Introduction.

Contemporary processes of modernisation are reflexive, and quite different to the initial and incomplete modernisation that gave rise to industrial society. Beck depicts two phases to the modernisation of industrial society - one is characterised by it’s reliance upon traditional components for functioning; the second is the actual transition to a new societal type, characterised with three aspects. These are

(1) the "civilization volcano"

Where the advanced technology of society is potentially highly destructive.

(2) the "individualisation of social inequality"

Blurred class contrasts and the increased importance of "individual market projectories".

(3) the "unbounding" of science and politics

Constituting a new relationship between scientific and politics.

His second book questions the reliance on expertise, and thus the fact value distinction of science and technology.
 
 

Initially, Beck challenges the usage of the term "post" -as somewhat of a ‘cop-out’ and an intellectual laziness. His object is to "take up the social theoretical thread again" and give meaning to the current vacancy of "post".

Inextricable from the production of wealth (and it’s problems) are the problems and conflicts which arise from the "production, definition and distribution of scientifically and technically produced risks".

[ there is also scope for sociologically/politically engineered risks -eg the formation of ghettos. ]

The transition from the logic of distribution of wealth to the logic of distribution of risks is rooted in at least two historical factors:

1. Real material need’s objective reduction through productive forces and social/legal protections/regulations

2. Dependence upon the release of risks and threats. They will be generated along with society’s "development" (as used in, for example, Wolfgang Sach’s ("The Development Dictionary") most derogatory sense of the word).

Beck’s egs: harmful/poisonous substances in foodstuffs, air and water, atomic weapons and energy, genetic engineering.

[Other egs: those that aren’t deemed as obviously or consensually an overall threat: eg harmful/poisonous pharmaceuticals / vaccinations, harmful appliances or infrastructure (EMF/EMP), harmful entrenched mysogynistic artefacts and practices eg gynocologists stirrups (esp. psychological harm), accepted operations such as tonsillectomies (links to infectious disease), sociological/environmental stressors and pressures (which may also lead to a less than fully comprehended risk in alcohol/drug use), etc. etc.]

• The old paradigm of the industrial / class society, is of how wealth is to be distributed unevenly but legitimately.
• The "new paradigm of the risk society" is how risks can be "prevented, made harmless, dramatized and directed, channelled away."

1. do not hinder the process of modernisation

2. do not overstep the bounds of the ecologically/medically/psychologically/socially acceptable

We live in the period of transition. The problems of wealth & risk distribution overlap each other. The conflict and problems of this "advanced modern period" cannot be understood in either distribution of wealth or distribution of risk frameworks, when taken individually. Beck situates these frameworks temporally so that we can no longer understand in terms of wealth distribution, but we can not yet understand in terms of risk distribution.

The logic of the definition and distribution of risks can be explained in terms of ideal types in these areas:

• the labour market and system of production (microelectronics, flexibility of working times, forms of under-utilisation of labour, decentralised salaried employment)
• freeing up of traditional and institutional forms of control of fear and insecurity in the family, marriage, sexual roles, class consciousness
• the demystification of scientific rationality ("disenchantment of the disenchanter"), technological risks, criticism of progress
• (Beck’s main thesis) the risks and consequences of modernisation, which are realised in the irreversible dangering of life. The risks are supra-national and not class specific.

Thesis One : "Knowledge is Dependent on Modernisation Risks".

Modern risks are fundamentally different to wealth and resources. They are invisible, irreversible, and based on causal interpretations. Unemployment is obvious, "DDT in your tea" is not. They are thus established as scientific information, which is open to social definition.

Generally, expertise is relied upon for the information which defines or does not define something as a risk. Thus threat situations create "social dependencies of information and knowledge", that are immune to class relations. Threatened parties are most frequently totally out of control, not being involved in risk definition, responsibility or "repair". They are under the control of the knowledge creators/bearers - and "the norms, interests and mistakes inherent in that knowledge".

[Beck maintains a quite relativistic position to scientific knowledge.]

Beck’s metaphor: everyday life becomes full of the Trojan horses, out of which the risk experts pop, all trying to define what is to be feared.

[The danger of this analysis is that danger might be overlooked due to the perception of exaggeration of danger which might occur when danger becomes a political commodity].

Thus media and others in positions of risk definition, take up key sociopolitical positions.

It is also important to regard the effect that the threatening potential of the forces of production are having on science. Scope for scientific research is getting narrower as the threat increases. The threat of error in scientific and the fact that everyday science deals with potentially destructive forces, works against the normative ideals of scientific behaviour.

Thesis Two : "Modernisation Risks Explode the Class-Structure".

"Necessity is hierarchical, smog is democratic".

When risk expands, social danger situations are created. These reflect inequalities of strata/class, whilst having a different logic of distribution.

Boomerang Effect/Ecological Devaluation

Risks introduce international inequalities -both (industrial to 3rd world) and (industrial to industrial) international relationships. They undermine the competency of the nation states, as trade in dangerous substances is universal and supra-national.
 
 

Risk industries are set up in countries where wages are cheap. "A systematic attractive force exists between extreme poverty and extreme risks." International inequalities arise between lands that "throw out their filth and those which take on the filth of others". The latter pay with the death of plants, animals and humans.

There is a unification from "levelling pressure" which occurs along with the global threat of modernisation risks. Beck argues for an increased urgency towards "the utopia" of a world society. In the transition to a risk society, people must adapt to threat of apocalypse -in the same way as the adaptation against economic decline was forced through the inception of the industrial society.

"Risk" jumps in to the jungle of corporate society, and complex political and administrative webs. Factors such as established interest groups and national egotism are important modulators of the response to risk. So too is the vague general sense of being affected by immense, tangible dangers. "Responsibility lies with everyone and no-one". Meanwhile, the usual day to

Solidarity out of fear

The industrial societies predication is on the "counterideal of equality". The risk society’s predication is on the "normative counterplan" of safety. The transition between the two replaces the value system of the unequal society with the value system of the unsafe society. The motive force of society moves from "I am hungry" to "I am scared".

Currently it is not obvious how the society bound by fear can operate: "how can the new solidarity of the frightened work?".
 
 

Thesis Three: "On the market form of modernisation risks".

Modernisation risks are big business. Thus the spread and marketing of risks does not break completely with capitalist development but rather elevates it. This is because there is a limit to conventional needs, but no limit to the amount of protection needed against endless, infinite and self-generating modern risks. With risks the economy becomes "self-referential", independent of the context of need satisfaction. In generating and exploiting risks the industrial society generates danger situations and the "particular political potential of the risk society".

Risks constitute a whole economic regeneration, not a spanner in the works of the system. The industrial system profits significantly from the (deplorable) risk it creates.

Risk needs are not finite and satiable: they are boundless. Saturated markets are transformed into new, open and expanding markets.

New branches of knowledge are generated: "critiques of civilisation, technology, ecology, the risk performances of the media, and risk research".

Beck’s "daring comparison" is to say that developed capitalism has "absorbed, generalised and normalised the destructive power of war". Like wars, conscious civilisation risks can destroy areas of overproduction & hitherto valid areas of production - eg highly polluting cars. This can be seen as really overcoming crises of turnover and creation of new markets.

The most important thing for the is that risk control must be above all symbolic: it must not remove the risk, it must be dealt with cosmetically. Inclusion of purification filters, packaging, symptomatic reduction of noxious substances.

This is the legacy of the power centres of the industrial society, who strive to maintain political and economic control.

[does this all add up to "we still haven’t learned yet"?]

Thesis Four "consciousness determines being, knowledge of risks and levels of effect of risks"

"Being determines consciousness in class and strata situations, whereas in situations of danger consciousness determines being".

Knowledge has a new political significance. "The political potential of the risk society must be explained and analysed in a sociological theory of the origin and distribution of risks and their significance".

Modernity, in coming to terms with the risks of civilisation, is under pressure to "de-differentiate". Eg the apparent institutionally separate areas of politics, the public sphere, knowledge and economy.

Risks cut across their areas of responsibility. Risk also cuts across established theoretical categories, such as theory and practice, fact value distinctions, across disciplines and specialised competency areas.

People often draw a mistaken line between scientific / technological evaluation of risks and popular opinion of them (+mass media portrayals), giving more credence to the former. But scientific risk research always "limps behind" social, environmental, cultural and developmental criticism of the industrial system. To Beck the conversion of scientist to the Risk bandwagon is often unnoticed and is representative of the control that they try to maintain in this new domain.

One must ask how rationality originates in society, noting the oppositions and entanglements of social and scientific concepts of assessments of risk.

This is the systematic and diligent falsifying into individual and local problems., shifted onto the affected. Effect is turned into its own causation.

The production of wealth which increases productivity, turns a blind eye to risk. This blindness has established its own structure with names such as "over-specialisation in the division of labour" and "productivity orientation".

In the field of risk research, the scientific intervention and imposition of "high" scientific standards and criteria actually creates a situation where the intensification and increase in risks can easily occur. Strict scientific standards allow or even promote the existence of life threatening entities. The higher the criterion of validity for proof of causality, the less risks noticed, and the more risks go unnoticed. This is a highly effective, legitimate dam to control the flood of modernisation risks.

[Germany vs japan cases]. Modernisation risks can never be given a strict cause-effect relationship.

Also, scientific risk management operates with the credo that

The relationship of acceptable risk to risk distribution can be compared to the relationship of the performance principle to the unequal distribution of wealth. Acceptable limits to pollution is virtual acquiescence to polluting which also legitimises the act of pollution (within the limits).

3 false conclusions of the "acceptable level of trick" of the "modern chemical magicians":

• Acceptable links are defined individually, with no regard to combinatorial effects.

• Vivisection fallacies.

• The human reactions are not registered.

"Public risk consciousness: "Non-experience at second-hand" "

Science maintains ultimate credibility. Risks not scientifically recognised do not exist. Those seeking elimination, treatment or compensation for risks must rely on science to press their point. Then, a crisis of scientific authority can favour ongoing obscuration of risk factors. Criticism of science ends up being counter productive in exposing risks.

That which evades perception, "Non-experience at second-hand", becomes an integral part of everyday thinking. This risk consciousness has anthropological significance. The modern civilisation risk consciousness has an imperceptible, yet ubiquitous latent causality. There is unlimited space for risks to cause harm.

It is easier to redirect insecurities/fears attached to risks than it is to quell needs for hunger or warmth or other needs. Displacement of social conflict, thinking and acting is easier. Scapegoats - different points and symbolic places, can be pointed to.

In risk societies there is an immanent tendency to seek scapegoats because threat occurs as a result of political inactivity. Then the dangers are not the principle threat, but rather those that point them out. They are confronted with the scapegoating and the hostility instead.
 
 

Thesis Five

Socially Recognised Risks have potentially explosive political implications. The unpolitical became political: elimination of causes in the process of modernisation and industrialisation itself.

Thus the debate on definitions of risks is about not only consequences for the health of man and nature but also social, economic and political results. It can be seen how critical it is.

Beck lists potential results of risk:

Collapse of markets, devaluation of capital, bureaucratic control of operational decisions, opening up of new markets, enormous expenses, legal processes, loss of face.

So in the risk society the political potential for catastrophes comes in bursts of varying degrees. Power and responsibility may be reorganised in the process of gaining protection from and control of these dangers. The risk society becomes a catastrophe society where exceptional circumstances are under threat of becoming normality.

Wherever modernisation risks are recognised, the world order changes. Barriers of specialised responsibilities fall. The public sphere gets involved to the level of technical details and businesses are attacked. Markets collapse, the cost of making goods increase, prohibitions and legal threats abound, pressures to renew the technology and it’s system arise. A new light is shone on technological and economic details.

Under such pressure a "politics of state emergency is engendered which draws its competencies and wider possibilities of interference" from the threats.

Emergency actions become legitimate and normal. The unthinkable becomes self evident. Completely new challenges to democracy arise.

[Dangers to the often illusory democracy that we have - dangers to those thin threads of political justice that stop western descent into a totalitarian state].

Thus the modernisation risks of the new industrial society may also bear the risks of legitimation of authoritarian/totalitarian controls. These would serve to defend against all dangers, and in claiming to prevent the worst becomes in itself another form of the worst.

The alternative is to capitulate in the face of the risks. Thus a dilemma is presented by risk. Overcoming it, towards the apparent self evidently desirable end, will be a principle, if not the principle goal of democratic thinking and action.
 
 
 

Further Discussion

Beck first presents an effective critique of "post" as a prefix in sociological terminology, depicting it as "the expression of mental laziness". In attempting to again pick up the "social-theoretical thread", Beck gives us five theses of what he terms the "Risk society".

The Risk Society has as its immediate antecedent, what Beck calls "phase one" of the industrial society. Phase one was characterised, amongst other things, as revolving around the (needs driven) question of how socially produced wealth can be distributed "unequally but nevertheless ‘legitimately’ in society". Phase two is the new paradigm of the Risk Society, in which (through fear) it is asked "how is risk to be prevented / made harmless / dramatised and directed / channelled away".

Beck’s five theses cover the importance of knowledge and knowledge bearers ("experts"); the fundamental difference between risk, as opposed to wealth or resources; the ability of risks to uproot the established order of both markets and knowledge disciplines; the potential universality of risks and (opposing this) the new inequalities that risk may create; and the danger of risks to freedom (in both its potential to absorb the power of war and the possible threat of a constant ‘state of emergency’ - a totalitarianism imposed by the threat of risks).

Beck views the Risk Society as being dependent upon knowledge. Knowledge gives us a reason to fear certain things, if it defines risk as being somehow material within those things. The status of knowledge and knowledge bearers become central in the risk society for this reason, and significant power is accorded to them. They have the power to create and destroy markets. The scientific risk researcher strives to be at the helm of expertise, despite her being condemned by history as being the least competent person for the task. Scientific risk research in a position of authority is a further negative, as science and it’s high criteria of proof may serve to paradoxically maximise risk occurrence.

Threats posed by risk are at once both an opportunity and a threat for dominant interests, who must strive to control risk. For these interests, risk is always to be controlled, and never removed. Control is gained by placing limits upon risk. This limitation is an act of condoning risk, and in this, absolving risk from blame. A merely placatory device, it is often at odds with empirical observations, such as combinatorial effects of risks, or the delayed reactions of the threatened. (Vivisection is another placatory and highly unpredictive device in this regard.) The blame due to real risk can often be offset to another place and time, safely away from real causative factors. Those that attempt to highlight real risk are potentially destabilising to the new status quo formed around risks, and are perceived as threats.

For those who attempt to control and even harness risk, this can be a risky game (so to speak), as in one way risk knows no class boundaries. As Beck succinctly puts it, "Wealth is hierarchical, smog is democratic". Risk brings dominant interests closer to the precipice, which is situated at the other side of the elevated socio-economic plateau upon which they stand. Harnessing risk can be a delicate balancing act for dominant interests. Legal action and enormous expenses (Eg for ‘clean-ups’) may threaten: decline of property values, goodwill and ‘face’, and even the collapse of whole markets (not to mention health) can occur when risk becomes socially recognised.

The threat of a constant state of emergency imposed by risk and risk bureaucratisation may be one of the most threatening situations posed for democracy.

In Beck’s book, I have two minor reservations.

One is a minor criticism that I have of Beck’s rhetoric. Where Beck outlines the potential reaction to those who threaten the new establishment by highlighting real, or potentially real risk, he states:

Isn’t there always visible wealth to hold against invisible risks? Isn’t the whole thing an intellectual chimera, the product of intellectual scaremongers, the stage manager of risk? It is the DDR spies, the communists, the Jews, the Arabs, the women, the men, the Turks, the refugees who are behind it all.

The very intangibility of the threat and helplessness to counter it favours the development of radical and fanatical reactions and political currents.(p101-102)

To me, it seems simplistic, and perhaps irrelevant, to tie in risk dismissal with the ‘conspiracy’ category.

It is a reasonable assumption that if political inaction causes risk, then the beneficiaries of that inaction would be the immediate parties threatened by the portrayal of risk. (Second at risk might be those in positions of responsibility who, by their inaction, allowed the risk to occur.) Thus these parties are the ones who are likely to concoct the ‘risk displacement’ or conspiracy stories, as alluded to by Beck. Their stories have the likely intentions of moving the blame for fear from ‘at fault’ parties. An easy scapegoat for this displacement comes with redirecting the blame to parties who might stand to gain somehow from the real ‘at fault’ party's cessation of activities.

Beck’s delving into the realms of generalisation is not acceptable in an analysis which attempts to be symmetrical. I construe a "conspiracy theory" - as Beck alludes here - as a theory which is guilty of imparting unnecessary complexity to a story, whilst oversimplistically interpreting the relevant parties intentions. If Beck wants to say this legitimately, then he must make the point in specific regard to the issue, both directly and substantially.

There are no reasonable analytical grounds upon which issues should be placed into the derogatory category of "conspiratorial" without substantiation: the analyses should be dealt with on a case by case basis. Such vacuous ridicule is a product of either equally void arguments or mental laziness, (a criticism Beck attributes to "post"). Beck does himself a disservice by reducing himself to this kind of rhetoric, as he may well have a point here, behind the rhetoric.

Chomsky deals with the problem in Manufacturing Consent, in his comments of those that find his work on the media to be a "conspiracy theory". He notes that this act of labelling is nothing but an evasive tactic that does not address the issues at hand. The engendering of such attitudes is a common trend, and a smokescreen that serves to deny and defame without evidence or argument.

Another reservation that I have with Beck is on the matter of whether Beck’s Risk Society does indeed constitute a paradigmatic change.

I believe that the Risk Society could constitute a paradigmatic change, for all the reasons given in Beck’s argument. He has, however, not firmly elaborated upon the variation between the idea of society having "absorbed, generalised and normalised the destructive power of war", and the presence of war during "phase one" of the industrial society. It is not presumptuous to say that war has been around for a long time, and that this in itself presents its own version of boundless, infinite risks for the individual. So in this context, there is a problem with redefining phase two of the industrial revolution on the basis of boundless risks, which is one of Beck’s criteria. What is needed here is the elaboration of a clear distinction between the use of war as a device for the subversion of the proletariat and preservation and expansion of dominant interest groups, as opposed to the infusing of risk into everyday life, with all of its market and psychological/anthropological consequences.

I believe that there is such a distinction to be had, and just that it has not been satisfactorily articulated in the paper. (Again, Beck may have done so in his major work). Hence the assumption on my part, that the problem is only of minor significance. The pertinence of Beck’s observations far outweigh any such reservations: the reorganising and even revolutionary potential of risk seems to give it weight as a true paradigmatic change.

--Consumercide, 1995

It is now clear that as a global community we are immersed in the the adverse potentials of a risk society. The most pertinent question is to whether, and to what extent, that risk is being actively created and managed by those at the upper echelons of world power. Go shopping for solutions to this question via the links on the international relations mainpage. We are living in very interesting times (to recast the confusian curse!).