Dangers, risks and threats: An alternative conceptualization to the catch-all concept of risk

Abstract

In the last 30 years, the relevance of risk for social actors and societies has been coupled with a growing academic debate extending across disciplines and practical fields. In the sociological literature, however, risk remains a concept with a disputed and overly comprehensive meaning. To overcome the conceptual stretching of risk, this article suggests a conceptualization which intends not only to better specify what risk is but also to distinguish it from what it is not. Building on the principal theories and on recent research, the authors propose integrating into the conceptualization of risk not only the element of agency, which allows us to distinguish between risk and danger, but also the intentionality of social actors in the production of risks, which introduces the distinction between risk and threat. While risks are attributable to positive human intention, so that potential harm is an unintended side effect in the production of benefits, threats are attributable to ill-intentioned actors, deliberately acting to cause damage to others. Illustrating their position with concrete examples, related to health, migration, terrorism and other domains, the authors argue that such a distinction may shed light on why threats are more likely than risks to gain public attention and to mobilize people and institutions to face them. The article suggests that a tripartite typology of dangers, risk and threats may be of relevance for sociological theory and research on risk and uncertainty.