Suchergebnisse

More than 30 years have passed since Ulrich Beck published Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. In it, he argued that contemporary Western societies are increasingly preoccupied by, and organised around, considerations of risk. Beck's work had a transformative effect on social theory, yet its impact on law and legal scholarship remains largely unexplored. This collection of essays, collated shortly after Beck's death in 2015, explores and reconsiders the legal foundations, concepts and methodologies of the "modern project" in light of risk society theory. In this volume, academics and lawyers from around the world engage in one of the first comprehensive interrogations of the impact of risk society theory on law and legal scholarship. The authors critically examine topics such as law and (ir)responsibility, reflexive modernisation, and liability, responsibility and accountability through the prism of risk society theory. This collection aims to explore the capacity of law and legal processes to meet the challenges of modernity and adapt to unfamiliar and changing social paradigms. This collection will interest socio-legal scholars, practitioners and students confronted with the novel dilemmas of contemporary society

This article explores the concept of 'risk' that is both an epistemological tool and major facet of "late modernity" (Delanty, 1999). During the 1970s, the use of the notion 'risk' was mainly confined to 'natural sciences', when the concept was used to analyse and improve the 'security' of technological systems (Giddens, 1990). According to Delanty (1999) it was not until the 1980s and 1990s that social science based 'disciplines' discovered the importance of the topic in relation to changes affecting modern society. In particular, the disciplinary development of Sociology, for example, has discovered 'risk' as one of the important aspects of neo‐liberalism and modernity (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; Luhmann, 1993; Delanty, 1999). Sociological conceptions of risk are rapidly changing the role of social science (Delanty, 1999). For example, Delanty (1999) claims that there are studies on epistemology or legitimation of risk knowledge. The conflict between sociologically informed concepts of 'risk' and the more traditional, probabilistic calculations of risk represent a contest of competing social philosophies and visions about the future development of human and financial resources, relationship between economic growth and environmental protection, role of government and individuality, and projections and visions about the future it can be argued. A sociologically informed understanding of risk illustrates the interconnectedness of an "ageing population," social policy and social life. From this perspective, risk is more than a calculation of costs and benefits, it is a theoretical mechanism for weighing different sets of political orientations which impinge on the positioning of individuals and populations.