ABSTRACT
As observed in earlier chapters, many theoretical discussions of risk tend not to acknowledge the differentiation of the targeting and effects of risk discourses on specific social groups. They represent the risk actor, in many cases, as lacking a gender, age, ethnicity, social class, geographical location or sexual identity. Statements about risk and subjectivity tend to elide differences, presenting the risk subject as universal. As noted in Chapter 4, Beck has claimed in his writings on world risk society and cosmopolitanism that distinctions between Self and Other are breaking down as nation-states have been forced to cooperate with each other. A close examination of the ways in which risk discourses operate as strategies of normalization, of exclusion and inclusion, however, demonstrates that in most cases notions of Otherness – and the consequent stigmatizing and marginalizing of the Other – remain central to ways of thinking and acting about risk.
