8/11/2019 Envireg Reviewer
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Risk Society and the Provident State Ulrich Beck
Between Industrial Society and Risk Society
Two phases in society may be distinguished
1) The residual risk society, which intensifies and legitimates
risks and hazards from decisionsmade without making it the center
of public debate.
2) The risk society, wherein the hazards of industrial society
dominate public, political, and privatedebates. I nstitutions
produce and legitimate risks and hazards which they cant control,
and
consequently sees and criticizes itself as a risk society.
There exist conflicts of accountability:
First: The relationship of modern industrial society to the
resources of nature and culture, which it isusing up in the course
of aggressive modernization
Second: The relationship of society to the hazards and problems
produced by it, which in turn exceedthe bases o societal
conceptions of security.
Third: The exhaustion, dissolution and disenchantment of
collective and group specific sources ofmeaning of the culture of
industrial society, which leads to the work of definition being
imposed upon
the individual himself.
The problem is that: Today human beings are not being re leased
from corporate, religious-transcendental securities into the world
of industrial society, but from industrial society into the
turbulence of world risk society
The Provident State and Risk Society
-The incalculable threats of pre-industrial society (magic,
gods, demons, famine, and plague) are
transformed into calculable risks in the development of
instrumental rational control.
-This leads to society becoming a risk group in insurers terms,
as a provident state and a providing state.
-The unpredictable is turned into the predictable, the risk
becomes the object of providential action.
So when does the Risk Society occur ?
-When the hazards which are decided and produced by society can
defeat the safety systems of the
provident states existing risk c alculations.
This thus occurs when the danger threatened:
1) Can not be limited in terms of time or place 2) Are not
accountable according to the established rules of causality 3)
Cannot be compensated or insured againt.
