Risk Society Make-up Class PDF

Risk society Make-up class Risk society → The composition of risk has mutated in such a way that its hazardous quality has generated apocalyptic consequences for the planet. Changes in the composition of risk, alongside structural transformations, have facilitated the transition from pre-industri...

Risk society Make-up class Risk society → The composition of risk has mutated in such a way that its hazardous quality has generated apocalyptic consequences for the planet. Changes in the composition of risk, alongside structural transformations, have facilitated the transition from pre-industrial to industrial modernity, into the risk society. → Beck positions the concept of risk within a historical narrative. - pre-industrial society/natural hazards: drought, famine, plague, etc. Risk consciousness: risks are attributed to external forces – “the gods”, “nature”. - industrial modernity: natural hazards are complemented by a set of human-made dangers (smoking, drinking, occupational hazards, etc.). Risk consciousness: a discrete pool of knowledge exists about how to regulate man-made risks and natural disasters. - risk society/manufactured risks: environmental risks prevail (air pollution, chemical warfare, biotech). Potentially catastrophic risks stem from industrial or techno-scientific activities and come to dominate social and cultural experience. Risk society →Manufactured risks are decision-contingent, endogenous entities generated by the practices of people, corporations, state agencies and politicians. Because manufactured risks arise out of the developmental processes of modernization, we can understand them as socially rather than naturally produced. → risk consciousness: Beck ties the public cognition of risks to social/structural transformations (globalization, the individualization of experience, the questioning of expert systems, etc.). These structural changes steer western cultures towards a “reflexive modernity”. What is that? Risk society Reflexive modernity/modernization refers to how changes in social class, gender, the structure of the family, and employment uproot patterns of cultural experience. As the structural certainties governing institution guaranteed in past evaporate, people must routinely make decisions about education, employment, relationships, identity, and politics. → in reflexive modernity, individuals assume greater responsibility for the consequences of their choices and actions. For Beck, the the changing nature of risk is tied to the broader process of reflexive modernization. Risks are no longer an inevitable or benign aspect of social development. They are a creation of the recurrent economic, scientific and technological expansion. Risk society In the chapter we read this week, Beck introduces two paradigms of inequality: 1) wealth distribution: material need can be reduced through the development of human and technological productivity, and legal and welfare-state protections. 2) risk distribution (techno-scientifically produced risk): wealth distribution is dependent on the fact that growing productive forces in the modernization process unleash hazards to an extent previously unknown. WEALTH DISTRIBUTION RISK DISTRIBUTION  Risk society These two paradigms of inequality correspond to two different societies: to a “wealth-distributing society” and a “risk-distributing society”. Ulrich Beck argues that in the continuity of the modernization process scarcity society begins to join risk society. What does that mean? Industrial society has always produced risks. Friedrich Engels noted in his description of English towns in the 19 th century that the living conditions of the English working class was equivalent to social murder. But these conditions – overcrowded living quarters, the lack of hygiene, poor diet, the unchecked spread of disease – were tangible; they were things people could see, characteristic of particular places (industrial towns). Risk society Today, however, the risks are different in their temporal and spatial dimensions. → new kinds of industrialized, decision-produced incalculabilities and threats spread within the globalization of high-risk industries. 1) Risks of late modernity are different [radioactivity, toxins, pollutants] induce systematic and often irreversible harm, generally remain invisible, are based on causal interpretation, and exist only in terms of the scientific knowledge about them. 2) Some people are often more affected than others by the distribution and growth of risks. In some dimensions, risk positions follow the inequalities of class positions, but bring a different distributional logic into play: boomerang effect. For instance, ecological or atomic disasters are hazards to health and life on the planet, but also hazards to legitimation, property, and profit. Ecological devaluations and expropriations are connected to the recognition of modernization risks. Risks society 1) Risks of late modernity are different [radioactivity, toxins, pollutants] induce systematic and often irreversible harm, generally remain invisible, are based on causal interpretation, and exist only in terms of the scientific knowledge about them. How do we understand the idea of ‘risk’? The way risks are represented in the mass media, through scientific abstractions (like charts, statistics, etc.) or representations of nature based on a dichotomy between victim/perpetrator run the risk of creating a discussion of nature without people. → however, when consequences for people come to the fore, it triggers either one of two reactions: (a) all people are equally affected (independent of their income, occupation, education, etc.), or one excludes discussion of people in particular and focuses on pollutants and their distribution and effects on a “region”. Risk society For Beck, risks are mediated through argument: “That which impairs health or destroys nature is not recognizable to one’s own feeling or eye, and even where it is seemingly in plain view, qualified expert judgement is still required to determine it “objectively”. Many of the newer risks (nuclear or chemical contaminations, pollutants in foodstuffs, diseases of civilization) completely escape human powers of direct perception (…)[we rely on] theories, experiments, measuring instruments [to make those risks] visible or interpretable all (…)” (Beck, p.27) Risk society Statements on hazards are never reducible to statements of fact; they always carry theoretical and normative implications. →causal interpretations always accompany risk assessments: risks are a product of the industrial mode of production, a systematic side effect of modernization. e.g., agricultural chemicals are present in the milk mothers breastfeed to their children. Who is responsible? The industry? The farmer who is forced to engage in specialized mass production with overfertilization and the employment of pesticides? In modernization, things which are spatially and temporary disparate are drawn together causally and brought into a social and legal context of responsibility. → normative dimensions come to light when the risks becomes tangible, and they become accepted. This gives rise to the question: how do we wish to live? Risk society Who causes the damage? The systemic interdependence of the highly specialized agents of modernization in business, agriculture, the law and politics corresponds to the absence of isolable single causes and responsibilities. Who is responsible? the authorities, science, or politics? For Beck, there is a general complicity and lack of responsibility. Everyone is cause and effect: the causes dibble away into a general amalgam of agents and conditions, reactions and counter-reactions. Such interdependency fleshes out the idea of the system. Because of the way the system works, one can do something and continue doing it without having to take personal responsibility for it. Risks become diffused in the system that produces them. Risk society 2) Some people are often more affected than others by the distribution and growth of risks. In some dimensions, risk positions follow the inequalities of class positions, but bring a different distributional logic into play: boomerang effect. → The history of risk distribution shows that, like wealth, risks adhere to the class pattern, only inversely: wealth accumulates at the top, risks at the bottom. Risks, Beck argues, strengthen class society. Poverty attracts risk, and the wealthy can purchase safety and freedom from risk. Risk society “Poverty is hierarchic, smog democratic”: risks display an equalizing effect within their scope among those affected by them. Risks possess an inherent tendency towards globalization. A universalization of hazards accompanies industrial production, independent of the place where they are produced. → Risks catch up with those who produce of profit form them. Risks produce a boomerang effect in their diffusion: even the rich and powerful are not safe from them. Risk society The production of modernization risks follows the boomerang curve. →Intensive industrial agriculture does not just cause the lead content in mothers’ milk and children to rise dramatically in distant cities. It also frequently undermines the natural basis of agricultural production itself: the fertility of the soil declines, vitally important animals and plants disappear, and the danger of social erosion grows. → under the roof of modernization risks, perpetrator and victim become identical. Risk society The boomerang effect need not manifest itself as a direct threat to life: it can also affect money, property and legitimation. With the destruction of the environment and its ecosystems, property becomes devalued and undergoes a creeping ecological expropriation. → ecological expropriation: everything which threatens life on Earth also threatens property and commercial interests of those who live from the commodification of life and the conditions that allow life to thrive. A systematic intensifying contradiction arises between the profit and property interests that advance the industrialization process and its frequently threatening consequences, which endanger and expropriate possessions and profits. Risk society “During smog alerts the land dies temporarily. Entire industrial regions are transformed into eerie ghost towns. Such is the will of the boomerang effect: even the wheels of the polluting industries come to a halt (…) smog cares not a jot about the polluter pays principle. On a wholesale and egalitarian basis it strikes everyone, independently of [their] share in smog production” (Beck, p.39). Risk society Risk positions: with the globalization of risks, a social dynamic is set into motion, which cannot be understood in class categories. The class of the “affected” does not confront a “class” that is not affected. It confronts at most a “class” of not-yet-affected people. → the conflicts that arise around modernization risks occur around systematic causes that coincide with the motor of progress and profit. In such conflicts, what is at stake is the issue of whether our concepts of “progress”, “prosperity”, “economic growth”, or “scientific rationality” are still correct. Risk society The struggle, then, is not about one class against another, but it takes shape in the form of a doctrinal struggle within civilization over the proper road for modernity. This is particularly pressing issue as the risks Beck talks about have a supra-national character. → International inequalities are arising between “filthy countries” and those who have to clean up, inhale or pay for the filth of others with increasing deaths, expropriations and devaluations. Risk society How do modernization risks travel? New international inequalities within the “First World” →They are “piggy-backed” in what we eat and breathe. They are, as Beck puts it, “stowaways of normal consumption”. →Toxins and pollutants are interwoven with the natural basis and the elementary life processes of the industrial world. within the “Third World” Hazardous industries have been transferred to low-wage countries. There is a systematic attraction between extreme poverty and extreme risk. Risk society Class societies are societies where the main concern is visible satisfaction of material needs: hunger/weakness confront surplus/power. → ignoring risks which are intangible always finds its justification in tangible needs. The tangibility of need suppresses the perception of risks, but only the perception, not their reality or their effects: protecting economic recovery and growth still enjoys unchallenged priority. Risk society Dilemma: “Third World” countries are caught up between the visible threat of death from hunger and the invisible threat of death from toxic chemicals: → In agriculture, without the widespread of chemicals, the yields of the land would sink. With chemicals the poor countries of the periphery can build up their stocks of foodstuffs and gain a degree of independence from the power centers of the industrial world. → HOWEVER, the chemical factories in the Third World reinforce the impression of independence in production and from imports. The struggle against hunger and for autonomy forms the protective shield behind which the hazards are suppressed, minimized, and, because of that, amplified, diffused, and eventually returned to the wealthy industrial countries via de food chain.