Introduction

Contemporary social theory considers the growth of risk to be a distinguishing feature of modernity (e.g. Beck 1992; Giddens 1991; Luhmann 1993). The broad agreement among social scientists ceases where they explain the emergence and diffusion of risk as a comprehensive management tool. We can roughly distinguish between an explanatory strategy that conceptualises risk as a substantive event, and one that understands risk as an organising concept.

Becks' Risk Society (1992) is the primary example of a substantive notion of risk. In his theory, Beck identified two, tightly interrelated triggers for the increasing concern with risk. When risks capture the unintended, often disastrous consequences of modern, industrial production and technology, these (technological) failures attract attention where social institutions fail to cope with the effects of technological progress (Beck 1992). Hence, risk signals a rising societal vulnerability and a growing friction between technology, risk management and societal institutions. Thus, ‘risk’ indicates a loss of technological and societal control.

Contrary to this view, authors like Ericson et al. (2000), Luhmann (1993 and 1998) or Power (2004) suggest that risk is a concept for managing future developments. It is not institutional vulnerability that risk flags, but rather the expanding control it provides. And there is an in-built growth mechanism. To escape the inevitable contingencies of the future, these authors suggest, it should not be opted for certainty and security, but ‘the solution … is based on the acceptance and elaboration of the problem, on the multiplication and specification of the risks’ (Luhmann 1993: 76).