Credits, references, and bibliography

Analyzing Modernity: The Juggernaut of Modernity and the Risk Society

Anthony Giddens (see also)

The Juggernaut

• We live (continue to live) in a modern world
• Modernity is a force pushing into the future--overwhelming all in its path.
  • Capitalism (commodity production, private ownership, class system).
  • Industrialism (use of inanimate power).
  • Surveillance capacities.
  • Control of the means of violence (nation-state)
• People steer it, but ineffectively and always at risk of losing control
• There are great rewards--the products of modernity--yet, they can turn in upon themselves and us (technological fix).

Space, Time, and Change (dynamic elelments of modernity)

• Ability to control is affected by time and space relationships: Distanciation
  • Relationships, controls, and perspectives--expanding through space and time: no longer face-to-face and immediate--global realities
  • Past, present, and future--consequences of what we do today (or did yesterday) for tomorrow?
  • See also ideas on how mobile technology affects interaction and sense of self.
• As we become more distant from each other and the products of modern society, we increasingly rely on trust (Disembedding):
  • Symbolic Tokens (money is one example)
  • Expert systems.
  • Yet, have little direct contact or control with either
• And, redefine ourselves and our relationships with things and others: Reflexivity.

Reflexivity

• Constantly examining and reexamining behavior and technology, and our thinking about them.
• Not content to leave things to the experts
• Produces sense of uneasiness
• Produces sense of openness and uncertainty: examining our previous examinations

Risk Society (Ulrich Beck)

• Insecurity and Risks (see wikipedia, too). Future orientation.
• What unifies society is the shared interest in avoiding risks and their consequences
• Distanciation
• Stratified Risk (class-based and core/periphery)
  • Rich nations and upper classes attempt to locate problematic factories, prisons, and the like--far away.
  • Boomerang effect

Risks and Insecurity

1. Childhood socialization; trust in parents and authority
2. Daily routines: life goes on
3. But, RISK remains. The juggernaut is always threatening:
   • The people who designed it made mistakes
   • Operator error
   • The unintended consequences of our modifications
   • Reflection redirects and relocates (unforeseen consequences)

"Anthony Giddens’s grand theory of modernity uses the image of the juggernaut, a massive force that rides roughshod over everything in its path.  Giddens intends to convey by this image a sense that modernity is out of control.  Control has been lost in part because modern social systems are spatially dispersed and complex. Modern individuals are reflexive beings, meaning they examine the big and small problems of their world and adjust their actions accordingly.  Still, in a complex world we must put many decisions in the hands of experts.   As a result, the juggernaut of modernity is a dynamic system, constantly adjusted by reflexive action and constantly creating new problems.  The German social theorist Ulrich Beck (1944-  ) shares Giddens’s interest in this insecurity, and has even gone as far as arguing that we now live in a risk society."(1)

Exercise(1)

Anthony Giddens thinks that the profile of risk has changed in contemporary times.  Go to the BBC website and view, read, or listen to Giddens’s lecture on “Risk.” 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/week2/week2.htm

This lecture, written for a general audience, provides an excellent introduction to how risk operates in the contemporary world.

a.       What is external risk?

b.      How has risk changed throughout the ages?

c.       Give an example of a manufactured risk.

d.      What does Giddens mean by the end of nature?

Anthony Giddens’s Runaway World: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/default.htm This website includes audio, video, and text versions of the Reith Lectures for the British Broadcasting Company Reith Lectures, 1999

Introduction to Anthony Giddens: http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens.htm

The Global Policy Forum: http://www.globalpolicy.org

Essay on World Risk Society: http://logosonline.home.igc.org/beck.htm (This essay by Ulrich Beck assesses the risk society after the attacks of September 11, 2001.)

1. Much of this page comes from the "Instructor's Manual" to accompany Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics, Second Edition, George Ritzer, Mcgraw-Hill, 2007. The Instructor's Manual was prepared by James Murphy, University of Maryland, College Park and Todd Stillman, Fayetteville State University. These excerpts are from chapter 5.
2. Ritzer, George. 2007/2010/2013. Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. 2nd/3rd/4th editions. St. Louis: McGraw-Hill

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