The Risk Society Revisited: Social Theory and Risk Governance

Conclusion: Risk Governance as a Catalyst for Social Theory and Praxis

Conclusion Risk Governance as a Catalyst for Social Theory and Praxis The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what no one thought about that which everyone sees. — Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will and Representation (1818) T he reality that risk has always been and will continue forever to be a universal feature of the human condition is nearly unassailable. From threats by saber-toothed tigers to global warming, there is deep uncertainty about the things that humans value. The world of advanced modernity has elevated risk to a position at the core of that condition. The pace of risk creation , the magnitude of potential consequences, and their spread distinguish the present era from all predecessors. Globalization has served to interconnect societies via a common concern with risk and by creating new suites of systemic risk. Risk holds a central presence in this era of advanced modernity, and its ubiquity is evident with widespread concern about a range of hazards, from the dramatic (terrorist attacks) and the complex (nuclear power) to the simple and rapidly expanding (cellular telephones). Social theory can promise not only to describe and explain fundamental social processes producing risks such as these, but also to outline the consequential dislocations and paradoxes they engender. At the same time, theory can point to potential solutions or acceptable procedures that can help societies govern risks in both the short term and the long term and develop a critical momentum that creates the resources and processes for taking collective actions necessary to create better living conditions and opportunities for all. In this book, we leaned on the thinking of key European scholars to describe the contours—and increase our understanding—of this world risk soci­ ety. A primary aim of this book was to capture the essence of their writings, 196 Conclusion critically evaluate their logic and theoretical implications, and identify key gaps that need to be filled. We distilled and summarized the works of Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Niklas Luhmann, and Jürgen Habermas and attempted to work through the logic of their theories as they bear on risk. There are clearly a number of key differences in the theoretical frames of Beck, Giddens, and Luhmann, and there is little doubt that the fundaments distinguishing the separate frames are worthy of explication and critique. But the frames are also replete with similarities that can inform the risk governance challenges of advanced modernity. These similarities are found in their common foundation for describing the current era as a categorical break with the past, in their situating of risk as the pivotal feature of this era of advanced modernity, and in their suggestions for institutional reforms to govern societal risks more effectively. The common foundation describing advanced modernity itself emerges with the complementary answers that the separate theoretical frames give to the three crucial questions that guided our treatment of risk in Part II: 1. What social order emerges in advanced modern societies where technological and ecological risks are virtually everywhere? 2. What is our knowledge about these risks? 3. How can societies develop the institutional and political means for governing risk effectively? To the first question, Beck, Giddens, and Luhmann answer that there is a clear discontinuity between contemporary society and its predecessors that is due to risks produced by humans and human systems—internal or manufactured risks, in Luhmann’s terminology. Contemporary technology is larger, more complex, and much higher in risk potential—with the capacity to affect far greater numbers of people, the things they value, and the areas they occupy. Furthermore, that risks are global and impossible to avoid has markedly increased the vulnerability of social systems everywhere. These infrastructural changes, it is further argued by Beck, Giddens, and Luhmann, have reshaped the social order. Technological, ecological, and terrorist catastrophes are increasingly transcending geographical, political, and economic boundaries. Social actors thus are stripped of their traditional social and political identities and are becoming individualized. Actors find themselves in a risk-laden world stripped of its traditional social filters, forced by their individualized status to make an increasing number of difficult risk decisions. Where do they look to inform their decisions? They look to conventional science, the keeper of risk knowledge. But they do so in a way that significantly departs from the past. The individualized social actor is increasingly more reflexive, recognizing science’s paradoxical role—as simultaneously creator of and assessor of risks. The lion’s...