Risk Society thesis

Résumé du document

By offering a radical reorientation of mainstream sociology, modern social theories illuminate theoretical themes in environmental sociology. Indeed, it has recently begun to contest the honoured epistemological assumption of the environment as an independent, objective reality. New environmental issues such as global warming has actually triggered off to a more direct theoretical concern with the social consequences of environmental degradation and resource management by environmental sociology. That is the reason why ecological alarmism seems to reflect uncertainties and anxieties to the changing character of late modern society. How to apprehend such a complex issue that relies on every societal field? By linking environment to sociology, to what extent does the Beck's Risk society thesis offer a new approach of the crisis the modern societies are facing? As science is closely related to environmental sociology, which keys is it likely to offer us?

Extraits

[...] Risk society thesis: rethinking our modernity to act towards modernization “Risk Society” is a theoretical frame, built by Beck. The idea of “reflexive modernization” has become a keystone in environmental sociology as it represents a new step to bridges between social and natural worlds. Actually, as we are witnessing the drawbacks of progress entering social debate, Beck is intimately convinced that environmental problems remain social problems and that is why he is claiming for a “social-natural relationship”, by interconnecting sociology and environment. [...]

[...] Thus, science appears not only as an unreliable friend but also as an insufficient friend. As science is a tool to be used with precautions, the green movement shouldn't be limited to a scientific movement, based only on science. That is why they tend to wider their reflection to more moral issues, all the more so as science doesn't determinate the practical solution of environmental problems. After all, the compounding of science plus social and moral issues is precisely the goal of environmental sociology. [...]

[...] Could we base a new society' scheme only on science? Even if science doesn't seem removable from the green movement, this specificity is two-edged. Indeed, because of a shortage in means, of their uncertainty in theory, scientists often don't have a strict and a fixed answer that the public is asking for. Hence, “science is needed to offer authoritative advice on our environmental problems but that authority is not as decisive as environmentalists might desire”. It would be interesting to lean over the precautionary principle that is becoming an incontrovertible demand: does science is able to take into account the precautionary principle as a whole in its scientific conclusions, all the more so as in legal and commercial contexts, the scientific authority is likely to become partial and so distorted? [...]

[...] As a conclusion, Risk Society thesis can be considered as an important step within environmental sociology and as an attempt to deal with complex issues that concern both social and scientific fields. Despite its failure and defaults, this new approach arouses the problem of science's place in the green debate, not only in theory but also for practical purposes. This thorny question has to be trashed out in order to make the most of both reflection and action: previous reflection within environmental sociology that mixes social and environmental issues seems indeed necessary to proceed towards a new conception of our modernity. [...]

[...] As we said, Ulrich Beck's risk society theory analyses ecological anxieties against the background of changing conditions of modernity. Through its questioning of the role of science and technology in overcoming an ecological catastrophe, the risk society theory seems to fundamentally contradict ecological modernisation theory. Indeed, Beck is calling for the use of new sociological and institutional tools to cope with environmental issues, whereas ecological movements are getting involved in the traditional ways of expression. Hence, Beck's theory contributes in analysing environmental problems in a new and revolutionary approach that mixes sociology and science. [...]