KRM 320: Risk Society, Ecological Modernisation, and Environmental Criminology

Comprehensive review flashcards covering Ulrich Beck, Hassan, and Anthony Giddens on the Risk Society, Ecological Modernisation, world systems, double-risk societies, and actuarial criminology.

According to Ulrich Beck, what are the three possible reactions to risk?

1. Denial
2. Apathy
3. Transformation

How does Ulrich Beck distinguish between threats, risks, and catastrophes?

Threats are forms of insecurity and endangerment that have existed since the beginning (such as sickness, wars, and epidemics). Risks assume decisions made by people and futures shaped by humans (such as probability, technology, and modernization). A catastrophe is a realized event of massive, overwhelming scale that exceeds recovery capabilities and causes widespread devastation.

What are the three defining characteristics of manufactured risk according to Beck?

1. De-localisation: Causes and consequences are not confined to a single geographical location but are omnipresent.
2. Incalculableness: Consequences cannot be calculated because they are based on hypothetical scenarios and open to differing opinions.
3. Non-compensability: Damage and costs cannot be repaired or compensated with money due to their extreme scale.

What four elements explain how modern risks are socially constructed?

1. Making Invisible Dangers Feel Real: Using language, media, and scientific reports to make intangible risks (like radiation or microplastics) perceptible.
2. Creating Shared Beliefs: Transforming individual fears into community-wide consensus about safety and danger.
3. Emotional Framing (Pity and Drama): Shaping societal feelings like sympathy for victims or outrage and fascination with a crisis.
4. Power & Authority (Who Decides?): Determining which authorities have the standing to designate what counts as a genuine threat.

How does literature contribute to the "experienceability" of risks?

Literature concentrates the uncertainty of the future into narratives, linking threat, risk, and manufactured uncertainty to the past. By perspectivizing them through stories, it makes them humanized, biologically and politically understandable, and socially meaningful.

What is the core premise of Ecological Modernisation (EM) theory?

It refers to optimistic theories asserting that economic growth can continue alongside environmental protection through long-term structural changes in production and consumption, with society, market actors, and the state proactively managing the environment.

Which academic group first adopted Ecological Modernisation?

The Berlin School, a small community of Berlin social scientists.

How do proponents of Ecological Modernisation argue that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental harm?

Through the application of environmentally benign technology and the institutional redesign that decouples economic growth from raw material throughput, energy use, and waste generation.

What are the three developmental stages of Ecological Modernisation theory?

1. First Stage: Heavily emphasized science and technology in industrial production, largely ignoring the state and broader social transformation.
2. Second Stage: Took a balanced view of states and markets in ecological reform, paying greater attention to institutional and cultural dynamics.
3. Third Stage: Expanded internationally beyond Europe, producing mixed results regarding its explanatory power in non-European contexts.

What are the three unified arguments underlying Ecological Modernisation?

1. Technology: Science and technology are both causes and solutions; innovative technologies must be incorporated at the source of production rather than as end-of-pipe solutions.
2. Market Economy: Regarded as the most effective mechanism for securing the flexibility, innovation, and responsiveness needed for ecological adaptation, with producers and consumers acting as agents of change.
3. State Transformation: The state moves away from command-and-control regulation toward decentralized, flexible, and consensual governance.

What is the primary argument of the Risk Society thesis regarding modern transitions?

Society has moved from first modernity (simple modernisation) to second modernity (reflexive modernisation), in which the positive logic of wealth distribution is overshadowed by the negative logic of the distribution of technological and economic risks.

What is meant by the concept of "organised irresponsibility"?

An institutional setup where environmental hazards occur continuously, but legal and political rules make it impossible to hold anyone accountable. It stems from applying outdated industrial logic, placing blind faith in experts who downplay systemic risk, and looking to the very science that caused the risk to fix it.

Who are "sub-political" actors according to Beck, and what is their role?

Agents operating outside traditional political structures who can challenge risk-generating institutions and reorganize society from the bottom up against the politicization of techno-environmental risks by power holders.

How is the concept of "individualisation" described in the Risk Society thesis?

A condition of increasing personal insecurity where individuals are no longer bound to fixed roles based on labels; life becomes self-produced, requiring individuals to continually reflect on their choices and accept personal responsibility for outcomes despite larger systemic pressures.

Based on this theoretical diagram, which four societies and switching zones correspond to the quadrants?

1. Lower left: Pre-Modern society (switching zone zero)
2. Upper right: Ecologically-modern society (switching zone two)
3. Upper left: Risk society (switching zone three)
4. Lower right: Double-risk society (moving from switching zone zero to switching zone one)

What defines a "Double-risk society" in the developmental trajectory model?

It is marked by the relocation of resource-intensive and polluting industries to poorer nations. These societies face the advanced techno-environmental risks of traditional risk societies alongside the unresolved material deprivations and insecurities of pre-modern and modern societies.

According to World System Theory, how are Core, Periphery, and Semi-Periphery nations defined?

• Core: Dominant capitalist nations characterized by high industrialization that extract surplus from the periphery (e.g., US, Japan).
• Periphery: Nations relegated to producing raw materials with low wage levels and low organic capital composition, exploited by developed nations (e.g., Bangladesh, Nigeria).
• Semi-Periphery: Buffer nations that exploit the periphery while being exploited by the core (e.g., India, China, Brazil).

What two major effects has globalisation had on peripheral nations according to the text?

1. It shortened the physical distance to the core and enabled some nations to shift from labour-intensive import substitution to capital-intensive export-oriented industrialisation.
2. It facilitated the global spread of techno-environmental risks by driving corporations to seek safe havens with cheap labour and lax environmental enforcement.

How does the distribution of "goods" and "bads" operate in double-risk societies according to Hasan?

They occur simultaneously and interdependently: the production and distribution of "goods" (such as jobs and economic prosperity from textile factories) directly generates and distributes "bads" (such as untreated industrial toxic waste that harms local communities).

How does individualisation operate differently in a traditional risk society versus a double-risk society?

In traditional risk societies, individualisation has fewer negative societal effects because class contrast is relatively low. In double-risk societies, an ill-equipped version of individualisation (akin to selfishness) occurs where class gaps are extreme, allowing businesses to offload environmental risk onto poor communities while individuals must fend for themselves.

How do sub-political groups differ between traditional risk societies and double-risk societies?

In traditional risk societies, sub-politics operates formally (e.g., registered NGOs) and focuses narrowly on environmental issues. In double-risk societies, sub-political groups operate informally (often led by women and youth), address broad socio-economic and political survival issues, and frequently see their failures outweigh their successes.

What are the five components of the "double exposure" framework described in the notes?

1. Feedbacks: Collective activities that produce large-scale transformations across regions.
2. Exposure units: Individuals, households, or groups bearing the brunt of risks.
3. Context: Conditions that amplify or dampen vulnerability to global changes.
4. Responses: Actions taken by individuals or groups before or after exposure.
5. Outcomes: Final results of the interactions (noted as N/A in the notes).

According to Anthony Giddens, what two fundamental transformations gave rise to the risk society?

1. The End of Nature: Few aspects of the physical world remain untouched by humans; human concern shifts from what nature can do to us to what we have done to nature.
2. The End of Tradition: Society moves into individualisation, where life is no longer experienced or lived as predetermined fate.

How does Giddens distinguish between "external risk" and "manufactured risk"?

External risk strikes unexpectedly from outside but occurs regularly enough to be predictable, calculated, and insured. Manufactured risk is created by human development, science, and technological progress; it involves unprecedented risk environments that cannot be calculated using probability tables.

How does Giddens distinguish between simple modernisation and reflexive modernisation?

Simple modernisation refers to an old-style, unilinear path of industrial development. Reflexive modernisation is the process of coming to terms with the contradictions, limits, and manufactured risks generated by modern industrial development.

According to Giddens, how should the modern welfare state be reinterpreted in relation to risk?

Rather than merely being a mechanism to reduce inequality, the welfare state should be viewed as a system of collective risk management. Established to handle external risks, it now faces a crisis of managing manufactured risks.

What is the precautionary principle, and what limitation does Giddens identify regarding its use?

The precautionary principle proposes that action must be taken on environmental concerns even in the face of scientific uncertainty (such as assessing product cycles before release). Its limitation is that the balance between benefits and dangers from scientific and technological innovation is often imponderable and difficult to determine.

What are the four key points of Actuarial Criminology outlined in the notes?

a. State monopoly on social control is diffused among various actors (such as private policing, private corrections, and community policing). b. Private policing and insurance companies function as an information hub for managing risk anxiety. c. Crime is treated as normal. d. The primary focus is on identifying, classifying, and managing groups according to their assessed level of dangerousness.