Professions and the risk society

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly recognised that professionals are not immune from political and cultural input in the way they construct their knowledge. Recent changes in the ideology of governments have expressed a primary concern with risk avoidance and the need for strategies to anticipate and identify psychological trauma, which may then become compensable. This mode of conceptualising and managing social problems has encouraged a reliance on the skills of psychiatrists and psychologists, who are regarded as possessing the technologies required to achieve political goals of self‐responsibility and self‐management As a consequence, the client base has broadened in response to this new managerialism, which measures outcomes in terms of economy and efficiency. Not all clients will respond and it is likely that some adjustment in the rhetoric of government and the role of professionals in a ‘risk’ society will need to be made.