ABSTRACT
Risk theory: Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1992) analyses Western society, focusing on the many risks posed by globalisation, including technological development. Beck centres in particular on the environment, and shows how local actions in one part of the world have global (negative) consequences in other parts. Mary Douglas’ Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (1994) focuses, to a greater extent than Beck, on the cultural and symbolic origins of thinking about risk. In Risk and Blame, the reader is presented with concepts that aim to provide tools with which to analyse the relationships between culture (values), individuals (type) and institutions in a risk perspective. Aaron Doyle and Richard Ericson’s anthology Risk and Morality (2003) and Lupton’s anthology Risk and Socio-cultural Theory: New Directions and Perspectives (1999) contain a series of contributions that explicitly link risk with neo-liberalism. The two anthologies concentrate on risk as a significant governance technology in the present day. Good, short introductions to theories of risk are Lupton’s (2005) Risk (Key Ideas) and Arnoldi’s (2009) recent book Risk (Key Concepts).
