ABSTRACT
These developments have taken place in the context of an increasingly powerful political discourse of risk within Western industrialised nations (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991; Horlick-Jones, 2001). We are living through times of rapid change, economic restructuring and globalisation, featuring a huge expansion of media and electronic communication. For many citizens, everyday experience has increasingly become one of feeling assailed by threats from crime and unemployment, and by the disappearance of familiar ways of life (Giddens, 1990). Risks to our food, our health and our environment have become daily features of media news reports. Significantly, the risks of failure faced by professionals charged with responsibility for the management of risk – one of the ‘risks of risk’ as it were – have themselves become grave; in terms of blame, public humiliation and job insecurity (Horlick-Jones, 1996).
