Vulnerable Society Health, Risk And Insecurity

At the same time as we may be characterised as living in a 'risk society', most understand this to involve a major preoccupation with matters pertaining to bodily health, safety, and insecurity.By focusing explicitly on the connections between health, risk, and insecurity, this book will offer new perspectives on an important field of contemporary debate and provide an invaluable resource for students, teachers, researchers, and policy makers.In The Vulnerable Society: Health, Risk and Insecurity, writers reflect upon the meaning and significance of risk across a broad range of social and institutional contexts. We highlight the concept of insecurity to draw attention to the subjective and emotional dimensions of health risk that structure everyday thought and action. Recent sociological writing on risk has emphasised the significance of uncertainty as an aspect of 'reflexive modernisation' with late modern societies characterised by growing recognition of the unpredictability of the threats posed by processes of techno-industrial development. The regulation of risk is oriented to controlling 'manufactured' uncertainty. Thus far, there has been little systematic attention to the significance of risk and uncertainty for perceptions of personal threat or 'sense of security'. Frequent news reports of health scares, combined with conflicting expert information about the risks (e.g. SARS, MMR, food contamination, electromagnetic radiation), it has been argued, contribute to anxiety or 'ontological insecurity'.Petersen, Alan is the author of 'Vulnerable Society Health, Risk And Insecurity', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415383073 and ISBN 0415383072.