ABSTRACT
Contemporary experts and popular cultures tend to represent risk as negative, something to be avoided. So too, much of the academic literature on risk represents individuals in late modernity as living in fear, constantly dogged by feelings of anxiety, vulnerability and uncertainty in relation to the risks of which they are constantly made aware. As observed in Chapter 1, risk is now often a synonym for danger or hazard, and the early modern concept of a ‘good risk’ appears largely to have been removed from the vernacular, appearing only in the parlance of economic speculation. As was argued in previous chapters, the emphasis in contemporary Western societies on the avoidance of risk is strongly associated with the ideal of the ‘civilized’ body, an increasing desire to take control over one’s life, to rationalize and regulate the self and the body, to avoid the vicissitudes of fate. To take unnecessary risks is commonly seen as foolhardy, careless, irresponsible, and even ‘deviant’, evidence of an individual’s ignorance or lack of ability to regulate the self.
