Saturday, October 5, 2019
Technology and beck's concept of world risk society Essay
Technology and beck's concept of world risk society - Essay Example Using this definition as the starting point, we get the subsequent argument that ââ¬ËSystemic eventsââ¬â¢ showed that industrial societies were generating hazards ââ¬Ëthat they could not controlââ¬â¢ (Beck, 1999, 51, 44, 72). ââ¬ËCompounded riskââ¬â¢ had become the new meta-norm in a networked society (Daniell, 2000, 18). Hence, the thinking here is that the world is spinning out of control with people in the grip of ââ¬Å"blind and impersonalâ⬠forces that they can neither control nor comprehend. In this context (Obama, 2006), the development of contraceptive pills and their widespread use has to be seen as a valiant effort at providing ââ¬Å"spaceâ⬠to the marginalized (ethnic minorities, women) as a means of empowering them and providing them with reproductive choices. Ulrich Beckââ¬â¢s World Risk Society (1999) was a sociological meditation on the interlinked forces of ââ¬Ëglobalization, individualization, gender revolution, underemployment, and global risks (as ecological crisis and the crash of global financial markets)ââ¬â¢ (Beck, 2000, 2). Beck examined the ââ¬Ërisk calculusââ¬â¢ concept, the power dynamics and sociology of risk (why groups profit from ââ¬Ëmanufactured uncertaintyââ¬â¢), the ââ¬Ësub-politicsââ¬â¢ of global dissent (anti-globalist and environmental campaigns), and how reflexive modernity uses conjecture in response to crises. Beckââ¬â¢s work was essentially a treatise on the chaos that the processes that we shall talk about subsequently were unleashing on the world. In this context, Beck was in consonance with other social scientists that foresaw a dystopian vision for humanity and tried to warn us to the inherent dangers. In such a bleak scenario, it is worthwhile to consider the fact that the development of contraceptive pills is indeed a bright spot in an otherwise anarchical situation. For instance, Kaplan in his book The
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