Risk And Culture What Is The Difference Between Douglass And Wildavsky

The second parameter of risk society this essay will consider is the change in the understanding of risk. In contrast to the arguments of Mary Douglas and Aarond Wildavsky (Risk and Culture 1982) that ‘there are no real or significant differences between the kind of differences between the kind of hazards that we are facing today, and the kind of hazards people used to face in earlier times’, Beck argues that the transition in modernity has led to a change in our understandings of the origins of risk (A. Christiansen & P. Sorensen, 2012, pg. 18). Pre-modern society or ‘pre-industrial’ society was characterised by the existence of external risk. These risks, for example; drought, famine and plague were attributed to external forces, such as

In addition, with the presence of globalisation and the ability of ‘money, technologies, commodities, information and toxins to cross frontiers as if they did not exist’, risk is able to cross national boundaries and force global change (U. Beck, 2006, pg. 336). Demonstrating this ability to cross national boundaries and force change on a global scale is the concept of climate change. Multiple elements of the risk of climate change depict a risk society. The first is that the scientific causes of climate change lie deep within second modernity. The ‘innocuous and invisible gasses, such as methane and carbon dioxide, released as by-products of development change the composition of the atmosphere with untold consequences’ (H. Bulkeley, 2001, pg. 431). This complies with Beck’s previously mentioned argument that in risk society, risks arise as side-effects of successful second modernity and industrialisation. Secondly, ‘the sources and experiences of climate change are indeterminately distanciated over space and time, stretching social and natural relations of cause, effect and responsibility, transcending the spatial, social and temporal limits of risks in the past’ (H. Bulkeley, 2001, pg. 432). This complies with the argument that risks are inescapable and unpredictable in a risk society. Even

In his 2002 piece Risk, Environment and Society Piet Strydom states ‘risk society is not only characterised by uncertainty about the intensity and reality of risk but also by uncertainty about the elusive concept of risk itself (P. Strydom, 2002). Due to the change in understanding the origins of risk, there has been an increase in contested, competing and conflicting risk definitions. Theorists of risk society compare and contrast many definitions of risk, including ‘local and global, individual and collective, natural and technological, real and constructed, calculable and incalculable, visible and invisible, voluntary and involuntary and actual and perceived risks’ to ensure effective risk communication (M. Ekberg, 2007, pg. 353). The proliferation of risk definitions is demonstrated by the academic literature surrounding the risk society. In World Risk Society (1999) Beck defines risk by distinguishing the difference between risk in danger, claiming ‘the point of this formulation is to distinguish decision-dependent risks that can be in principle brought under control, and dangers that have escaped or neutralised the control requirements of industrial society’ (U. Beck, 1999, pg. 31). In Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (1995), he further attempts to establish the different between risk and threat by stating that if a private insurance company offers indemnity,