Risk and 'The Other'

This book forges a social psychological framework for understanding the human response to risks ranging from nuclear wars to industrial accidents, from earthquakes to epidemics. Its key concern is to highlight and to explain the widespread sense of personal invulnerability to danger. The social scientific study of people's responses to risk tends to focus on either their narrow cognitive or their broad socio-cultural roots. The approach in this book slots into the gap between these poles. It elucidates how individuals, steeped in various societies, cultures and groups, make sense of impending crises. Since the response to risk is essentially a response to a menacing, threatening event, emotional factors form a key component of this response. Interestingly, such factors are severely underrepresented in this area since it has been overattentive to the cognitive processing of risk.