World Risk Society Research Articles

"This was never about a virus": Perceptions of Vaccination Hazards and Pandemic Risk in #Covid19NZ Tweets.

In this paper, we draw on qualitative methods from the medical humanities and quantitative approaches from corpus linguistics to assess the different mappings of pandemic risks by Twitter (X) users employing the #Covid19nz hashtag. We look specifically at their responses to government measures around vaccines between August and November 2021. Risk, we reveal, was a major discursive thread in tweets during this period, but within our tweets, it was the vaccine rather than the virus around which hazard perception and response were grouped. We find that the discursive stance of those opposed to the vaccine evoked entangled medical and political hazards, untrustworthy experts, obscure information, restrictions on sovereignty, threats to children, and uncertain future dangers, all of which positioned them within what Ulrich Beck termed the world risk society. We also found that these narratives of risk manifested in specific Twitter styles, which employed a consistently larger number of hashtags. The lack of conjunctions between the hashtags, we argue, encouraged a disordered reading of doubt and precaution, as the hashtags presented triggering phrases whose interconnections were hinted at rather than specified. By contrast, those who tweeted in support of government measures were rhetorically led by solutions rather than risks, with one exception: their perception of those who were vaccine opposed. We use scholarship on risk and precautionary logic to map out the contrasting positions in tweets addressing Aotearoa New Zealand's pandemic experience during the closing months of 2021.

Capitalising on Uncertainty: Exploring the Failure of International Law to Address the Risk Generated by the Proliferation of Space Debris

Abstract The increase in the number of space activities in recent decades has led to a concomitant increase in space debris in orbit around Earth. Space debris pose a risk not just for specific satellites, but also on a systemic level, as a collision cascade can result in the near-Earth orbits becoming unusable. In turn, this would entail a loss of the services currently provided through satellites. The international community has recognised this risk. Despite this, states are reluctant to negotiate and conclude international legal rules to address the proliferation of space debris. This article explores a root cause of this discrepancy. It argues that while law is typically seen as the regulator of uncertainty, international law’s regulation of outer space – under the interests of global capital investors – is directed by principles that support processes of commodification (i.e., the freedom of use), rather than principles that manage the risks associated with the proliferation of space debris as these would constrain (or are perceived to constrain) the expansion of capital (e.g., the precautionary principle). Therefore, international law – at the level of principles – is a co-producer of uncertainty. This conclusion is reached by exploring the proliferation of space debris through Ulrich Beck’s world risk society and by incorporating capital and economic power into his work. This inclusion reveals (i) that it is the accumulation of capital that generates risks and (ii) that capital exploits the socially constructed nature of risk to legitimise its expansion. International law – as both a regulator and co-producer of uncertainty – plays an essential role in legitimising these processes.

The becoming of the complex fears among young people: reflection through the prism of the genotype of the domestic culture

The article examines the process of the development and complication of fears, starting with the transition from the traditional society to the “risk society” and the “world risk society” and further to the modern society, the essential features of which, according to the anthropo-sociocultural approach of N. I. Lapin, are “synergistic complexities”. They represent realities as the result of a nonlinear process of their formation in the context of the past, present and future. Their immanent essence is manifested in self-development, self-organization and hybridization of nature, society, technology that is expressed in the emergent effects of instability, inequality, dynamic chaos, which produce fears for people about the uncertainties of the present and future. Specifically, two types of the synergistic complexities are considered, which are the determinants of the “culture of fear” (U. Beck) and the formation of a specific fear market in which staged fears of the complex type dominate and the means of their “treatment” are sold. However, the content of fears is determined not only by global trends in the transformation of the universe, but also by local national factors and, above all, by the genotype of the country’s culture. In this regard, foreign pragmatic approaches to minimizing fears are critically analyzed, which are contrasted with the research of the domestic scientists offering culturally determined means of overcoming them. In the conclusion, the authors substantiate the contours of the concept of a strategy for the reflexive treatment of fears, aimed at counteracting the penetration of staged fears into the consciousness of Russian youth.

Revisiting the Geography of Globalisation in the Covid-19 Pandemic using Risk Theory

My review paper is part of Covid-IAS Project, funded by National Research Council of Thailand. The paper focuses on the geography of globalisation in the Covid -19 pandemic. I employ Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk society to critically examine geography. Although Beck is not a geography theorist, his theory can be used extensively and alternatively to study the geography of globalisation. By drawing upon Beck, I argue that the geography of globalisation in the context of Covid -19 displays forms of dependency upon the politics of knowledge about Covid -19 vaccines. With the production of knowledge, the vaccines have caused various forms of dependency, including global dependency (external knowledge about the effectiveness of the vaccines and their side-effects), regional dependency and international dependency (the EU and its member states), the interplay between global dependency and international dependency (COVAX), and the emergence of the nation states as regional production hubs (AstraZeneca vaccine). Although Beck’s theory enables us to critically investigate the geography of globalisation, Beck ignores the significance of the nation states in globalised risk situation. In contrast with Beck, I suggest that nation states have still played important roles in world risk society, especially in the context of Covid -19.

Risk analysis versus risk governance: the case study of the Ebola Virus Disease

Risk notions mostly espoused by the world risk society and securitization theories have influenced the two major risk handling methods: risk analysis and risk governance. Engaging the risk notions, some scholars and policy makers have identified risk governance as superior to risk analysis. Risk analysis, considered the classical method, has technical parameters, leaving out important societal considerations. Risk governance, an emerging method, reaches beyond technical into societal parameters, so it is more holistic. This risk analysis-governance distinction prompts the question on what exactly risk governance adds to risk analysis. To answer the question, the article uses methodology and concepts in policy studies: qualitative methods, mainly a policy analysis of the 2013/2014 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak as a case study and synthesis of relevant bodies of literature, backed by secondary data from institutional and country sources; and the adaptive and integrative risk governance model of Klinke and Renn (2012) as a conceptual framework to guide the policy analysis. The claim is that, depending on the model, risk governance mainly adds components that incorporate multilevel and multistakeholder participation to enhance risk handling. The overall finding in support of this claim is that risk governance, as more entrenched in international risk handling, considerably allows both multistakeholder and multilevel participation under its components, while risk analysis, generally dominating national risk handling, does not allow substantial multistakeholder participation under its components, although it appears that it could considerably allow multilevel participation as well. Despite the additions of risk governance to risk analysis, as practiced, both methods fail to be as inclusive as possible, suggesting there is room for improvement to risk handling.

An autoethnography of automated powerlessness: lacking platform affordances in Instagram and TikTok account deletions

Situated within the field of platform governance studies, this paper shares findings from an ‘autoethnography of automated powerlessness’, drawing from the researcher’s disempowering experience of being a heavily moderated social media user. Using theoretical frameworks blending affordances and World Risk Society theories, this paper contextualises my experiences of moderation of my pole dance instructor, activist and blogger account @bloggeronpole from February to October 2021 within social media’s broader de-platforming of nudity and sexuality, finding fallacies within platforms’ own affordances, which lack mechanisms to aid or rehabilitate de-platformed accounts. With little to no information from platforms about the details of their moderation, qualitative, ethnographic and autoethnographic explorations of their governance are all users currently have to fight and understand their puritan, patriarchal censorship of nudity and sexuality, which are often conflated with risk. This study concludes with recommendations for different options for better, more equal and community focused moderation.

NEOLIBERALIZAM I COVID-19 / NEOLIBERALISM AND COVID 19

In this paper, I will explicate neoliberal contribution to human suffering of ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I will give an explanation about connections of modernisation process with social uncertanities and creation of world risk society. I will connect neoliberal capitalist paradigm with basic mechanisms of social uncertanity, showing the modes which contribute to interests of global capital. Exploatation of risk and profiting on human tragedies are one of the ways of capital reproduction, and I will connect that with political and economic practices during the COVID-19 crisis. Above all, I want to show how the commercialization of society neglects basic human welfare and that the domination of ideology of globalism doesn’t have any intentions to make global society more stable place, because it doesn’t know any efficient, on collective wellbeing directed, mechanisms of leading global processes.

Covid-19 and Sargassum blooms: impacts and social issues in a mass tourism destination (Mexican Caribbean).

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Mexican Caribbean in late March 2020, this world-renown tourist destination had already been struggling with Sargassum influxes for 5 years. The nature and magnitude of these two impacts are not directly comparable, but both have contributed to profoundly transforming the region. As extreme COVID-19 containment measures were implemented nationwide, the tourism industry contracted by 98% as over 23 million visitors failed to arrive in 2020 and 400 daily flights stopped landing at Cancun Airport. Sargassum accumulations on Caribbean beaches, and their collection, containment and removal had been a challenging socioeconomic issue in the Caribbean region years before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the tourist industry. We explore Beck’s concept of a risk society as an approach to these socioenvironmental impacts. We analyze five premises about risk society, combining them with a mainly ethnography methodology involving 61 informants. We present the results in terms of impacts. Using the concept of trajectory based on pandemic event chronology, we review the main stages of the pandemic during the research period (May to July 2020) and how the studied population worked to prevent virus infection and spread. We employ narratives to analyze risk perception both of the Sargassum influx and the pandemic. The discussion highlights the importance of moving beyond nature/society dichotomies and dualisms. In summary, the profound transformations caused by these impacts provide a unique opportunity for the Mexican Caribbean to reconstitute itself in a way that encompasses the world risk society concept, perhaps in a more socially and environmentally resilient incarnation.

World Risk Society and Constructing Cosmopolitan Realities: A Bourdieusian Critique of Risk Society.

Current global crises and threats have revealed the growing implications of Ulrich Beck's theory of risk society. Rather than being a theory of risk, risk society theory is more a social theory of the new social world and modernity. Risk society theory encompasses a new social ontology of the social in the era of uncertainties and crises. Beck also proposes the cosmopolitan outlook and particularly methodological cosmopolitanism as the epistemology and methodology of the world risk society. Yet, a close examination of Beck's social theory reveals a contradiction between the two aspects. On the one hand, in the ontological dimension, we are faced with the primacy of the indeterminate and the empirical, but on the other hand, Beck's epistemological prescriptive eliminate the possibility of reaching them. The current article aims to address this incompatibility. In doing so, first, the main pillars of risk society theory, and then the cosmopolitan outlook and sociology are discussed. By criticizing Beck's epistemological apparatus as well as juxtaposing the theory of risk society and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of action and fields, in the final section, the article proposes a solution to complete the ontology of risk society and overcome some of its epistemological problems.

New ‘old’ risks on the small farm: Iconic species rewilding in Europe

Increasing production to meet the growing demand for food whilst conserving biodiversity and reducing pressure on natural ecosystems is a dual planetary challenge of the highest order. The world’s small farmers are at the forefront of this challenge, being asked to make greater contributions to both enhancing food and nutrition security, and to the stewardship of natural assets. We focus on rewilding involving the conservation, management, and reintroduction of species, and how the praxis impacts small farmers in Europe, simultaneously being encouraged to increase food production. We present empirical data from four European case studies featuring Norwegian wolves, Scottish Sea Eagles, and wild boar in both Spain and Italy. We adopt Beck’s World Risk Society concept to situate what small farmers report as trade-offs, within a broader sociological schema, to show underlying features of a new landscape.

Citizenship Education in World Risk Society: an Evolutionary perspective

Citizenship Education in World Risk Society: an Evolutionary perspective

COVID-19, routine dynamics and reflexivity of structure. On the eventful change of Fridays for Future's protest forms

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Dis/Kontinuität von Routinen zu Beginn der COVID-19-Pandemie, die als Zusammenhang multipler, miteinander verschränkter „Handlungs- und Interaktionskrisen“ (ÖZS Sonderheft 2016, 41/1) begriffen wird. Statt als äußere Faktizität und Ursache des Wandels werden Krise(n) als von Akteur*innen soziomateriell erhandelte und damit kontextspezifisch hervorgebrachte konzipiert. Der Artikel greift die in den organizational studies geführte Debatte zum intendierten Wandel von Routinen auf und ergänzt diese durch eine Reflexion auf die Rolle von Krisen. In methodologischer Hinsicht verbindet der Beitrag Fragen über Routinedynamiken mit der Perspektive der eventful sociology, die im soziomateriellen Erhandeln von Routinen ein potenzielles Initial weitergreifender Strukturveränderungen sieht und daher eine strenge Zeitverlaufsbeschreibung entlang von Pfaden einfordert. Anhand der Ergebnisse einer prozessorientierten ethnografischen Studie zu Fridays for Future Wien identifiziert der Beitrag zwei Bedingungsmomente, die der Reflexivität von Struktur zugrunde liegen (normativ-diskursive und materiell-körperliche) und bettet dieses Verständnis von Reflexivität in die Debatte zur (Welt‑)Risikogesellschaft ein.

Interconnected Society – Interconnected (Criminal) Law.

The rhizome is an infinite, dynamic root network without a main branch. It is not just a scientific term that describes the growth of fungi; the image of the rhizome also reflects today’s interconnectedness of society driven by globalisation and digitisation. This article explores how rhizomatic structures are currently mirrored in criminal law (scholarship). First a distinction is drawn between the rhizomatic perspective and existing theoretical concepts for the description of global dependencies, such as the “world (risk) society”. Second the article analyses how new criminal norms are needed to address newly created vulnerabilities. Such novel global vulnerabilities include e.g., computer crimes. Further, it is explained how a world-wide interconnectedness of vulnerabilities may lead to a convergence of criminal law standards. The paper concludes by advocating for an interconnected criminal law scholarship.

The carelessness of entrepreneurial universities in a world risk society: a feminist reflection on the impact of Covid-19 in Australia

ABSTRACT In this reflective piece, I consider how the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of Australian universities. I argue that government and university management have been careless of international students and academics and their health and wellbeing, with significant equity and long-term effects as to the role of the university in a democracy.

Integrating Key Insights of Sociological Risk Theory into the Ecosystem Services Framework

Environmental risks give urgency to the need to understand the society–nature relationship. While the ecosystem services (ES) framework allows analysis of interrelationships between biophysical supply and human demand for natural resources, further research is needed to understand what drives societal demand for ES. Here, I explore how incorporation of the key sociological theories of risk (systems theory, ‘world risk society’, and cultural theory of risk) can advance this understanding. By examining these theories, the following key insights were identified: (1) A deeper understanding of societal structures and risk perception helps to understand culturally driven patterns of ES demand; (2) sociological ES research must use inter- and transdisciplinary methods to understand the drivers of ES demand and risk perception. It must also link this understanding to the natural sciences’ knowledge of the drivers of ES supply if it is to identify new instruments of environmental governance; (3) while anthropocentric in character, the ES framework, especially one that is modified by the concept of risk, enables society to reflect on its role as a proactive part of a social–ecological system, rather than a passive victim of nature’s whims. This change in perspective may prove to be a key step in achieving sustainable development.

Managing the Covid-19 pandemic through individual responsibility: the consequences of a world risk society and enhanced ethopolitics

At the end of March 2020, international media present Swedish management of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic as soft and irresponsible. Thus, Sweden, which is usually regarded as exceptionally risk averse and cautious, has chosen an unexpected risk management approach. The aim of this article is to reflect on how the Swedish government has managed the Covid-19 pandemic until early April 2020 from two theoretical perspectives, the risk society thesis and governmentality theory. We make a brief review of how previous pandemics have been managed compared to Covid-19 and try to understand the consequences of the Swedish handling of present pandemic with a particular focus on the governance of the pandemic and the exercise of power rather than definite risk management strategies during the pandemic.

The Fukushima Disaster and the “Clash of Risk Cultures” : Japanese and German Journalists’ Perceptions of a Nuclear Crisis

The article examines how nuclear risk was perceived by German and Japanese journalists covering the Fukushima Disaster. Drawing from the theoretical framework of Beck’s World Risk Society, the journalists’ personal risk perceptions are reconstructed from narrative interviews, adding an important variable to the understanding of journalistic communication on risk and disaster. The results indicate that German correspondents in Japan were highly concerned about their personal safety while Japanese journalists hardly showed any anxiety with regard to the nuclear disaster. The varying perceptions also widely applied to the journalists’ professional experience of the disaster, although further influences like organizational culture came into play as well. The article concludes that historically shaped discourses are an important macro factor for media reporting on risk and disaster.

Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change

Over the past few decades, notions of environmental, ecological or green gentrification in cities have entered the lexicon of critical urban scholars and activists alike, not least in North American and European settings. This happens amidst growing concerns that the current policy and planning emphasis on making cities more sustainable serves in some cases to exacerbate socio-material inequalities in the city via forms of residential displacement. In this critical commentary, I respond to recent calls for expanding the socio-geographical parameters of green gentrification research, and for enriching the agenda via new theoretical approaches, by highlighting one particular avenue of problematisation that seems so far conspicuously lacking. This is the realisation that, in an unequal world of anthropogenic climate change, green gentrification must be grasped not only at local but also, simultaneously, at transnational scales of risk-induced socio-spatial restructuring. My suggested approach to a more multi-scalar and climate-sensitive notion of green gentrification proceeds via sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theorising of the intensifying socio-material inequalities of climate change in ‘world risk society’, along with ethnographic work on urban climate politics in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and in the North-West Indian city of Surat. While allowing us to analyse the many local ambivalences wedded with urban sustainability politics in the global North and global South alike, Beck helpfully insists that we keep their unequal trans-local interconnectedness in view, yielding a radicalised notion of green gentrification as set in-between and connecting localised and globalised frames of inequality in new ways.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRISIS IN THE RISK SOCIETY: PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

The article is devoted to the philosophical consideration of anthropological crisis in the risk society in his historical transformation. The research is aimed to anthropological analysis of the risk society in order to identify its new features in the modern era. As a methodological principle of research, the author defines the distinction between anthropological and cosmological approaches in philosophy. It is about their complex relationships and contradictions in the development of the civilizational process. The anthropological crisis becomes apparent when society becomes a “society of risk” in the modern era. The article reveals the cause of the anthropological crisis in the risk society: the social production of wealth becomes the production of risks. In the XXI century there is a “world society of risk” (Ulrich Beck), which is associated with the process of globalization. The risk research methodology suggests the need to anticipate unpredictable. The main difficulty in risk analysis is that the risk is between certainty and uncertainty, between rational and irrational. Two main trends - the reflexivity of the unknown and the cosmopolitan moment - point to a global change in the society in the 21st century, whose priority is security. In the historical and social philosophical perspective, security is understood as a concept that encompasses integrity, inviolability, inviolability with respect to corporeality, life and property. In the context of the modern anthropological crisis, security has become the main value concept of the social political language. The logic of uniqueness gives way to the logic of ambiguity, which finds its expression in the connection of the risk society with the cosmopolitism. The “cosmopolitan moment” of the world risk society presupposes recognition of the uniqueness of the Other as an opportunity to overcome the anthropological crisis.

Repurposing the university in the 21st century: toward a progressive global vision

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the contemporary university has been redefined across the world in terms of success in global competition, usefulness for money-making, and efficiency, meaning application of New Public Management ideas. My aim is to sketch an alternative and future-oriented ethico-political conception of the university to serve counterhegemonic purposes. First I discuss briefly the Humboldtian myth and legacy. Second, I summarize Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the historical and practical limits of the idea of the university. Third, in response to Habermas’s criticism, I outline a non-speculative, scientific realist way of understanding the unity of all sciences and humanities. Fourth, I locate the idea of the university in the twenty-first century global context, understood in part as world risk society. And finally, I argue that the autonomy of the university should be anchored in the rules, principles and institutional arrangements of multi-spatial metagovernance, rather than just those of territorial states. The future of the university calls for new cosmopolitan institutional solutions and world citizenship.