ABSTRACT
The term "risk society" was coined in the 1980s, with its popularity beginning during the 1990s, and was both as a consequence of its links to trends in thinking about wider modernity, and also to its links to popular discourse, in particular the growing environmental concerns, such as climate change and genetically modified (GM) food during the period. Risk society is a social construct; a social construct is called a heuristic device, more specifically, an ideal type. The "immanent contradictions between modernity and counter-modernity within industrial society" brings with it massive changes to the socio-economic order, and obviously with it the nature and purpose of school education. Whereas pre-industrial societies were subject to risks such as weather and industrial pollution, now risks depend on industrial and political decisions, and are, therefore, "politically reflexive". Moreover, the concept of Beck's risk society is linked intrinsically to the concept of reflexivity.
