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The Meaning of Risk

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Understanding Risk-Taking

Part of the book series: Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty ((CRSTRU))

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Abstract

This chapter explores different understandings of risk-taking in academia before positioning the notion of risk-taking within the historical development of modernisation. However, the modern dream comes with an irresolvable tension. Risk-taking aims for a better future but at the same time produces the uncertainties of possible harm. Risk-minimisation and risk-taking are constitutive for the notion of risk. The chapter argues that it is an empirical question how this tension is understood and socially shaped in everyday life to be explored in the empirical chapters of the book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Interestingly, I have recently found a different explanation as well, that it is about the risk that the risk calculation is wrong: ‘Actuarial risks are the risks that the assumptions that actuaries implement into a model to price a specific insurance policy may turn out wrong or somewhat inaccurate’ (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/actuarialrisk.asp).

  2. 2.

    Nowadays more reliable and less intrusive tests are available but still do not provide certainty.

  3. 3.

    Compare for the UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/school-performance-tables-about-the-data or Australia: http://www.nap.edu.au/.

  4. 4.

    The late modern forms of security seem relatively fragile compared to a more comprehensive understanding of security typical for earlier times. Here, security had the form of Geborgenheit , which represents embeddedness in a static order that stabilises the human psyche by stable external social structures (Kaufmann 1970; Bonß and Zinn 2016: 102).

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  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jens O. Zinn

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Zinn, J.O. (2020). The Meaning of Risk. In: Understanding Risk-Taking. Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28650-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28650-7_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28649-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28650-7

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