The course of risk analysis

from the fringes to the center of Social Theory

Abstract

Two of the most important contemporary social theoreticians, Beck and Giddens, contended that the topic of grave environmental and technological risks was key to understanding the characteristics of modernity’s historical project. In discussing the nature of these risks, Beck and Giddens shed new light on issues regarding social conflict, relations between the lay public and experts, the role of science, and ways of doing and defining politics. This article places these contributions within the broader framework of risk study in the social sciences. Three lines are identified: the narrowest, which involves cultural studies on risk; the second, which involves the dissemination of studies of different types of risks; and the third, which sees the topic move onto center stage in social theory.