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- Title
Refuse and the ‘Risk Society’: The Political Ecology of Risk in Inter-war Britain.
- Authors
Cooper, Timothy; Bulmer, Sarah
- Abstract
This article responds to current critiques of Ulrich Beck's ‘risk society’ thesis by historians of science and medicine. Those who have engaged with the concept of risk society have been content to accept the fundamental categories of Beck's analysis. In contrast, we argue that Beck's risk society thesis underplays two key themes. First, the role of capitalist social relations as the driver of technological change and the transformation of everyday life; and second, the ways in which hegemonic discourses of risk can be appropriated and transformed by counter-hegemonic forces. In place of ‘risk society’, we propose an approach based upon a ‘political ecology of risk’, which emphasises the social relations that are fundamental to the everyday politics of environmental health.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; POLITICAL ecology; INTERWAR Period (1918-1939); BECK, Ulrich, 1944-2015; RISK society; PHILOSOPHY of history; SCIENCE historiography; ENVIRONMENTAL health; MEDICINE; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY; HISTORIOGRAPHY
- Publication
Social History of Medicine, 2013, Vol 26, Issue 2, p246
- ISSN
0951-631X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/shm/hks112