VUCA is a term you are likely to see more of.
I came across the name “Ulrich Beck” while reading Shutdown by Adam Tooze – who has become one of my favorite authors. Ulrich Beck was an extraordinary sociologist and his contributions in his respective field are numerous and pivotal. One such idea can be found in the title of his most celebrated work published in 1986, ‘Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity’ which facilitated the embodiment of the very idea of a risk society. The world is becoming increasingly complex – as highlighted in my first article here – but the concern isn’t only about being complex. Considering the ever-increasing speed of the state of complexity, we have entered the age of polycrisis. As such the change, the ‘metamorphosis’, is outpacing our understanding of it. Subsequently perpetuating or prolonging the presence of risks and increasing the likelihood of crisis.
Increase in Complexity + Increase in the Speed of Increase in Complexity = Prolonging Risks
Consequence: Crisis
What is a risk society? It can be defined as a society that is obsessed with the future and safety, hence there exists a perpetual and continuous concern with the factor of risk. Beck defined it as “an inescapable structural condition of advanced industrialization” and elaborated that our contemporary society is engaged in preventing risks that it has perpetuated itself – for instance, climate change. Furthermore, while in the earlier times the proletariat used to suffer (mostly) from the problems, in today’s globalized society even the rich aren’t safe from the threat (this is true only to a certain extent as the loss caused by any event is always disproportionately divided amongst the rich and the poor. This asymmetry can, most importantly, be found in carbon emissions and their deadly effects). Closely related to this concept and another incontrovertible proof of Beck’s foresightedness is the idea of “organized irresponsibility”: we as individuals collectively contribute to a problem yet avoid individual accountability. Instead, we blame it on the collectives such as rules, regulations, systems, political intricacies etcetera. This produces “risk arbitrage” where actors (individuals, groups) reap benefits by producing risk, avoid the consequences (usually disproportionate), and have no accountability.
Interestingly, and unfortunately, we can easily relate this to our contemporary world. I believe that this framework can best explain one of the key policy issues that we face as a collective community: climate change. (I intend to write a separate article on that subject using Beck’s theory). Another important point to understand, and one that remains a common focus in my articles here is that technology has also played a key role in the formation of a risky society. Social media, easy movement of goods, and services, and blurring of boundaries all of these have benefits but also downsides to it.
According to Beck, in a risk society “the ability to anticipate and endure dangers, to deal with them biographically and politically acquires importance. In place of fears of losing status, class consciousness, and orientation to upward mobility, which we have more or less learned to handle, other central questions appear. How do we handle ascribed outcomes of danger and the fears and insecurities residing in them? How can we cope with the fear, if we cannot overcome the causes of the fear? How can we live on the volcano of civilization without deliberately forgetting about it, but also without suffocating on the fears – and not just on the vapors that the volcano exudes?”.
The …….