ABSTRACT
At least as far back as the publication of Ulrich Beck’s (1992) Risk Society, social commentators have contemplated the idea that late capitalism might become a game not of accumulating goods but avoiding ‘bads’. Beck’s original thesis proposed that the modern world produced new kinds of risks that were changing the nature of global politics and forging new local and global alliances. Modern risks were different because they were too big to be contained within the borders of nation states (think nuclear disasters) and because they were the fruits of ‘progress’ (think ecological destruction). Perhaps most important of all, modern risks were different because their scale made them impossible to insure against; no amount of money could undo the damage of an environmental catastrophe. It is this fi nal difference that Beck saw as providing the kinetic energy for social transformation. Beck’s ideas drew a predictable chorus of critics, partly due to their sheer ambition, but equally because of his later links with New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ social agenda in the UK.
