Joost Van Loon & Barbara Adam 
The Risk Society and Beyond 
Critical Issues for Social Theory

Ulrich Beck′s best selling
Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management.
The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck′s ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in
Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck.

Table of Content

Introduction – Barbara Adam and Joost van Loon

Repositioning Risk: The Challenge for Social Theory

PART ONE: RECASTING RISK CULTURE

Risk or Angst Society? – Alan Scott

Two Views of Risk, Consciousness and Community

Risk Culture – Scott Lash

Risk, Trust and Scepticism in the Age of New Genetics – Hilary Rose

PART TWO: CHALLENGING BIG SCIENCE

Nuclear Risks – Alan Irwin, Stuart Allan and Ian Welsh

Three Problematics

Genotechnology – Lindsay Prior, Peter Glasner and Ruth Mc Nally

Three Challenges to Risk Legitimation

Health and Responsibility – Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

From Social Change to Technological Change and Vice Versa

PART THREE: MEDIATING TECHNOLOGIES OF RISK

Child Organ Stealing Stories – Claudia Castaneda

Risk, Rumour and Reproductive Technologies

Liturgies of Fear – Howard Caygill

Biotechnology and Culture

Virtual Risks in an Age of Cybernetic Reproduction – Joost van Loon

PART FOUR: P(L)AYING FOR FUTURES

Information, Instantaneity and Global Futures Trading – Deirdre Boden

Discourses of Risk and Utopia – Ruth Levitas

Risk Society Revisited – Ulrich Beck

Theory, Politics and Research Programmes

About the author

Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich. He is the author of Counterpoison (1991) and Ecological Enlightenment (1992).