1st Edition
Risks, Identities and the Everyday
Risks, Identities and the Everyday focuses on the individual and the lived experience of everyday risks - a departure from the focus on risk from a macro level. The contributors look at risk and how perceptions of risk, risk taking, and risk assessment increasingly dominate our everyday lives and explore it in a variety of settings not previously associated with risk theory, including: plastic surgery, teenage sub-cultures, ageing and independent travel. The volume moves risk away from abstract theorising about what people may or may not fear about risks, to focus on how it actually materialises and operates in everyday 'real' social interactions and contexts. It also interrogates the rational self at the heart of macro social theories by thinking through the construction of risk choices and the socio-cultural dynamics that 'present' some risks as acceptable, appropriate and necessary.
Risks, Identities and the Everyday
Biography
Dr Julie Scott Jones is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Dr Jayne Raisborough is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Brighton, UK.
'A welcome addition to the rapidly growing field of risk studies, this book provides thoughtful empirical analyses of quite ordinary everyday 'risk situations' in relation to everyday occurrences and decisions, thus highlighting the constructed nature of risk perceptions and the significance of processes of identification and negotiation. It not only provides valuable insights into the lived realities of the "manufactured uncertainties of late modernity", but also into how certain risk-discourses have been deployed to sustain specific forms of institutionalized power.’ Joost van Loon, Nottingham Trent University, UK '...for those genuinely searching for something that offers an explanation of how risk is perceived by individuals and how they react to it, this is well worth studying.' The RoSPA Occupational Safety & Health Journal '...I highly recommend this book...The fact that the interpretations of the case studies remain close to the data make them well-suited for use as reading assignments for undergraduate and graduate courses in fields such as science and technology studies, the sociology of sickness and health, the sociology of the body, and, of course, all seminars related to issues of risk and uncertainty.' Health Sociology Review
