Techno-environmental risks and ecological modernisation in “double-risk” societies: reconceptualising Ulrich Beck’s risk society thesis

ABSTRACT

By utilising a relatively underused framework developed by Maurie J. Cohen (1997. Risk society and ecological modernisation alternative visions for post-industrial nations. Futures, 29 (2), 105–119), this theoretical paper joins two of the most debated theories of environmental politics – ecological modernisation (EM) and Ulrich Beck’s risk society thesis – into a unified framework and problematises some of their implicit assumptions to theoretically introduce the notion of a “double-risk” society. In addition, it explains the differences between the traditional “Risk Society” theorised by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck and the newly introduced concept of a “double-risk” society. The arguments put forward in this paper provide some fresh perspectives facilitating the study of the techno-environmental risks and other ecological problems faced by “double-risk” societies. Theoretically, this paper adds to both EM theory and the risk society thesis as the generalisability of their existing versions is limited precisely because they fail to address some important social changes at the global structural level.

KEYWORDS:

• “Double-risk” society
• ecological modernisation
• risk society
• techno-environmental risks
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgements

The research underpinning this paper was supported by Royal Holloway, University of London, through a scholarship titled “Dean’s Scholar in Management”. The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, Professor Bobby Banerjee, Professor Laura Spence, and Dr Stephanos Anastasiadis for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Md Nazmul Hasan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9307-1769

Notes

1. The term “double-risk” society has previously been used by Rinkevicius (2000) to explain nuclear risks in Lithuania. However, my use of the term in this paper is significantly different from the way Rinkevicius (2000) used it.

2. See Leichenko and O’Brien (2008) for an extended discussion on this topic.

3. These reporters worked for a private Bangladeshi TV channel Jamuna Television.

4. This coexistence is similar to what Schmidt (2006, p. 78) called “multiple modernities” in his criticism of mainstream modernisation theories for oversimplifying the understanding of the modernisation process undergone by different societies.