Late Modernity and Environmental Risk

1. Late Modernity and Environmental Risk

2. Main Questions • How can we understand contemporary societies in terms of their relationship with the natural environment? • How do ‘late modern’ societies differ in this respect (if at all) from modern societies? • What are the defining features of society-environment relations in late modern societies? • What changes are taking place, what are the implications, and how can we understand what is at stake?

3. Lecture Outline • Ulrich Beck and Risk Society – Who, What, Why? • The Risk Society – When, Where, What? • What are the risks in the Risk Society? • What’s new about risks in the Risk Society? • The Calculus of Risks in modernity. • Incalculable risks and the Risk Society. • The implications of incalculable risks. • Social contradictions of the Risk Society. • Beck’s proposed solutions. • Assessing the Risk Society thesis.

4. Who? What? Why? • Ulrich Beck (1944 - ) one of world’s leading sociologists. • Part of German intellectual tradition (Weber, Habermas) also influenced by Greens. • Overarching grand theory of contemporary world, developed since late 1980’s • Puts environmental crisis at heart of theory. • Sees society-nature relations as central to understanding today’s society and its problems.

5. WHEN is Risk Society? • Risk society = a historically specific type of society. • Beck (with Anthony Giddens) divides modernity into sub-periods: FIRST MODERNITY – early modernity (1500’s to about 1800) – high modernity (1800 to c.1960: industrial society) SECOND MODERNITY/LATE MODERNITY – about 1960 to the present (1960 - ) • Second modernity = Risk Society. • Risk societies for Beck represent a ‘second modernity’, still modern (not postmodern) but a distinctly different phase of modernity.

6. WHERE is Risk Society? • Applies most obviously to the most advanced Western capitalist countries. – Europe, US, Canada, Australia, Japan. BUT no country consequences. immune from consequences. • In that sense, the Risk Society is a world risk society.

7. WHAT is Risk Society? • A society characterised by massive invisible risks (known & unknown) that are beyond institutional control, leading to generalised anxiety and fear. • Risk society is modernity in entropy (modernity turned against itself – ‘reflexive modernization’). • Modernity no longer able to cope with its own unintended consequences. • Risks generated by modernization processes increasingly swamp modern institutions.

8. WHAT kind of risks? • Major risks in Risk Society are HUMAN-MADE. • ENVIRONMENTAL: – Industrial pollution (accidents/‘acceptable levels’) – Agro-chemical pollution (intensive farming) – Toxins in food, water, clothes (cancer/allergies) – Nuclear power (low level exposure/meltdown) – Biotechnology (GM foods, cloning, unpredictable) – Deforestation, extinction and bio-diversity loss. – Climate change (extremes/flooding/Gulf stream)

9. HEALTH (often linked to environment): – Diet (obesity epidemic/junk foods/eating disorders) – New pathogens and diseases (avian flu/swine flu/HIV/MRSA/antibiotic resistant ‘superbugs’) – Pharmaceutical (new drugs/supplements/testing) • ECONOMIC: – Financial crisis/economic collapse/recession. – Unemployment (‘flexible’ labour, short contracts) • POLITICAL/SECURITY: – Terrorism (chemical/biological/nuclear/WMD) – Warfare (high tech, nuclear war, germ warfare)

10. So what is new? Haven’t there always been risks? • There were many risks in pre-modern societies: – Diseases (e.g. Plague) – Earthquakes – Volcanic eruptions – Famine (crop failures) – Wildfires – Wild animal attacks

11. But these risks were largely natural disasters, not human-made (or not perceived as human made).  Risks in the Risk Society are human-made and perceived as such. • Pre-modern risks were attributed to external powers of nature or the supernatural. • Risks in the Risk Society are known to be human made (hence they become social problems). • They were always relatively local in scope, not a threat to all humans/the planet.  Some risks in Risk Society are global in scope.

12. So what about risks in first modernity? • Many risks in ‘first modernity’ (1800-1960) • Modernization processes created lots of risks: – Industrialisation (industrial risks/pollution/accidents) – Urbanisation (smog/traffic accidents/health risks) • These were human-made risks, but they were also CALCULABLE RISKS. • i.e. Industrial society developed a complex social and institutional approach to managing these risks. • Beck calls this ‘the calculus of risk’.

13. The Calculus of Risk • Developed by industrial societies (high modernity) • Way of dealing with consequences of industrialism. • Made risks manageable by social institutions. • Emergence of insurance. • Risks de-individualised by being expressed as statistical probabilities. • Opened up risks to regulation (e.g. occupational hazards issue for Trades Unions) • Allowed insurance premiums to be calculated.

14. Allowed industrialism to deal with its own unforeseen consequences. • Precautionary after-care (planning for accidents) • The ‘polluter pays’ principle = system for fair/just distribution of consequences of risk. • Created security in the face of an uncertain future. – “Modernity, which brings uncertainty into every niche of existence, finds its counter-principle in a social compact against industrially produced hazards and damages, stitched together out of public and private insurance agreements.” (1992, p. 100). • This social contract legitimated modern industrial ‘progress’ despite its associated risks (‘security pact’)

15. And what about in Risk Society? • This social contract is fundamentally violated. • Calculus of risk is undermined, no longer applies, is no longer adequate. • Because of the development of ‘mega-hazards’, which involve INCALCULABLE RISKS. – “Since the middle of the [20th] century the social institutions of industrial society have been presented with the historically unprecedented possibility of the destruction through decision-making of all life on this planet.” (1992, p. 101)

16. ‘Mega-Hazards’ • In Risk Society the risks are not manageable calculated risks (as in modernity), but instead are ‘mega-hazards’: • Created by modern science and technology, but now beyond their control. • Potentially global in scope. • Can pose an ‘existential threat’. • Consequences both ‘creeping’ (gradual but deadly) and ‘galloping’ (extremely rapid). • The worst imaginable accident would be self-escalating into an almost apocalyptic scenario…

17. What are the ‘mega-hazards’? • Nuclear • Biotech • Chemical-industrial • Ecological/(climate change)

18. A few real examples • Chernobyl (1986) & Fukushima (2011) nuclear disasters. • Sellafield leaks (21 between 1950 – 2000). • BSE (‘mad-cow disease’) 2001. • Bhopal chemical disaster (1984) Beck – These are not just freak accidents, but predictable statistical inevitabilities over time.

19. What are the implications? • Worst-case scenarios make calculus of risk meaningless. • Damage crosses borders and hard to limit. • Precautionary after-care rendered meaningless. • Consequences and damage are beyond all calculation. • The individual ‘polluter pays’ principle increasingly inapplicable (due to multiple sources of pollution). • Insurance is unworkable (premiums incalculable).

20. Risk Society therefore = an uninsured society. – “There is no institution, neither concrete nor probably even conceivable, which would be prepared for the WIA, the ‘worst imaginable accident’, and there is no social order that could guarantee its social and political constitution in the worst possible case. There are many, however, which are specialized in the only remaining possibility: denying the dangers.” (1992: 101) • This creates a sharp contradiction between increasingly risk-averse bureaucratic societies and the open legalisation of mega-hazards with no imaginable after-care or social insurance.

21. Beck on Climate Change (in 1992)... “The greenhouse effect, for example, will raise temperatures and sea levels around the world through the melting of polar ice caps. The period of warming will submerge entire coastal regions, turn farmland into desert, shift climatic zones in unpredictable ways and dramatically accelerate the extinction of species. The poorest in the world will be hit the hardest. They will be least able to adapt themselves to the changes in the environment. Those who find themselves deprived of the basis of their economic existence will flee the zone of misery. A veritable exodus of eco-refugees and climatic asylum seekers will flood across the wealthy North; crises in the Third and Fourth Worlds could escalate into wars. Even the climate of world politics will change at a faster pace than is imaginable today. So far, all these are just projections, but we must take them seriously. When they have become reality, it will already be too late to take action.” (1992, p. 110-111).

22. Risk societies are trying to manage these threats with institutions set up for risks of high modernity. • Incapable of dealing with nature of new risks. • Result = institutional failure: they try to deny and ‘normalise’ the risks. – “Hazards of the nuclear and chemical age, therefore, have a social as well as physical explosiveness.” (1992, p. 104) – “Political security in risk societies is the security of not thinking about things.”(p. 101) • Experts and political institutions systematically play down the risks (they are part of the problem).

23. Contradictions of Risk Society • Risk Society full of growing contradictions. • Denial and/or non-management of risk increasingly obvious to public. • Resulting in loss of faith in centralised modern political, legal and media institutions. • Loss of faith in modern rationality, expertise, science & ‘progress’ (some de-rationalization) • Generalised loss of trust, suspicion of official lies and systematic cover-ups (‘rational paranoia’) • Fear, anxiety & suspicion pervade everyday life.

24. Risk Society as Second Modernity • Beck argues that in Second Modernity (Risk Society) old social structures of First Modernity becoming irrelevant. • Old divisions between social classes based on property, labour and capital, being replaced by new divisions based on contours of risk (‘risk winners/losers’) • Driving force goes from ‘I am hungry’ to ‘I am afraid’. • New inequalities based on geographies of risk/insecurity (e.g. labour markets with core and peripheral workers). • Creators of the risks not those most affected by them. • But Beck insists that risks in Risk Society are egalitarian in principle, because they potentially affect everyone.

25. The democratic gap in risk society • Failure of social contract based on insurance leaves only ‘technical assurance’. • But this is a matter of ‘expert’ opinion. • When experts are also often the originators of the risks. • i.e. The people responsible for assessing the risks are also the ‘culprits’ (e.g. Fracking, Neonicotinoids). • Techno-science conducts a ‘politics of the fait accompli.’ • Result = Industry and technoscience escape democratic scrutiny (‘a monopoly on concealed social change’) • The industrial techno-sciences cause the risks in search of profitability, but society must live with the consequences.

26. What can be done? Beck’s proposal • Advocates an ‘ecological extension of democracy’ and political scrutiny. • Systematic consideration of alternatives, dissenting voices, dissenting experts. • Development of ‘sub-politics’ (environmental groups, social movements) in response to institutional failure . • These expose and confront risks (public awareness) • The Risk Society also undermines itself even more effectively than its critics (contradictions, accidents) • All this creates possibility for ‘an age of ecological enlightenment.’

27. But Beck is ultimately not very optimistic: – “No one knows how, whether and by what means it may be possible to really throttle back the self-endangering momentum of the global risk society.” (1996, 42). • Risk Society is a society in which the negative unintended consequences of modernity are piled so high that they are spinning out of control. • The risks are destabilising and delegitimising the very institutions set up to control them. • The attempt to treat each accident as a temporary set-back or freak occurrence is becoming visibly inadequate and unconvincing. • In this way the environmental crisis is also an institutional crisis of ‘second modernity.’

28. For Beck that is why environmental problems are also social problems: – “Environmental problems are not problems of our surroundings, but – in their origins and through their consequences – are thoroughly social problems, problems of people, their history, their living conditions, their relationship to the world and reality, their social, cultural and political situations... Anyone who continues to speak of nature as non-society is speaking in terms from a different century, which no longer captures our reality.” (1992, 81).

29. Evaluation • A theory – but is there enough evidence? - Evidential basis strong enough? - Evidence chosen to fit argument? (not ‘scientific’) • Too generalising? – “risk” can’t explain everything - Contemporary social conditions more complex - History more complex than a transition from First Modernity to Second Modernity

30. 3) Tends to focus too much on spectacular risks? e.g. nuclear disaster, global warming. Less attention given to more mundane risks / risks that were already important in First Modernity e.g. car crashes, smoking, alcohol, which are increasingly regulated. 4) Claims that social class is becoming irrelevant • But class very often dictates how likely you are to be at risk e.g. health diet/unemployment. • The rich can often buy their way out of risky situations (though he acknowledges this).  So class membership & level of wealth still very important.

31. 5) Beck’s macro-approach can seem to assume that everyonesees risks in the same way / has the same risk priorities. Lupton and Tulloch (2003): What risks an individual thinks important varies with • Their social position (especially class) • Their gender and ethnicity (e.g. fear of crime) • Their geography (where they live) • Their specific personal life-history This also applies to how people deal with risks.

32. 6) Far from risks always being denied, the rhetoric of risk is often USED by governments for their own purposes: • Frighten the public • Use this to drive through policies e.g. “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Logic of pre-emptive action “Global terrorists” as a feared Other legitimising repressive measures to further control the populace (anti-terror laws).

33. 7) Rhetoric of risk can be similarly used by various groups e.g. far-right groups targeting asylum seekers and immigrants Risks (e.g. economic) blamed on stigmatised minorities

34. QUESTION – the politics of risk • Do politics and the media normalize risks and threats, or do they exaggerate (or even invent) them? • Can the case be argued that insecurity, anxiety and the language of risk are actually political tools? • Or are some threats invented or exaggerated in order to divert us from the ‘real’ threats?

35. GROUP WORKAssessing the Risk Society thesis Working in groups, discuss: • How persuasive is the Risk Society thesis? • What aspects are you convinced by and why? • What aspects do you find unconvincing and why? • Can you think of some examples which support the thesis? Explain. • Can you think of some counter-examples? • How convincing/realistic are Beck’s solutions? • Can you think of any ways in which his theory needs modifying, in your view?

36. Assessing the Risk Society thesis DEBATE We are living in a ‘risk society’. FOR and AGAINST... (Arguments, examples, evidence)

37. Next week... Core theoretical perspectives on society-nature relations.  Remember to do the Key Reading!