Dr. Matiur Rahman & Shishir Reza :
Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist wrote and published a book title “The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity”. The book was first published within the year 1986. Its English version was published in 1992. “Risk society,” “reflexive modernization,” and therefore the “elevator effect”- these are a number of the key concepts invented by Beck. The concept of artificial risks in modern society was of central importance within the debate of the mid-1980s, due to various ecological catastrophes like the Chernobyl disaster.
Ulrich Beck described a typical shift from modernity to a “second modernity.” He argues that man-made, yet unwanted side-effects of modernity challenge the very basis of its definition, producing growing societal uncertainties and thus leading to a new age where people must come to positions with the consequences of their activities. This ongoing process is called “reflexive modernization.” Reflexive does not mean “reflected” or “conscious” in this context, it denotes to a “boomerang” effect, where mostly unplanned results of production or processes in modern societies boomerang on these societies and force them to change – surely not an intentionally planned chain of events.
As a result of this process, society within the “second modernity” is not any longer concerned with the distribution of power and wealth, but instead with the way it handles risks. This influences the definition of societal groups as well: as Beck described in The Risk Society, problems like ecological risks are not distributed according to wealth, social settings and strata-they affect society as a whole. However, the ability to prevent risk is highly dependent on knowledge and information – here mass media and journalism come into play by making these risks visible.
The process of reflexive modernization challenges society and therefore the individual alike. According to Beck, it changes the way we work, the concept of the state, also because the economic basis of society. Overall, Beck sketches out second modernity as a non-linear, anti-determinist time with competing, sometimes seemingly paradoxical developments happening simultaneously. However, he also identified political and social options during this process of dissolving norms and changing power structures.
In the present day, social risks have become part of our daily lives as human beings. Ulrich Beck defined them as the systematic way of dealing with the risks and insecurities resulting from modernization. He attributed this issue to a broad change, which he called “reflexive modernization”, where the unintended and unpredictable impacts of recent life on modernity happen. In the risk society, the people’s concerns are shifted from natural disasters to the perils resulting from human activities, which are often global and widespread.
In total, a risk society does not merely arise from the reality that daily life has generally become more dangerous; the problem is more about fading the borders of uncontrollable risks. In the context of pandemic diseases, and especially , Covid-19, which may be defined as a disease of the danger society, this uncontrollable border fading is noticeably visible – from all developing to developed countries.
Sociologists explained that facing Covid-19 is happening at three dimensions: distance, time, and society. The distance aspect means the disease is non-localized in order that it’s distanced from the state-nation level and has spread to the planet community. On the space side, we discover ourselves encountering a peril that has no boundaries. In fact, coronavirus is that the real phenomenon of globalization, although we must confine mind that we must see global threats and opportunities together. Undoubtedly, living within the post-Covid-19 world requires a rethinking of the intelligent system for all nations.
The time aspect indicates the critical periods of the disease and its different consequences, which should be considered separately. On the time side, the long time period of the disease, also because the prolongation of the anti-Covid-19 vaccine production and therefore the spread control process, became a worldwide problem. These issues have long-term consequences in various social, economic, and political dimensions for all governments worldwide, demanding extensive and expansive efforts to affect them.
Lastly, the outbreak of coronavirus should be considered one of the most important social events in the twenty-first century. The most significant inherent characteristics of all pandemic crises, including Covid-19, are the emergence of social stress and anxiety due to the unfamiliarity and uncertainty of the phenomenon, disruption in institutions’ order and performance , and reduced social interactions.
(Dr. Matiur Rahman is Research Consultant, Human Development Research Centre and Shishir Reza is Associate Member, Bangladesh Economic
Association).