In the early ‘80s, the sociologist Ulrich Beck spent some months on the hills surrounding Munich and wrote what became the academic best-seller Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Sage 1992). 20 years (and 80.000 copies) later, together with my colleagues of Safety Science and – I believe – most of students in the field of risk studies around the world, I was inaugurating the beginning of my PhD studies by reading his book. In the following months – and , I couldn’t know then, in the following years – I tried to resolve my initial feelings about it: something in between a powerful fascination and a doubtful discomfort. Doing a review of Beck’s critics and supporters is an effort of Hercules, especially considering the variety of scholars who refined, criticized or simply married his paradigm of a society “systematically dealing with risks”, whose nature is “systemic and not tied to the place of origin” and whose consequences “outlast generations and regard those not alive yet” (Beck, 1986:1992). As long as all scholars in risk studies are sooner or later called to develop their own opinion on it (with a paradoxical relevance of risk analysts supporting it), sharing some thoughts on the risk society paradigm seemed to be a good exercise for this blog.
As well known, the theory of Beck is essentially announcing the advent of a society that, around the early 80’s, concluded her transition towards a “reflexive society” dealing with the technological risks she systemically creates; this, because of Western economical adopted pattern, whose reliance on ultra-hazardous technologies creates, next to the historical unequal wealth distribution, new forms of distributiveness pertaining risks and (global) threats. It is very difficult disagreeing with Beck; Bhopal (1984) and Chernobyl (1986) have confirmed that, indeed, we are exposed to ever known disastrous potentials we have put in place by ourselves; this, through a form of “organized irresponsibility” according to which culpability and liability cannot be assigned individually, but are also denied collectively in the name of “industrial fatalism”.
Yet my fascination and discomfort remains. The architecture of Beck’s paradigm is as solid as Marxist theory of capitalism, in the sense that it captures a mechanism rather than applying one to the scope of investigation; so either one dismounts it by replacing its very foundations, or there’s little room left to objection. On the other hand, the theory is so paradigmatic that one questions whether it really reflects the phenomenon at issue, namely: technological systemic risks. What are they, and what makes them differing from the risks of early modernization?
These remarks reflect, maybe, the typical orientation of risk analysts, who are trained to look at the specific nature of risks in relation to the relevant technology rather than addressing a “discourse on risk” that isolates the concept and cancels such specificities. Cancelling them is what Beck does instead: risk is a sort of phantom assuming all possible forms, from “pollution in foodstuff” to “atomic plants” to “chemical substances”, but also the new forms of uncertainty of individual lives. At the eyes of a risk analyst – that, for the sake of completeness, I am not - this generalization is heresy to say the least; and despite the growing tendency of relegating the role of analysts to the mere calculus of the risk equation, I think their position is worthy of attention. The characterizing features describing the risk arising, for example, from nuclear power generation along the technological life-cycle are totally incomparable with the matter of “pollutants in foodstuff” and, in many ways, also to hazardous chemicals production. That all these human activities are risky is banal (are there some which are not?); that they all represent different forms of risk and that they cannot be covered under the same umbrella of systemic and inter-generational is also a banal, yet omitted consideration in Beck’s seminal work. Biting an apple, scattering ammonia-derived fertilizers and siting the chemical factory that produces them are rings of the same chain; the forms of risk and the relevant challenges associated to each of these actions are, by contrast, rather different when not incomparable, both in societal and individual terms.
However, this explains my initial discomfort with Beck only in part. It took a while to understand that this feeling was also deriving from the philosophical implications of his theories. As Mythen (2007) and Smith (2006) among others point out, Beck meta-theoretical approach is bent towards the creation of a universal societal paradigm that sacrifices complexity and details; and even though this doesn’t compromise her capacity to capture the main lines of developments of contemporary society, understanding the materialistic structure and the dialectic dynamic that marks it is essential for a real appraisal of what we are doing when we put our flag on the risk society planet.
The materialistic footprint of Beck’s paradigm is quite evident, considering that the reflexive and individualistic risk society is wholly determined by the adopted technological (hence, simplifying, industrial and organizational) pattern; whose characterizing feature is the risk she systemically produces. Material structure and ideological over-structure are well identified interdependent elements of the risk society; when Beck says that next to the historical wealth unequal distribution the risk society poses new problems of risk distribution, is indeed writing the next chapter of a history called “capitalism”. As before noticed (Leiss 2001, Eliott 2002) the dialectic vision of history survives in Beck, putting the individual of the risk society in the inescapable condition of being “condemned to” rather than - as finely captured by Smith in his comparative work of Beck’s and Arendt thoughts, 2006 – “liable for” (as Arendt would say, also of her inaction). At this point, it is important to keep in mind that Marx resolved the inescapability of the inequality caused by industrial capitalism by theorizing the removal of its root-causes (i.e. the restricted property of capital); this, through the “organized dis-organization” of industrial society – in other words, through revolution. Which I believe, in less explicit and combative terms, is the same horizon Beck’s theory suggests; with the difference that an individual revolution (for what regard preferences, choices and sub-political participation) will replace the collectively organized one.
If my interpretation is right, and this is what Beck’s paradigm is all bent to, fine: it is a fully legitimate standpoint that has the merit, on top, of having captured important features of late modernization and technological developments with it. However, the discomfort I always felt comes precisely from the intuition that this theory could have led to promote a sort of adverse, and implicitly revolutionary, approach to the matter of risky technologies; without, in the meantime, having provided sufficient understanding of what these risks concretely are (as Alexander has noticed, after all Beck embraces a fully objectivist approach, 1996) and without having minimally brought into discussion the role played by individual perceptions and cultural perspectives (see Douglas 1986, 1982). In Beck’s paradigm risk is a sort of “object of the world” rather than the resultant of complex individual perceptions and societal constructions; furthermore, related benefits (among which, nullified risks) are completely out of the equation - the phantom has only negative and no single potentially positive connotation. Finally, by ignoring the sometimes remarkable differences among different forms of man-created risks Beck ignores the substantially different social and ethical challenges (related to α-site vs. site-specific risks and intra- vs. inter-generational consequences) that need to be considered before any further consideration can be done.
By questioning these elements of Beck’s theory I don’t intend to suggest that I believe that all risky technologies are desirable and acceptable as long as they satisfy a risk-benefit balance or a risk-risk trade-off, regardless of their ethical implications; and neither that the strong materialistic footprint and meta-theoretical presumption of Beck’s theory is per se a good reason to search for alternative models. To the contrary, I support the idea that prior to developing a sense of justified aversion for risky technologies and suggesting a feeling of opposition against them, one should have enlarged the picture of which they are only an element, and have understood which risks risks replace together with the specific ethical challenges they create - but also eventually resolve. Only through a sound, collective and participated ethical appraisal of the technologies posing risk - rather than through addressing a general “discourse on risk” that embraces all aspects of human acting into nature; see Arendt, cited by Smith 1996 - a step forward towards a society empowered to choose and govern them can be done.
I conclude by saying that all of this tortuous reasoning is going to be hopefully published in one article; I hence welcome your comments as even though some years have passed, I still haven’t concluded it….apparently, the phantom keeps escaping me.
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