near and distant
future.
• Technological imperative: a belief that if something can be done it should and will be done.
• Industrial modernity: characterized by the safety, security, predictability and permanence of inherited
traditions.
• Scientization of society: it testifies to the manufacturability of life.
Parameter 2: Different understandings of risk
• Premodernity, primary modernity, reflexive modernity and postmodernity are each characterized by
different attitudes towards risk and uncertainty.
• The shift in emphasis from natural to technological risks.
• The shift from a realist to social constructivist perspective on risk.
• The increasing gap between actual and perceived risk.
• Reflexive modernity or the ‘risk society’ is unique because of the emergence of a different attitude
towards risk.
• The risk society is characterized by an all-pervasive awareness that the most threatening and self-
endangering risks are the real or putative risks emerging from recent advances in nuclear, chemical and
biomedical technologies.
• Scientization of nature: change in emphasis from natural to technological risks, and the gradual
erosion of the boundary separating natural and technological risks.
• Fatalistic premodernity: uncertainty was accepted and risk was attributed to supernatural powers.
There was no risk awareness.
• First age of modernity: actual risk and belief in linear progress.
• Second / reflexive age of modernity: intersubjective communication about risks, social experience of
living in a risk society, subjective perception of risk.
• Perceptions of risk may be influenced by cognitive illusions and heuristics such as an availability bias
or optimistic bias.
Parameter 3: The proliferation of risk definitions
• Different understandings of the origins and impact of risk have led to a proliferation of contested,
competing or conflicting risk definitions.
• The risk society is not only characterized by uncertainty about the intensity, severity and reality of risk,
but also by uncertainty about the elusive concept of risk itself.
• Risks that can in principle be brought under control, and dangers that have escaped or neutralized the
control requirements of industrial society.
• If a private insurance company offers indemnity (NL = vergoeding), then a risk is a risk, but if private
insurance is denied, a risk is a threat
• Risk isn’t the same as hazard or danger. Risk refers to hazards that are actively assessed in relation to
future possibilities.
• Risk: the likelihood of an unpleasant occurrence.
• Hazard: the circumstance that may lead to that occurrence.
,Parameter 4: The reflexive orientation of risk
• Reflexivity: the constant appropriation of new knowledge as the basis for social organization and self-
identity. A process of continuous monitoring and surveillance, and of making adjustments as new
information and revised knowledge become available.
• Bauman has described similar patterns of contemporary social relations under the title of ‘liquid
modernity’.
• When the future is unknown, the best preparation is flexibility. Flexibility allows adjustments to be
made as new knowledge is acquired and interpreted.
• Reflexivity is the process through which both individuals and institutions manage their risk
environments, and it is the response to the collapse of trust in the certainty or permanence of
knowledge.
• All knowledge is contingent on power in the post-traditional society, therefore all knowledge is
temporary, incomplete and contested.
• One of the ironies of the risk society is that rather than reducing uncertainty, the expansion of scientific
knowledge has succeeded in generating greater uncertainty.
• Unawareness is the antithesis of knowledge, it refers to our ignorance or the gaps in our knowledge.
Parameter 5: Risk and trust
• In an environment of high trust, risk is low, and in an environment of low trust, risk is high.
• Trust is a substitute for knowledge and adaptive response to uncertain futures and incalculable risks.
• Two forms of trust
o Facework commitment: the trust in systems, trust is embedded in kinship, local community,
religion, custom and tradition in traditional society, providing individuals with a sense of
ontological security, shared identity and group belonging.
o Faceless commitment: predominates in the post traditional society or reflexive modernity. It
is our trust in society’s symbolic (e.g., money) tokens and experts systems that gives rise to
faceless commitments.
• Our increasing dependence on trust in expert systems as a strategy for managing and reducing risk has
produced its opposite in anxiety and doubt.
Parameter 6: The politics of risk
• Includes the risk to our fundamental political ideals of liberty, equality, justice, rights and democracy.
• The formation of local and global interest groups oriented around risk issues and the development of
policies oriented towards the prevention or resolution of risk conflicts.
• Shift from class politics to ecological politics / shift from emancipatory politics to life politics:
reflexive modernity is dominated by issues oriented towards promoting a better quality of life, reducing
risks to health and the environment, assessing the impact of emerging technologies on society and
ensuring the safety, security and survival of life on earth.
• Reflexive modernization: the age of uncertainty and ambivalence, which combines the constant threat
of disasters on an entirely new scale with the possibility and necessity to reinvent our political
institutions and invent new ways of conducting politics at social “sites” that we previously considered
unpolitical.
• Democratic monarchy: citizens exercise their democratic rights in the act of voting for a political
leader, but then surrender their social, civil and constitutional rights and become invisible and silent
subjects of the state (in classical modernity).
• Authoritarian-modernity: a concentration of decision-making power.
• Beck’s solution to overcome the authoritarian technocracy of reflexive modernity is to facilitate a
democratization of science. He recommends a division of decision-making power between the
producers of science (scientists) and the consumers of science (citizens).
, Critique of risk society
• Beck is overly optimistic in assuming that pre-risk society risks have disappeared.
• Beck is inconsistent, or undecided, on whether exposure to risk in the risk society is egalitarian (=
believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and
opportunities) or hierarchical (= arranged in order of rank).
• Scott, who argues that what Beck characterizes as the ‘risk society’ may be more appropriately labelled
the ‘risk-averse society’ or ‘angst society’.
• Where everything turns into a hazard, somehow nothing is dangerous anymore.
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