ABSTRACT
To put it differently, the emergence of ‘manufactured risk’ is offered as the explanation for scepticism toward grand narratives of progress. According to Giddens (1994: 79), the ‘Promethean outlook which so influencedMarx should be more or less abandoned in the face of the insuperable complexity of society and nature’. The goal is no longer to achieve something positive but simply to avoid bad things happening. As Beck (1992: 49) puts it, ‘one is no longer concerned with attaining something “good”, but rather with preventing the worst’. Moreover, risk society – the sociological theory and the phenomenon it purports to describe – is characterised by a broader questioning of social institutions, roles and mores, a development that Beck and Giddens explain in terms of ‘reflexivity’ (Beck 1992: 15; Giddens 1994: 5). Established patterns of belief and behaviour in relation to politics, work, social class, the family, are all called into question: they appear outdated, useless and even dangerous when confronted with the ‘insuperable complexity’ of contemporary risk society.
With no reliable institutional or intellectual framework, society becomes more reflexive and more individualised as people are forced to produce their own meanings and their own rules, critically assessing the claims and counter-claims of expert knowledge.
