ABSTRACT
The concept of the ‘risk society’ has been prominent in sociology for over a decade (e.g., Beck 1992; Giddens 1991). Broadly, the risk society perspective encapsulates two observations. The first is the apparent paradox that the more technologically developed society becomes and able to manage and remedy adversities, the more society seems convinced that the world is a dangerous and threatening place. The second is the apparent collapse of deference towards experts, with the consequent effect of neutralising their efforts to persuade people that the world is not as dangerous as they think. There are a number of examples to support this hypothesis from subjective fears of experience such as flying in aeroplanes to the perception of parents that their children are at ubiquitous risk of abduction and harm from strangers. These attitudes and the behaviours we adopt in response to them may themselves have unintended negative outcomes: children fail to learn skills of managing everyday challenges because they are over-protected by parents; parents place their children at risk of impairment or even death because they cannot be reassured that a triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella does not place their child at risk of autism (Baron-Cohen 2009). Webb (2006) has analysed in some depth the effects that the ‘risk society’ has had on social work including the preoccupation with risk management and defensive approaches to practice.
