Nuclear Meltdown and the Culture of Risk

摘要

During the last twenty-five years the hydra-headed idea of risk—nuclear, industrial, health-, allergy-, and terrorist-related—has exerted a profound influence over the shape and direction of social scientific research. Informing academic debate and policy formation, it has modified collective perceptions of everyday life. Construction workers no longer expect to be allowed on site without protective clothing. Pedestrians no longer intuitively calculate that, whatever the law might suggest, reckless drivers hold the whip hand in ill-lit downtown streets. While highway accidents continue to kill and injure large numbers, those transgressing the traffic regulations now expect to receive punishments that more accurately reflect the full social meaning of dangerously irresponsible behavior. Progress remains painfully slow, particularly among the less-well-off members of the community, but public health educators now report marginally less depressing results in relation to campaigns targeting the obesity pandemic. Desperate to reduce the risk of premature death, an increasing proportion of Europeans and Americans now behave in ways that acknowledge some elementary connections between nutrition, exercise, and health, thereby pressuring corporations like McDonalds to modify their advertising and their menus; supersize meals have recently been declared a thing of the past.