Ulrich beck risk society

Last Updated on November 28, by Karl Thompson. Risk society refers to modern societies in which technological developments such as nuclear power and biotechnology create new risks and uncertainties. Risk society is another way of characteristing postmodern or late modern society. The term was developed by sociologist Ulrich Beck in the mid s to describe the way new technologies were changing our experience of risk.

Ulrich beck second modernization

In Risk Society, science and technology are increasingly viewed as having introduced problems of development and global risks. Nuclear Power and Artificial Intelligence are two excellent examples of this. Nothing appears fixed anymore, and contradictions emerge between scientists and policymakers about the appropriate risk response. Social structures have always faced dangers.

In recent years, science, technology, and industry have created prosperity but have also brought about new dangers for example, those posed by the production of nuclear power , which have focused the thoughts of individuals and societies on a quest for safety and the idea of calculable risk. In the mids, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck claimed that our relationship to society and its institutions had changed profoundly over the past decades, and that this required a new way of thinking about risk.

This is shaped by an awareness that control of—and mastery over—nature and society may be impossible.