Introduction

Since the mid-1980s, there has been an upsurge of academic and popular interest in the subject of risk and its management. Indeed, it has been claimed that risk is emerging as a key organizing principle in social science (Beck 1992, Douglas 1992, Giddens 1990,1991) and become “one of the most powerful concepts in modern society” (Leiss & Chociolko 1994:3). Controversies as to how risk should be managed are now claimed to rank as “among the most bitter disagreements in contemporary society” (ibid.: xiii).