Risk, Power, and Inequality in the 21st Century

by D. Curran

Overview

Risk, Power, and Inequality in the 21st Century provides a groundbreaking new analysis of the increasingly important relationship between risk and widening inequalities. The massive, and often unequal, impacts of contemporary risks are recognized widely in popular discussions – be it the fall-out from the 2008 financial crisis or Hurricane Katrina – yet there is a distinct neglect in social science of the overall systemic impacts of these risks for increasing inequalities. This book moves beyond this lacuna to identify novel intersections of risk and inequalities. It shows how key processes associated with risk society – the social production and distribution of risks as side-effects – are intensifying inequalities in fundamental ways. In articulating how risk is intensifying both the social sources of suffering of the least advantaged and the power of the most advantaged, this book realizes a significant rethinking of risk, power, and inequalities in contemporary society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349697595
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	06/16/2016
Edition description:	1st ed. 2016
Pages:	185
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dean Curran is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada. His research interests include social theory, risk, and class.

Table of Contents

1. Which Risk Society, and for Who?
2. The Sociology of Risk and the Ineliminability of Realism
3. Risk Society and Systematic Social Theory
4. Thinking with Bourdieu, Marx, and Weber to Analyse Contemporary Inequalities and Class
5. Risk Society and the Distribution of Bads
6. Risk Illusion and Organized Irresponsibility in Contemporary Finance
7. Conclusion: Beyond the Quiet Politics of Risk

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This splendid and very innovative book is a major contribution to our understanding of the implications of Beck's enormously important work." - William Outhwaite, Newcastle University, UK

Editorial Reviews

"This splendid and very innovative book is a major contribution to our understanding of the implications of Beck's enormously important work." - William Outhwaite, Newcastle University, UK

From the Publisher