Risk and reflexivity

If we follow the Risk Society analytic proposed by Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and colleagues, ¹ the problems and conflicts of highly industrialised societies can be understood to arise, not principally as a result of the unequal distribution of wealth, but rather the unequal distribution of risk. Once a society succeeds in overcoming genuine material scarcity, its concerns turn to the unintended consequences of industrial production. In this so-called ‘reflexive’ period of our modernity – when our processes of industrial development, rationalisation and growth become limited by their own manufactured side-effects – the assessment, mitigation and redistribution of socially constructed risk becomes a dominant rationale for both industry and government.