Risk Society and Confucian Reflexive Modernity

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-162
2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bunn

The paper utilizes climbing practice to examine how risk societies generate risk consciousness in agents. It critiques the cognitive basis of reflexivity, particularly in Beck’s work, and seeks an alternative rooted in embodied practice. Sweetman’s ‘reflexive habitus’ serves as a starting point to synthesize a relationship between Ulrich Beck’s risk society and Bourdieu’s theory of practice. However, it is argued that both Sweetman and Beck overstate the shift reflexive modernity implies. Instead, the article focuses on Bourdieu’s account of ‘regulated improvisation’ to argue that, as fields become more ambiguous, agents must make use of improvisation to match their subjective capacities with objective possibilities. For climbers, this involves a slow development of the perceptual basis for climbing risks. This allows risk to become perceptively controllable, whereby climbers can manage the basis of the risks they take through a host of options, including the length, remoteness and severity of a climbing route.


2020 ◽  
Vol XVIII (2) ◽  
pp. 245-258
Author(s):  
Vlaho Kovačević ◽  
Krunoslav Malenica ◽  
Igor Jelaska

The aim of this research was to analyze the attitudes of the student population at the University of Split towards asylum seekers as a multidimensional threat to the community in the context of risk society. We have approached the empirical data collection within a multidimensional theoretical framework. The first part of our subject interest is the theoretical direction of reflexive modernity and risk society proposed by Ulrich Beck, while the second part deals with the theoretical explanations regarding the perception of asylum seekers as a threat. In accordance with the research objective, a stratified sample of 286 Croatian students from the University of Split expressed their attitudes toward asylum seekers using a scale. Reliability of the used questionnaire was assessed by using test and retest method. Results indicate that students perceived asylum seekers as a statistically significantly more realistic than a symbolic threat. The respondents thus recognize one, equally important yet diffuse phenomenon showing interest among the respondents for the rational choice but also for respecting the individual’s subjectivity.


Author(s):  
Sylvia Mayer

AbstractAnthropogenic climate change constitutes one of the major global risks of our time. In spite of widespread scientific consensus, however, climate change discourse is still characterized by controversy. This controversy reflects both a variety of conflicting interests that frame the perception of climate change and a fundamental trend in our age of reflexive modernity: an increased awareness of scientific uncertainty and a loss of trust in scientific authority. It also defines our current cultural moment as paradoxical: societies worldwide are simultaneously characterized by such increased awareness of scientific uncertainty and by reliance on scientific knowledge to a historically unprecedented degree. According to Ulrich Beck, this paradox in part defines what he conceived of as a new manifestation of modern society, the ‘world risk society.’ This essay addresses the fictional contribution to the risk discourse of global climate change. After introducing the role of science in the world risk society and the climate change novel as a fictional risk narrative, it discusses how Susan M. Gaines’


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurício Pietrocola ◽  
Ernani Rodrigues ◽  
Filipe Bercot ◽  
Samuel Schnorr

The current COVID-19 pandemic raises reflection on the new roles of science education in citizen education in a world characterized by civilization risks, derived from the socioeconomic development. This specific type of risk is treated as manufactured risk as proposed by the sociologist Ulrich Beck. In this work, we report a document analysis starting from Beck's risk society theory, followed by notions of reflexive modernity, risk perception and the Cynefin decision making model for complex problems. COVID-19 pandemic is characterized as a manufactured risk and we present features of it. We state that students are unable to deal with manufactured risk because of the type of problems they are usually prepared to solve at school and the limited risk perception they have. In order to acquire a better science education, we propose the integration of wicked problems in science programs alongside the use of a multidimensional schema, so-called amplified risk perception space, a tool to locate students' risk perception. We hope to contribute to prepare citizens for a world of global and complex events, such as the current pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Arif Budi Darmawan ◽  
Alfira Nuarifia Handitasari

The emergence of modernization and globalization, followed by technology, information, and communication, leads Javanese millennial women to start using modern beauty treatment. On the other side, there are groups of millennial women who prefer to use traditional treatment. Research on traditional treatments and Jamu (Indonesian herbal medicine) are mostly focus on its function rather than reasons of people using it. This study explores the factors and reasons of millennial women to return to use traditional beauty treatment rather than modern one. This study applied qualitative in particular phenomenology to explain this trend and to understand the meaning from the perspective of users. This research conducted in Yogyakarta Special Region and involved eight millennial women. Using theory of Ulrich Beck on risk society, this study suggests that the trend of back to natural treatment among millennials is a form of a reflexive modernity. There are reasons of young women to do this; 1) previous experience of adverse effect of modern beauty treatment; 2) the price of traditional beauty treatment is more affordable than modern one; 3) the feasibility of getting basic ingredients for traditional beauty treatment; 4) belief about the good effect of traditional beauty treatment rather than modern one.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.


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