ABSTRACT
One of the most influential social science texts of the last decade of the 20th century was unquestionably Beck’s book on risk society.2 The thesis concerns a move away from industrial society with its concern with the distribution of wealth towards a risk society in which there is an increasing focus on the costs of development, or, as Lash and Wynne would have it, a shift from the distribution of goods to the distribution of ‘bads’.3 Giddens4 has pointed out that the bads or risks are not simply dangers, but constitute uncertainties, especially concerning the impact of developments in science and technology. This uncertainty is heightened as, unlike the costs attaching to industrial society, those borne in risk society are spread in a random and differential manner. This has had major consequences for the political system, as debate moves from the relations of production to the production of ill-defined relations with risk. In Beck’s own words, ‘what no one saw and no one wanted-self-endangerment and devastation of nature-is becoming a major force of history’.5
