ABSTRACT
The theoretical perspectives on risk that have been reviewed thus far provide various approaches to understanding how concepts of risk influence subjectivity. For the ‘cultural/symbolic’ approach, risk is used to reproduce and maintain concepts of selfhood and group membership, particularly in defining self from the polluting or ‘risky’ Other. For the ‘risk society’ perspective, reflexive awareness and concern about risk pervade modern sensibilities, creating new forms of relating to the self and others, including experts and institutions. For the ‘governmentality’ perspective, risk dispositifs contribute to the configuring of a particular type of subject: the autonomous, self-regulating moral agent who voluntarily takes up governmental imperatives. While these insights are important in the abstract theorizing of risk responses, the writers following these perspectives have tended not to explore in detail the diverse and dynamic ways in which lay people respond to risk.
