Introduction: Moving Targets Risk, Security, and the Social in Twentieth-Century Europe

Abstract

According to the sociologists Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, modern societies have become increasingly preoccupied with the future and safety and have mobilized themselves in order to manage systematically what they have perceived as “risks” (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991). This special section investigates how conceptions of risk evolved in Europe over the course of the twentieth century by focusing on the creation and evolution of social policy. The language of risk has, in the past twenty years, become a matter of course in conversations about social policy (Kemshall 2002). We seek to trace how “risk” has served as a heuristic tool for understanding and treating “social problems.” A key aim of this collection is to explore the character of social policy (in the broadest sense) as an instrument (or technology) that both constructs its own objects as the consequences of “risks” and generates new “risks” in the process (Lupton 2004: 33). In this way, social policy typifies the paradox of security: by attempting literally to making one “carefree,” or sē (without) curitās (care), acts of (social) security spur new insecurities about what remains unprotected (Hamilton 2013: 3–5, 25–26). Against this semantic and philological context, we suggest that social policy poses an inherent dilemma: in aiming to stabilize or improve the existing social order, it also acts as an agent of change. This characteristic of social policy is what makes particularly valuable studies that allow for comparisons across time, place, and types of political regime. By examining a range of cases from across Europe over the course of the twentieth century, this collection seeks to pose new questions about the role of the state; ideas about risk and security; and conceptions of the “social” in its various forms.

The politics of the unknown: Uncertainty and the nuclear threat in Britain, 1979–1985

“…Furthermore, such an investigation could usefully draw on the rich sociological and anthropological literature on uncertainty and risk (e.g., Bauman, ; Beck, ; Bonß, ; Callon, Lascoumes, & Barthe, ; Giddens, ). While social historians have started to examine “risk as a category of analysis,” to borrow Peter Itzen's and Simone M. Müller's recent proposal, they are still lagging behind sociologists and anthropologists when it comes to an explicit engagement with uncertainty (Itzen & Müller, , p. 14; for another exception, see Moses & Rosenhaft, ). What makes the works by sociologists and anthropologists so useful, apart from their definition of key terminology, is the convincing case that they have made for uncertainty to be taken as a socially and culturally constructed entity (Bonß, ; Douglas, ; Bonß, ).…”

How to Judge Safety Crime: Lessons From the Eternit Asbestos Maxi-Trials

“…13 As of the second half of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth, workers' compensation schemes were implemented in Switzerland, Austria, England, Russia, Italy, France, Japan, Canada, and some U.S. states. [14][15][16] Most of these schemes carry the implicit idea that "professional risk" is an unavoidable feature of modernity and that therefore, the modern way of governing this risk is financial compensation by a state-guaranteed insurance plan, rather than litigation based on the supposedly outdated notions of fault and responsibility. Berman calls this system the "compensation-safety apparatus" that purports to "solve" the issue of occupational exposure through the verification of procedural conformity and the allocation of fixed-rate compensation.…”

Les nouveaux risques de « l’ère de l’opulence » : l’inadaptation et les politiques d’action sociale en France (1945-1969)

“…Cependant, les usages de la notion de risque sont en fait bien plus étendus. En tant qu'objets des politiques sociales, ces risques se sont transformés au fil du XX e siècle tant dans leur nature que dans leur importance relative 4 . L'apparition des « nouveaux risques de l'existence » liés à la difficulté d'accéder au travail, aux changements démographiques et aux transformations du marché du travail, tout comme l'effort visant à pallier les limites des systèmes de Sécurité sociale via des dispositifs d'assistance comme le Revenu minimum d'insertion (RMI), met en évidence l'inadéquation du couplet risquesassurance 5 .…”