introduction

• Contemporary critical has had to negotiate with the with massive environmental disaster, industrial disaster, 9/11 and other cataclysmic events.

• Much contemporary theory examines the role such events play in culture. One of the most influential of such theories is that of Risk society.

example

• PC

• NOTICE that both risks and solution are embeddedin the same system.

• Do you see the use of technology as risky, and that same technology asks you to buy more perfection to avoid risks???

Risk: ‘ Virus’, “ illegal operation’, ‘corruption of hard disc and so on.Solution: contact the help centre, download anti- virus, update

your PC etc

Risk Society

Risk Society: towards a new Modernity (1992)-ULRICH BECK

Definition:

A Risks society is a society increasingly preoccupied with the future ( and also with the safety) which generates the notion of Risk.

- Anthony Giddens

“A Risk society is a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself” – ULRICH BECK

Risk Society: towards a new Modernity (1992)

-ULRICH BECK

As soon as risks became real they become disaster.

Example: Indian Cricket Batting line up

‘RISKS ARE POTENTIAL DISASTERS’

TECHNOCULTURE in everyday life

We live in increasingly technolosized world.

Everyday life Shopping to Education depends heavily on technology.

Communication- mobile

Online shopping

Entertainment

Access of information

commerce

Technological threats

Weapons of mass destruction

9/11 attack, other terrorist attack

These threats are solved using more technological systems and machines, which in turn generates more risks.

culture of warnings

• Risk of releasing confidential informations ( credits cards, residential address etc)

• Moral panics about childrens

• Cyberstalk

Beck begins by ‘suggesting that technoscience in industrial society has generated numerous dangers.

Industrial society is based on the production and distribution of goods which are required to fill the ‘scarcity’ within society.

Society is based on scarcity and the removal of scarcity can handle goods and needs only when they catualize, as ‘visible’.

Such a system can not handle the risks and hazards of industrial production and dustribution.

But as long as risk is secondary to scarcity or needs industrial society has no problems.