ABSTRACT
Conflicts over how to handle risks are part of the power plays in social life. Societal evaluation of risk must be seen as a contest—an agon, from a Greek word meaning competition—where protagonists and antagonists offer competing views of how reality should be viewed and interpreted, what should be regarded as benefit and what should be feared as risk. The dramaturgy in social controversies over risks reveals that emotions such as fear and pity for victims may be as strong a driving force in politics as economic self-interest—or even stronger. In social drama and political spectacle, the audience has a more powerful role than in the poetical drama. In social controversies over technological risk one important distinction is between those bearing risk and those generating risk. Social dramas over risk are not necessarily conscious or planned social constructs. In societal evaluation of risk we can observe many of the elements characteristic of the classical tragedy.
