Taming Risk: Uncertainty, Trust and the Sociological Discourse of Modernity

This interdisciplinary and multifaceted work investigates the traumatic character of (late) modernity from the perspectives of risk and trust regarded as correlates to human actions, as well as forms of social consciousness and cultural production in contemporary, post-industrial societies. In this way, the book gestures towards an interpretative framework in which modern social structures and systems may be effectively conceptualised in an overtly phenomenological context that entails the understanding of risk and trust as significant elements of human experience, social knowledge and a personal motivation to take goal-oriented actions. Being focused upon searching for inter-subjective mechanisms fostering the inherent societal dynamism of risk societies, the volume offers an integrative perspective in risk studies in which risk and trust-related considerations are perceived in terms of sociological theories aiming to reconcile the dimensions of agency and structure. Methodologically speaking, the text advances a comfortable theoretical vantage point for observing the ontology of late modernity in the context of an interplay between agential experiences of uncertainty as well as systemic and structural frameworks of exposures to technological risks. Needless to say, the work is a must-read for scholars and researchers in the fields of theoretical sociology, risk studies, modernization theories, and cultural studies.