2011-12 Dangerousness

Current Sociology, 2019

In the last 30 years, the relevance of risk for social actors and societies has been coupled with a growing academic debate extending across disciplines and practical fields. In the sociological literature, however, risk remains a concept with a disputed and overly comprehensive meaning. To overcome the conceptual stretching of risk, this article suggests a conceptualization which intends not only to better specify what risk is but also to distinguish it from what it is not. Building on the principal theories and on recent research, the authors propose integrating into the conceptualization of risk not only the element of agency, which allows us to distinguish between risk and danger, but also the intentionality of social actors in the production of risks, which introduces the distinction between risk and threat. While risks are attributable to positive human intention, so that potential harm is an unintended side effect in the production of benefits, threats are attributable to ill-intentioned actors, deliberately acting to cause damage to others. Illustrating their position with concrete examples, related to health, migration, terrorism and other domains, the authors argue that such a distinction may shed light on why threats are more likely than risks to gain public attention and to mobilize people and institutions to face them. The article suggests that a tripartite typology of dangers, risk and threats may be of relevance for sociological theory and research on risk and uncertainty.

IJASOS- International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences, 2016

Historically, risks are the part of people"s life; however, the levels and the threats of risks have been changed through the history. Technological improvements and globalisation make more simplistic and easier human"s everyday life in some ways, but they have such a remarkable effect on the levels of ontological insecurity and senses of risks. The risks and ontological insecurity have been changed throughout the history. In premodern times, risks were natural disasters, wild animals, heavy weather conditions, such as heavy snow and rain. However, people are facing different, more influential, more vital risks due to the technological improvements, communication tools, globalisation, Americanization. These risks, which we are facing today, can be classified into four different primary groups; such as Economic, Societal, Environmental, Technological, Geopolitical risks. In this paper, societal risks are the main discussion subjects.

This is a draft of a chapter in which we propose a model of danger and explore its implications in terms of some current views of emotions. Our aim is not simply to understand dangers in general but to understand how HLNW (high level nuclear waste) may pose dangers now and into the very distant future. We hope to characterise what some have taken to be unthinkable and intractable about those dangers and their uncertainties, and to provide a framework for thinking about how to act appropriately towards these dangers, at least communicatively. Comments welcome.

Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology, 2010

Undoubtedly, the fear can be seen a grounding emotion broadly studied by psychology, sociology and anthropology for many years. Every end of millennium represents for human beings a new embodiment of their beliefs, their production, forms of consumption and even their hierarchical lines of authority. As privileged witnesses of the starting of a new millennium, one might realize how the sentiment of unprotection has been disseminated as a virus world-wide. Ranging from appalling events such as 11/09 towards the Swine Flu recently appeared in Mexico, the perception of lay-people of what is or not dangerous seem to be changed for-ever. Under such a context, the present theoretical manuscript explores the connection of risk and fear at the time it delves into the main contributions and limitations of . From different angles, every-one of cited scholars will give to reader an insight view of the role played by risk and fear in our modern society.

Science of Societal Safety, 2018

We plan our safety measures under economic, personnel and time constraints. The extent of how far we take these measures depends on our acknowledgement of risk of whether we "stop because it is risky" or we "cannot stop because of its benefits despite its risks". This chapter discusses our risk recognition and concerns about mass media that strongly affect our risk recognition. It also overviews differences in risk evaluation about natural disasters and social disasters. Keywords Disaster frequency • Mass media • Risk assessment • Risk recognition • Vulnerability approach 3.1 How People Cope with Risks in Contemporary Societies 3.1.1 Risk Perception by Human Advancement of scientific technologies has given a great number of convenience and benefits to human. The power, however, that scientific technologies produce is far greater than what we, a mere biological being, are born with. We thus started to have anxiety against risks associated with scientific technologies going out of our control. In fact, the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the 2011 Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, although such events are rare, had us experience the great dangers and damages that accompany the introduction of scientific technologies. ISO defined risk as "effect of uncertainty" (ISO 2009). Risk perception is about acknowledging future dangers with uncertainty in whether they will actually take place or not and, at the same time, acknowledging future benefits with uncertainty in whether they can be gained or not.

Science

It is not at all difficult to become afraid of an endless range of things. Just so much as opening the newspaper in the morning will do. A brief glance over the headlines will be sufficient to make you afraid of the food you were planning to eat today, since it will increase your chances of getting cancer; of your neighbor, since he's Muslim and for all you know he might be among that percentage of Muslims in your country who have 'extremist' opinions of some sort, or his son might be an alienated second generation adolescent who is likely to commit all sorts of crime out of sheer frustration; of the streets after dark, since someone in your town has been raped again; of the office where you work, since any of your colleagues might be infected with some new pandemic flu virus; of traveling, since a terrorist has tried to explode a train and there has been a plane crash as well and add that to the yearly death rate caused by traffic accidents. The list can be extended far beyond the limited amount of pages assigned to this paper. The function of the information offered to us by the media seems to be not just to inform us, but also to make us aware of the things we should worry about, of the risks we face.

Individual danger and collective danger have very different effects according to the predictions of a theory called regality theory, based on evolutionary psychology. This study explores the effects of different kinds of danger on 37 different indicators of psychological and cultural responses to danger based on data from two waves of the World Values Survey, including 173,000 respondents in 79 countries. The results show that individual danger and collective danger have very different-and often opposite-psychological and cultural effects. Collective dangers are positively correlated with many indicators related to authoritarianism, nationalism, discipline, intolerance, religiosity, etc. Individual dangers have neutral or opposite correlations with many of these indicators. Infectious diseases have little or no effects on these indicators. Many previous studies that confound different kinds of danger may be misleading. Several psychological and cultural theories are discussed in relation to these results. The observed effects of collective danger are in agreement with many of these theories while individual danger has unexpected effects. The findings are not in agreement with terror management theory and pathogen stress theory.

Annotation. For a long time action of a person in emergency situations have been of interest to social sciences. The work refers to the interpretation of one's behaviour in emergency situations juxtaposing it with the context of sense of security. The authors put emphasis on the subjective process of experiencing threat and security which is called in psychology a sense. In search for instruments that serve coping with challenging and emergency situations the category of Type A Behaviour Pattern was indicated (TABP). It was considered a mechanism which paradoxically plays an adaptive and non-adaptive role. The factor differentiating the level of adaptation is the result of action in the form of a success or failure. The indicated mechanism was also interpreted in the context of cultural conditions. In the presented work the authors also assessed the efficiency of coping with emergency situations by people with this behavioural pattern.