review of Beck's thesis on reflexive modernization
(Beck vis-a-vis Tony Giddens)
concepts of reflexivity - but the aim is to discuss how our own human subjectivity is presented and understood
it is no longer accepted of course to start from the everytday politics of global environment, etc. - as only technical challenges: they further challenge our own human relations in consumer cultures,relationships of domination and instrumentality - there is, in other words, a cultural challenge involved in responding to environmental issues.
Hence his interest in how we construct our own human subjectivity in these discourses.
Tendency to think in a social constructivist approach as more contingent, away from deterministic views - e.g., technology assessment in the Netherlands -
he wants to focus on scientific knowledge: when we take a social constructivist approach to science - the issue is not how we might direct science in better directions; but add the questions - how can democratic influences effectively limit instrumental/calculative reason _per se_?
Review of Beck -
his thesis begins from processes of individualizations, dissolution of social glue of modern institutions. New quality to the kind of risks brought about by science and technology - the very diagnoses of those risks and consequences is only possible through scientific knowledge itself - leads to increased contestation;
these risks are global - more pervasive;
they're unattributive - their causes are often diffuse, hidden, complex;
irreversible;
noninsurable - the state can no longer guarantee security from their risks - the fundamental social contract has been broken.
The question is no longer around distribution of goods - but of bads, of risks.
The processes of dissolution, of identification with modern institutions is reinforced by other processes - e.g., the breakdown or complexification of funding structures, conventional work and labor. In all sorts of domains we see a reinforcement of insecurity --> alienation from those institutions that once brought us security and identity.
Institutions systematically deny responsibility for these things.
Beck argues that there is manifestly a widespread alienation from conventional forms of politics, turn to local issues: what was once political is no longer political, what was once depoliticized is now politicized in the growth of new social movements - "subpolitics": new forms of collective identity, activity.
Critiques:
One of the most widely disseminated: neomarxism/historical materialism - Ted Benton, U. of Essex. When you look at the empirical substance - question whether these kinds of risks can be laid at the door of modern science and technology. E.g. - mad cow disease - this is actually a risk which fulfills some of the characteristics of Beck's thesis, but can also be analyzed perfectly well in terms of capitalist economics. Had very little to do with the overextension of science and technology.
A variety of risks that dominate the modern agenda can be analyzed as effects of late industrial capitalism.
Benton's got a serious point if you look at some things - but it may misunderstand certain elements of Beck's thesis. His is a thesis regrading a general syndrome, not always specific cases.
Tony Giddons -
Beck is arguing that the central dynamic centers on nonknowledge, on ignorance, on unintended consequences.
Giddens takes up a different perspective, a modern existentialism recognizing the need to make choices. These reflexive processes are taking place through the modern human subject.
To Beck, the fundamental dynamic of reflexivity is the external real world - when we make interventions into it, it exercises its own agency and reflects back on us - causing us to reflect, question, and become alienated from those institutions which were supposed to control these processes.
Giddens describes these as processes of the human agent. Reflects a very Popperian view of modern science.
Difference in the role of ignorance in these two accounts.
Wynne offers a critique of both Giddons and Beck
attacks Giddons' model of science that leads to focus on human subject/agent: Popperian model is fundamentally challenged by 25 years or so of sociological research on science and scientific knowledge.
Giddons' account of the need for existential choice - rests on the idea that before expert conflict became a public contest, people uncritically accepted "experts" views. Empirically contestible.
Beck: fundamentally realist - it is physical reality that is the agent that generates the sense of lack of trust in modern institutions (out of unanticipated consequences). Whatever the truth of that may be, there is a further human process - even when modern institutions do accept responsibility for risks, attempting to resolve, control environmental issues, etc. - they are propogating models of the human that are fundamentally inadequate. If we use cost-benefit analysis - this fails to capture fully our human relationship with nature. Wynne's point is that the institutions reinforce models of our subjectivity which we do not recognize or accept - hence our alienation, irrespective of whether or not physical risk really exists.
As a cultural form, modern science is embracing - and as it were, ghettoizing unto itself - a variety of human issue that are fundamental to issues of modern technology and democracy. This discourse takes on normative force, not distributed as hypotheses: they begin to construct their own models of the human.
It is only by opening up those discourses to the hidden contingencies...can we open up to discussion...
Example: climate change - usually represented by the IPCC: peer review, negotiation, etc. But the assumption is that the long term climate prediction is a doable prediction. But the central question on the original agenda was: is this sort of prediction doable? [see "Online Resources" for links to the IPCC report].
In effect, the question has been answered by default. Now it's become normal science -
But it's realistic to ask the question: are we just building conventions here - which may be useful fictions? What would it be like if we recognized that such long-term prediction is not possible
(recognizes the problem - oil and gas will say there's no reason to change vs. view that the risks of tampering with it are more severe and serious than we might assume under the assumption of prediction.)
Would require us to ask "fourth hurdle" questions. If we recognize widely that we can't predict accurately - then why are we doing this? what purposes does it serve? --> broader cultural debate. Would thus place more democratic responsibility in the wider sphere for asking the right questions.²