Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science and Environmental Decision-Making

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• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 272
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Environmental decision-making in recent decades has become increasingly dependent on scientific expertise. Grounded in universal principles of knowledge, these expert evaluations often depart from the assessments of ordinary members of the public. Whether the issue is nuclear power, genetic testing, food safety, or biodiversity, conservation lay people are increasingly charging experts with being ignorant of local contextual considerations. Scientists, as well as many policy-makers, in turn contend that the public is hopelessly irrational in gauging environmental risks. A growing group of social theorists has begun to take a keen interest in these disputes because risk captures central themes of late modernity. Increasing individualization, emerging new social movements, and declining public trust in key institutions are notions that loom large in these debates. Highlighting both theoretical and empirical perspectives, this volume brings together a distinguished group of environmental sociologists who critique and extend current thinking on what it means to live in a 'risk society'.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
Environmental Sociology, Social Theory, and Risk: an Introductory Discussion (Maurie J. Cohen)....Pages 3-31
Front Matter ....Pages 33-33
The Rational Actor Paradigm in Risk Theories: Analysis and Critique (Ortwin Renn, Carlo C. Jaeger, Eugene A. Rosa, Thomas Webler)....Pages 35-61
Menus of Choice: the Social Embeddedness of Decisions (Kristen Purcell, Lee Clarke, Linda Renzulli)....Pages 62-79
Front Matter ....Pages 81-81
Dealing with Environmental Risks in Reflexive Modernity (Joris Hogenboom, Arthur P. J. Mol, Gert Spaargaren)....Pages 83-106
The ‘Risk Society’ Reconsidered: Recreancy, the Division of Labor, and Risks to the Social Fabric (William R. Freudenburg)....Pages 107-120
Front Matter ....Pages 121-121
‘Outsiders Just Don’t Understand’: Personalization of Risk and the Boundary Between Modernity and Postmodernity (Michael R. Edelstein)....Pages 123-142
The Exxon Valdez Disaster as Localized Environmental Catastrophe: Dissimilarities to Risk Society Theory (J. Steven Picou, Duane A. Gill)....Pages 143-170
Front Matter ....Pages 171-171
Discovering and Inventing Hazardous Environments: Sociological Knowledge and Publics at Risk (Stephen R. Couch, Steve Kroll-Smith, Jeffrey D. Kindler)....Pages 173-195
Scientific Evidence or Lay People’s Experience? On Risk and Trust with Regard to Modern Environmental Threats (Rolf Lidskog)....Pages 196-224
Taming Risks through Dialogues: the Rationality and Functionality of Discursive Institutions in Risk Society (Klaus Eder)....Pages 225-248
Front Matter ....Pages 249-249
A Historical Perspective on Risk (David Lowenthal)....Pages 251-257
Back Matter ....Pages 258-264

✦ Subjects

Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, multidisciplinary; Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, multidisciplinary