Risk Society and the Distribution of Bads

Abstract

A series of important sociological works characterize the contemporary age in terms of a fundamental break from earlier forms of modernity. These various descriptions of the current age, such as ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman 2000), the ‘network society’ (Castells 2000), an age of ‘mobile hybrids’ (Urry 2000) and ‘risk society’ (Beck 1992a), despite their differences, are unified by their emphasis on a heightened sense of discontinuity with the past. For several of these theorists this fundamental shift in the social conditions of contemporary society likewise requires a shift in the basic methods of sociology (Urry 2007) and of the concepts used in social analysis (Beck 1992a). One of the most important and contentious of these claims regarding the need to jettison prior sociological concepts, which forms a key departure point of this study, is Ulrich Beck’s declaration that in the risk society the concept ‘class’ will no longer be adequate to understand this new emerging social reality (Beck 1992a).