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- Title
Hari Kunzru's Transmission and Global Risk Society.
- Authors
TÜZÜN, Hatice Övgü
- Abstract
The famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck's main argument as outlined in his groundbreaking Risk Society (1986) is that modern society as we know it has actually been increasingly structured around and being affected by new qualities of risk that haven't existed before. Modern society has become a risk society in the sense that it is increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that it itself has produced (Beck, 2006, p. 332). Drawing on Beck's observations, I argue that Hari Kunzru's novel Transmission (2004) is one such contemporary novel that examines some implications of living in a global risk society where we face the unintended consequences of hyper complexity and integration. Transmission revolves around the main character Arjun Mehta, an Indian computer programmer who leaves his native country behind to realize his "Amrican" [sic] dream in the so-called land of golden opportunities. Unsettled by a profound experience of uncertainty and insecurity as he shifts between local and global positions, Arjun gradually understands that he is considered to be little more than cheap and disposable foreign labor. When he is eventually made redundant by his employer due to economic downturn, Arjun panics and suffers a nervous breakdown as he cannot even bear the thought of going back to India as a failure. Once he realizes that he will not be getting his job back, he creates a highly effective virus that causes the near-global collapse of networked computers. Ultimately, Transmission shows that increasing connectivity has rendered our system fragile mainly because we seem to lack the capacity to manage the growing complexities of a rapidly evolving global system.
- Subjects
BECK, Ulrich, 1944-2015; RISK Society (Book); MODERN society; TRANSMISSION (Book : Kunzru); KUNZRU, Hari; FOREIGN workers
- Publication
Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, 2019, Vol 18, Issue 3, p1028
- ISSN
1303-0094
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.21547/jss.490526