Definition
According to sociologist Anthony Giddens, a risk society is "a society increasingly preoccupied with the future (and also with safety), which generates the notion of risk," whilst the German sociologist Ulrich Beck defines it as "a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernisation itself (Beck 1992:21)".
Beck (1992:50) defined modernization as,
"surges of technological rationalization and changes in work and organization, but beyond that includes much more: the change in societal characteristics and normal biographies, changes in lifestyle and forms of love, change in the structures of power and influence, in the forms of political repression and participation, in views of reality and in the norms of knowledge. In social science's understanding of modernity, plough, the steam locomotive and the microchip are visible indicators of a much deeper process, which comprises and reshapes the entire social structure."
Read more about this topic: Risk Society
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