Abstract
Sociologists are growing increasingly skeptical toward research on risk conducted in other fields, and new perspectives on risk are emerging. Topics that merit further exploration include the social construction of risk and risk objects, risk analysis as a type of scientific enterprise, the organizational and institutional forces that shape positions on risk, safety and risk as dynamic properties of social systems, and the social forces that create and allocate risk. In particular, sociologists need to place more emphasis on exploring the roles played by organizations and the state in hazard production and on formulating a political economy of risk. To a significantly greater degree than other disciplines concerned with risk, sociology emphasizes the contextual factors that structure vulnerability to hazards and the linkages that exist between vulnerability and social power.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Abraham, Kenneth S. 1986 Distributing Risk: Insurance, Legal Theory, and Public Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Alesch, Daniel J. and William J. Petak 1986 The Politics and Economics of Earthquake Hazard Mitigation: Unreinforced Masonry Buildings in Southern California. Boulder: University of Colorado. Institute of Behavioral Science. Program on Environment and Behavior, Monograph No. 43.
Anderton, Douglas L., Andy B. Anderson, Peter H. Rossi, John M. Oakes, Michael R. Fraser, Eleanor W. Weber, and Edward J. Calabrese 1994 “Hazardous waste facilities: ‘Environmental equity’ issues in metropolitan areas.” Evaluation Review 18:123–140.
Anderton, Douglas L., John M. Oakes, and Karla L. Egan 1997 “Environmental equity in Superfund: Demographics of the discovery and prioritization of abandoned toxic sites.” Evaluation Review 21:3–26.
Beck, Ulrich 1992 The Risk Society: On the Way to An Alternative Modernity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
1995 Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash 1994 Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Oxford: Blackwell.
Been, Vicki and Francis Gupta 1997 “Coming to the nuisance or going to the barrios? A longitudinal analysis of environmental justice claims.” Ecology Law Quarterly, Feb: 1–56.
Blaikie, Piers, Terry Cannon, Ian Davis, and Ben Wisner 1994 At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability, and Disasters. London: Routledge.
Block, Fred 1987 Revising State Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Brickman, Ronald, Sheil Jasanoff, and Thomas Ilgen 1985 Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the U.S. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bullard, Robert D. 1990 “Ecological inequities and the New South: Black communities under siege.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 17:101–115.
1994 Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Burby, Raymond. J. and Steven. P. French 1981 “Coping with floods: The land use management paradox.” Journal of the American Planning Association 47:289–300.
Burton, Ian, Robert W. Kates, and Gilbert White 1978 The Environment as Hazard. New York: Oxford University Press.
Buttel, Frederick H. 1985 “Environmental quality and the state: Some political-sociological observations on environmental regulation.” Research in Political Sociology 1:167–188.
Capek, Stella M. 1993 “The ‘environmental justice’ frame: A conceptual discussion and an application.” Social Problems 40:5–24.
Charles, Michael T. and Allan K. Settle 1991 “United flight 232: Sioux City's response to an air disaster.” Industrial Crisis Quarterly 5:77–90.
Clarke, Lee 1985 “The origins of nuclear power: A case of institutional conflict.” Social Problems 32:473–487.
1988 “Explaining choices among technological risks.” Social Problems 35:1–35.
1989 Acceptable Risk? Making Decisions in a Toxic Environment. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1990 “Oil spill fantasies.” Atlantic Monthly (November):65–77.
1993 “The disqualification heuristic: when do organizations misperceive risk?” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 5:289–312.
Clarke, Lee and James F. Short 1993 “Social organization and risk: Some current controversies.” Annual Review of Sociology 19:375–99.
Commission for Racial Justice 1987 Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites. New York: United Church of Christ.
Couch, Stephen R. and J. Stephen Kroll-Smith 1985 “The chronic technological disaster: Toward a social scientific perspective.” Social Science Quarterly 66:564–575.
Covello, Vincent T. 1983 “The perception of technological risks: A literature review.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 23:285–297.
Covello, Vincent T., Paul Slovic, and Detlof von Winterfeldt 1987 Risk Communication: A Review of the Literature. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation.
Covello, V., David B. McCallum, and Maria T. Pavlova 1988 Effective Risk Communication. New York: Plenum.
Crouch, Edmond A. C. and R. Wilson 1982 Risk/Benefit Analysis. Cambridge: Ballinger.
Dietz, T. and R. W. Rycroft 1987 The Risk Professionals. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Dietz, Thomas, Paul C. Stern, and Robert W. Rycroft 1989 “Definitions of conflict and the legitimation of resources: The case of environmental risk.” Sociological Forum 4:47–70.
Dietz, Thomas, R. Scott Frey, and Eugene Rosa 1999 “Risk, technology, and society.” In R. E. Dunlap and W. Michelson (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Westport, CT. Greenwood Press.
Douglas, Mary and Aaron Wildavsky 1982 Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dunlap, Riley E., Michael E. Kraft, and Eugene Rosa 1993 Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste: Citizens' Views of Repository Siting. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Fischer, F. 1991 “Risk assessment and environmental crisis: Toward an integration of science and participation.” Industrial Crisis Quarterly 5:113–132.
Fischhoff, Baruch 1990 “Understanding long-term environmental risks.” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 3:315–330.
1996 “Public values in risk research.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 545:75–84.
Fischhoff, Baruch, Sarah Lichtenstein, Paul Slovic, S. Derby, and Ralph Keeney 1981 Acceptable Risk: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freudenburg, William R. 1992 “Heuristics, biases, and the not-so-general publics: Expertise and error in the assessment of risks.” In Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding (eds.), Social Theories of Risk: 229–249. Westport, CT: Praeger.
1993 “Risk and Recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions.” Social Forces 71:909–932.
Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling 1994 Oil in Troubled Waters: Perception, Politics, and the Battle Over Offshore Drilling. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Frey, R. Scott 1995 “The international traffic in pesticides.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 50:151–169.
Furger, Franco Forthcoming “Accountability and systems of self-governance: The case of the maritime industry.” Law and Policy.
Furger, Franco and Bob Brulle 1997 “The blind spot of regulatory agencies: The case of the US Coast Guard.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada, August 9–13.
Gamson, William A. and Andre Modigliani 1989 “Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach.” American Journal of Sociology 95:1–37.
General Accounting Office 1983 Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office.
1991 Disaster Assistance: Federal State, and Local Responses to Natural Disasters Need Improvement. Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office.
Godschalk, David R., D. J. Brower, and Timothy Beatley 1989 Catastrophic Coastal Storms: Hazard Mitigation and Development Management. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Golding, Dominic 1992 “A social and programmatic history of risk research.” In Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding (eds.), Social Theories of Risk: 23–52. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg 1992 “The Exxon Valdez oil spill in the context of US petroleum politics.” Industrial Crisis Quarterly 6:175–196.
Gusfield, Joseph R. 1981 The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Heimer, Carol A. 1985 Reactive Risk and Rational Action: Managing Moral Hazards in Insurance Contracts. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1988 “Social structure, psychology, and the estimation of risk.” Annual Review of Sociology 14:491–519.
Hilgartner, Stephen 1992 “The social construction of risk objects.” In J. F. Short and L. Clarke (eds.), Organizations Uncertainties, and Risk: 40–53. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Jasper, James M. 1990 Nuclear Politics: Energy and the State in the United States, Sweden, and France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Johnson, Branden B. and Vincent T. Covello 1987 The Social and Cultural Construction of Risk: Essays on Risk Selection and Perception. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Kahneman, Daniel, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds 1982 Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kasperson, Roger E., Robert W. Kates, Ortwin Renn, Paul Slovic, H. S. Brown, J. Emel, R. Goble, Jeanne S. Kasperson, and S. Ratick 1988 “The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework.” Risk Analysis 8:177–187.
Kates, Robert W. 1971 “Natural hazard in human ecological perspective.” Economic Geography 47:438–451.
Kates, Robert W., Christoph Hohenemser, and Jeanne X. Kasperson 1985 Perilous Progress: Managing the Hazards of Technology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Kendall, Henry 1991 “The failure of nuclear power.” In Martin Shubik (ed.), Risk, Organizations, and Society: 163–218. Boston: Kluwer.
Kirby, Andrew, ed. 1990 Nothing to Fear: Risks and Hazards in American Society. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin D. 1981 The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon.
Krieg, Eric J. 1995 “A socio-historical interpretation of toxic waste sites: The case of Greater Boston.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 54:1–14.
1998 “The two faces of toxic waste: Trends in the spread of environmental hazards.” Sociological Forum 13:3–20.
Kriesi, Hanspeter, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Marco G. Giugni 1995 New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Krimsky, Sheldon and Dominic Golding, eds. 1992 Social Theories of Risk. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Kunreuther, Howard 1992 “A conceptual framework for managing low-probability events.” In Sheldon Krimsky and Dominic Golding (eds.), Social Theories of Risk: 301–320. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Laumann, Edward O. and David Knoke 1987 The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy Domains. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Lave, Lester, ed. 1982 Quantitative Risk Assessment in Regulation. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Lipset, Seymour M. and W. Schneider 1983 The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind. New York: Free Press.
Los Angeles Times 1996 “Quake authority begins offering insurance policy.” December 3:A3.
Lowrance, William 1976 Of Acceptable Risk: Science and the Determination of Safety. Los Altos: William Kaufman.
Luhmann, Niklas 1993 Risk: A Sociological Theory. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Lynch, Michael 1985 Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Manning, Peter K. 1989 “Managing risk: Managing uncertainty in the British nuclear installations inspectorate.” Law and Policy 11:350–369.
Mazur, Allan 1981 The Dynamics of Technical Controversy. Washington, DC: Communications Press.
Mazur, Allan and Jinling Lee 1993 “Sounding the global alarm: Environmental issues in the US national news.” Social Studies of Science 23:681–720.
Mitchell, J. Kenneth 1990 “Human dimensions of environmental hazards: Complexity, disparity and the search for guidance.” In A. Kirby (ed.), Nothing to Fear: Risks and Hazards in American Society: 131–175. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Mohai, Paul 1990 “Black environmentalism.” Social Science Quarterly 71:744–765.
Molotch, Harvey and John Logan 1984 “Tensions in the growth machine: Overcoming resistance to value-free development.” Social Problems 31:483–499.
Morrison, Denton E. and Riley E. Dunlap 1986 “Environmentalism and elitism: A conceptual and empirical analysis.” Environmental Management 10:581–589.
Mulkay, Michael 1979 Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Allen and Unwin.
National Research Council 1993 Issues in Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
1996 Understanding Risk. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
New York Times 1996 “Error fans fears of chemical cleanup at Utah plant.” Sept. 1:1:16.
1996 “Next door to danger, a booming city.” October 6:1:22.
Olson, Richard S. 1985 “The political economy of life-safety: The City of Los Angeles and ‘hazardous structure abatement,’ 1973–1981.” Policy Studies Review 4:670–679.
Parker, Ronald S. 1992 “Vulnerability and resiliency: Environmental degradation in major metropolitan areas of developing countries.” In Alcira Kreimer and Mohan Munasinghe (eds.), Environmental Management and Urban Vulnerability. Proceedings of a conference at the World Bank, Washington, DC, February 25. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Perrow, Charles 1984 Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies. New York: Basic Books.
1991 “A Society of organizations.” Theory and Society 20:725–762.
1997 “Organizing for environmental destruction.” Organization and Environment 10:66–72.
Petak, William J. and Arthur A. Atkisson 1982 Natural Hazard Risk Assessment and Public Policy. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Peterson, Russell W. 1982 “Three Mile Island: Lessons for America.” In C. Hohenemser and J. X. Kasperson (eds.), Risks in the Technological Society: 35–45. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Pickering, Andrew 1992 Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pinch, Trevor J. and W. E. Bijker 1984 “The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other.” Social Studies of Science: 399–441.
Raynor, S. and R. Cantor 1987 “How fair is safe enough? The cultural approach to societal technology choice.” Risk Analysis 7:3–13.
Reiss, Albert J. 1992 “The institutionalization of risk.” In James F. Short, Jr. and Lee Clarke (eds.), Organizations, Uncertainties, and Risk: 299–308. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Rosa, Eugene A. 1993 “Mirrors and lenses: Toward theoretical method in the study of the nature-culture dialectic.” Paper presented at the Conference International “les Fonctions Sociales de la Nature” (The Social Functions of Nature). Les Fontaines, Chantilly, France, March 8–12.
1995 “Risk as a challenge to cross-cultural dialogue.” Paper presented at the 32nd Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, Trieste, Italy, July 3–7.
1998 “Metatheoretical foundations for post-normal risk.” Journal of Risk Research, 1:15–44.
Rosen, Ruth 1994 “Who gets polluted?” Dissent Spring: 223–230.
Rowe, William D. 1977 An Anatomy of Risk. New York: Wiley—Interscience.
Royal Society Study Group 1992 Risk: Analysis, Perception and Management: Report of a Royal Society Study Group. London: The Royal Society.
Schnaiberg, Allan 1980 The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Schnaiberg, Allan and Kenneth Alan Gould 1994 Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Shrader-Frechette, K. S. 1985 Risk Analysis and Scientific Method: Methodological and Ethical Problems with Evaluating Societal Hazards. Dodrecht: D. Reidel.
1993 Burying Uncertainty: Risk and the Case Against Geological Disposal of Nuclear Waste. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Short, James F. 1984 “The social fabric at risk: Toward the social transformation of risk analysis.” American Sociological Review 49:711–725.
Shrivastava, Paul 1987 Bhopal: Anatomy of a Crisis. Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Company.
1994 “Societal contradictions and industrial crises.” In Sheila Jasanoff (ed.), Learning from Disaster: Risk Management After Bhopal: 248–267. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Slovic, Paul, Baruch Fischhoff, and Sarah Lichtenstein 1977 “Rating the risks: The structure of expert and lay perceptions.” Environment 21:14–20, 36–39.
Stallings, Robert A. 1990 “Media discourse and the social construction of risk.” Social Problems 37:80–95.
1995 Promoting Risk: Constructing the Earthquake Problem. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Tasca, Leo 1990 The Social Construction of Human Error. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Tinker, John 1984 “Are natural disasters natural?” Socialist Review 14:7–25.
Tversky, Amos and D. Kahneman 1973 “Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability.” Cognitive Psychology 4:207–232.
1981 “The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice.” Science 211:453–458.
Vaughan, Diane 1989 “Regulating risk: Implications of the Challenger accident.” Law and Policy 11:330–349.
1990 “Autonomy, interdependence, and social control: NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger.” Administrative Science Quarterly 35:225–257.
1996 The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Waller, R. A. and Vincent T. Covello 1984 Low Probability/High Consequence Risk Analysis: Issues, Methods, and Case Studies. New York: Plenum.
Walters, Lynne Masel, Lee Wilkins, and Tim Walters 1989 Bad Tidings: Communication and Catastrophe. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
White, Gilbert 1974 Natural Hazards: Local, National, Global. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wilkins, Lee 1986 “Media coverage of the Bhopal disaster: A cultural myth in the making.” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 4:7–33.
1989 Shared Vulnerability: The Media and American Perceptions of the Bhopal Disaster. New York: Greenwood Press.
Wynne, Brian 1982 “Institutional mythologies and dual societies in the management of risk.” In Howard C. Kunreuther and Eryl V. Ley (eds.), The Risk Analysis Controversy: An Institutional Perspective: 127–143. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Yeager, Peter C. 1987 “Structural bias in regulatory law enforcement: The case of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.” Social Problems 34:330–344.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tierney, K.J. Toward a Critical Sociology of Risk. Sociological Forum 14, 215–242 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021414628203
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021414628203