447706

2012
CSI0010.1177/0011392112447706Anaïs and HierCurrent Sociology

Guest editorial CS

Current Sociology
1­–3
Risk society and Current © The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0011392112447706
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Seantel Anaïs and Sean P Hier

University of Victoria, Australia

Articles selected
Ekberg M, The parameters of the risk society: A review and exploration. Current Sociology, May
2007; 55(3): 343–366.

Jensen M and Blok A, Pesticides in the risk society: The view from everyday life. Current Sociology,
September 2008; 56(5): 757–778.

Laraña E, Reflexivity, risk and collective action over waste management: A constructive proposal.
Current Sociology, January 2001; 49(1): 23–48.

Mythen G, Reappraising the risk society thesis: Telescopic sight or myopic vision? Current Sociology,
November 2007; 55(6): 793–813.

In the early 1990s, Ulrich Beck’s theory of the risk society became a sociological
force to reckon with. Beck argues that industrial modernity’s rule-enforcing logic of
prediction, intervention and control is being undermined by the realization that indus-
trially produced risks (be they environmental, chemical, or political in nature) are not
only human-made but also uncontrollable and global in reach. With the growing reali-
zation that manufactured risks are unknowable (and thereby uninsurable), the indus-
trial modernization process is becoming an issue and problem for itself. The latter
produces a reflexive, rule-altering (rather than enforcing) orientation to human exist-
ence that is at once global and experiential in scope. As the once-latent side effects of
first modernity unleash their destruction, industrial modern sensibilities (conditioned
by class, gender, nationalism, etc.) are being replaced by new collective cosmopolitan
identities articulated in a global public sphere. These shifting modern sensibilities and
collective identities are a testament to the contributing role of a risk ethos in present
social formations. The risk society thesis offers a viable counter-narrative to existing
sociological accounts of modernity in light of the increasing realization that the line-
arity of progress can no longer be verified and that the promise of democracy remains
largely unkept.
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If nothing else, Beck demonstrates the courage and the tenacity to reset the terms of
reference for the sociological imagination. Beck’s concept of ‘reflexive modernity’ cap-
tures – among other things – a shift towards increasingly adaptable individualized
approaches to the insecurities and vulnerabilities that characterize risk society. By theo-
rizing simultaneous transformations in the structural and experiential economy of the
world risk society, he aims to explain how individuals increasingly seek biographical
remedies to systemic contradictions. The superlative explanatory aims of Beck’s
metatheory notwithstanding, reaction to the risk society theory has varied from the time
it was introduced into English-speaking sociology to the present.
The risk society thesis has been debated and revised in the pages of Current Sociology
over the past decade. At least a dozen papers have analytically engaged with Beck’s ideas
about risk, industrialism, modernity, individualization, globalization, cosmopolitanism,
subpolitics and reflexivity. We revisit four of these papers in this special 60th anniversary
issue to demonstrate how the risk society thesis has contributed to sociological debates
in the new millennium. Despite their differences, and irrespective of the particular cri-
tiques they offer, the pieces we selected are a testament to the power of the risk society
thesis to guide sociological enquiry as it moves forward into the 21st century. Moreover,
these articles draw attention to at least five ongoing debates being staged in current
sociological discourse.
First, each paper contributes to understandings of risk society by opening up impor-
tant questions for research and enjoining readers to reflect upon and ask questions about
current social formations. Together, the papers offer insight into how sociologists might
account for shifts in the ways that risk is managed, governed, evaluated and negotiated
as the conceptual coordinates of first modernity increasingly fail to account for our
shared social experience.
Second, the papers in this issue attempt to negotiate what Van Loon (2000) calls the
‘science and technology paradox’ (i.e. the idea that the scientific bodies most capable of
identifying and measuring risk are increasingly delegitimized by their radical failure to
address catastrophic risks). Ekberg’s review of the risk society thesis, for instance,
addresses the science and technology paradox by offering a model that distinguishes six
parameters of the risk society. Mythen interrogates the macroscopic and largely theoreti-
cal focus of the risk society thesis by engaging with ‘micropolitics’, ‘new terrorism’ and
‘guilty pleasures’ as important sites of analysis. In a similar vein, Jensen and Blok’s
empirical study of risk perceptions concerning pesticides addresses the paradox by
assessing how people act and react to risk-based claims-making activities. Finally,
Laraña addresses the science and technology paradox in terms of debates concerning the
incineration of waste in Spain.
Third, each paper attempts to mend a critical disjuncture in the literature on risk by
addressing tensions between realist and social constructivist epistemologies of risk.
The papers collectively offer empirical contributions to risk, resisting the temptation to
search for empirical falsehoods in scholarship that is fundamentally theoretical. It may
be an empirical falsehood that technologically induced hazards are inaccessible to the
human senses or that anthropogenic risks are uninsurable. Stephen Collier (2008), for
instance, contends that insurers do offer catastrophe coverage and that terrorism is now
an insurable risk. Nevertheless, none of the authors claims that risk society theory is
Anaïs and Hier 3

anti-empiricist or unsuitable for situated empirical testing. To the contrary, each author
offers an important contribution to the risk society’s empirical foundation.
Fourth, each paper advances important critiques without arguing for a wholesale dis-
missal by recognizing that critical efforts are a testament to the important theoretical
contributions of risk society theory. By recognizing the importance of Beck’s work to
21st-century sociology and its influence on a number of cognate fields (criminology,
political science and anthropology, to name a few), the papers pose critical questions
about how our scholarly community might engage in conversation rather than argumen-
tation about the value of risk society thinking.
Fifth, and most importantly in our view, this selection of papers locates risk society as
a historical moment of great importance to 21st-century social theory by offering situ-
ated analyses of the social, scientific and political forces that animate the human condi-
tion. Ultimately, our aim in choosing these pieces for the special 60th anniversary issue
of Current Sociology is to demonstrate how Beck’s contribution to 20th-century sociol-
ogy has been adapted to confront 21st-century realities.

References
Collier S (2008) Enacting catastrophe: Preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization.
Economy and Society 37(2): 224–250.
Van Loon J (2000) Virtual risks in an age of cybernetic reproduction. In: Adam B, Beck U and Van
Loon J (eds) The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory. London: Sage.