| Risk Revisited Contributor(s): Caplan, Pat (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0745314635 ISBN-13: 9780745314631 Publisher: Pluto Press (UK) OUR PRICE: $38.00 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2000 Annotation: "Risk" is a keyword in contemporary debates in social theory. Here, distinguished contributors reexamine the concept of risk. Are we, they ask, living in a more dangerous time? Or are we more afraid? Is this really the Age of Anxiety?Looking at the topic from a cross-cultural perspective, the contributors challenge the Eurocentric frameworks within which notions of risk are more commonly considered; arguing that perceptions of danger, and sources of anxiety, are far more socially and culturally constructed - and far more contingent - than risk theorists generally admit. Perceptions of risk, they argue, are contested, inherently unstable, and liable to change over time and place - as can be seen in the way that anxieties about nuclear war were superseded by new worries such as global warming, genetic engineering, and AIDS, whether in the West or in southern India. Whether discussing the truth claims of scientists and environmentalists, or distinguishing between lay and scientific notions of risk, the contributors to this volume consider risk ethnographically as well as theoretically. They provide a much-needed new dimension to a concept that until now has been over theorized but all too rarely properly scrutinized. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - General - Social Science | Anthropology - General - Social Science | Prostitution & Sex Trade |
| Dewey: 302.12 |
| Series: Anthropology, Culture and Society (Paperback) |
| Physical Information: 0.75" H x 5.32" W x 8.43" (0.89 lbs) 264 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Looking at the concept of risk from a cross-cultural perspective, the contributors challenge the Eurocentric frameworks within which notions of risk are more commonly considered. They argue that perceptions of danger, and sources of anxiety, are far more socially and culturally constructed - and far more contingent - than risk theorists generally admit. Topics covered include prostitutes in London; AIDS in Tanzania; the cease-fire in Northern Ireland; the volcanic eruptions in Montserrat; modernisation in Amazonia; and the BSE scare in Britain. |