Jens O. Zinn

University of Melbourne | MSD · School of Social and Political Sciences

The theory of reflexive modernization asserts that society has entered a new and radicalized form of modernity, in which the original institutions and social boundaries that characterise modern society are dissolving. One of the most prominent thinkers on this theory is Ulrich Beck, who in his book Risk Society claims that we are witnessing a socia...

Even though risk-taking is a common and widespread social experience sociological theorizing on the concept is scarce. This contribution aims to systematize and advance understanding of risk-taking and its different forms and how these connect to social inequalities and the social machinery. It considers risk-taking in the context of the debate abo...

Die Begriffe reflexive bzw. zweite Moderne und Risikogesellschaft gehen auf Ulrich Beck zurück, der Mitte der 1980er-Jahre einen radikalen Wandel im gesellschaftlichen Verständnis und Umgang mit Natur und Technik diagnostizierte. Die Erfolge der Moderne und insbesondere ihre technologischen Errungenschaften wären von systematischen Nebenfolgen begl...

Risk studies have shown that many people rather than following rational means of managing risk refer to non-rational (hope, faith) and in-between rationales (trust, intuition), which are not irrational but reasonable and based on subjective experiences, which are difficult to overcome by the communication of mere expert knowledge. We suggest that t...

In this editorial, we identify the key questions requiring further exploration in the sociology of vaccines. In doing so, we discuss the socio-structural forces shaping views towards knowledge about and access to vaccination, trust in vaccines and regulators/decision makers, the associated problem of financial interests in vaccine development and r...

This introduction lays out the key themes of the book and locates these within wider scholarship in the sociology of risk and uncertainty. We pay particular attention to the work of Mary Douglas whose work is not so commonly drawn upon in studies of risk and inequality. We argue, however, that various Douglasian themes, not least those pertaining t...

Understanding risk communication in the public sphere is important for risk studies since the management of risk not only requires decision makers and experts to communicate risk well but also to understand how risk is debated in the public sphere more broadly. This special issue therefore discusses approaches which examine the linguistic represent...

In this editorial, we introduce a special thematic collection of articles published in this current issue, and earlier in 2021, which develop a range of social science approaches to studying and theorising pandemic risk, largely focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. We structure this editorial essay in two parts. First, we consider the challenges of th...

This paper presents an annotation approach to examine uncertainty in British and German newspaper articles on the coronavirus pandemic. We develop a tagset in an interdisciplinary team from corpus linguistics and sociology. After working out a gold standard on a pilot corpus, we apply the annotation to the entire corpus drawing on an “annotation-by...

This conclusion revisits the COVID-19 pandemic from the broader perspective of a changing global world. It raises questions regarding the opportunities for global learning under conditions of global divisions and competition and includes learning from the Other, governing within a changing public sphere, and challenging national cultural practices....

With SARS-CoV-2 a new coronavirus is spreading around the world that challenges governments and triggers unprecedented social responses. Worldwide people have had to manage the experience of an uncertain new threat under very different conditions. A growing body of research and theoretical approaches tries to make sense of the social responses to t...

Since the 1980s, a growing body of scholarship suggests that societal concerns and management of risk have become a central feature of modernising societies. Most prominently Ulrich Beck has asserted that modern societies were increasingly confronted with the side-effects of social progress challenging the modern machinery, such as science and insu...

This article explores the factors that helped COVID-19 to become a 'monstrous threat' to humanity, which legitimises significant restrictions to people's freedom and is justified by the ethics to keep everyone safe. It analyses how rigid means increase old inequalities and produce secondary risks and significant side-effects and demonstrates how, w...

The chapter outlines the methods and design of the research underpinning the book. The analysis uses The Times archive at the Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences (CASS) research centre at Lancaster University. The chapter discusses data quality and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) issues when studying historical newspapers, the composition of t...

This brief chapter engages with the question as to what extent changes in news production might have influenced the occurrences of at risk constructs. The section starts with an overview of the changing size of the different sections of The Times before examining how the proportion of at risk instantiations in different sections contribute to the o...

The people and valued objects at risk reported on in The Times changed historically. The analyses discuss linguistic variation and social change from the nineteenth century onwards. From very low frequency in all kinds of contexts in the nineteenth century to more frequent occurrences in the first half of the twentieth century, usage is linked to t...

Public concerns about all kinds of issues are reported in the media. How these concerns are expressed linguistically changes over time. The chapter provides detailed linguistic analysis and examples of the risks as well as information about the social contexts. From the dominance of ‘war’ during the 1950s and 1960s to a broader set of issues relati...

The hyphenation of at risk is a relatively recent development mainly observable since the 1980s. It stands for institutional strategies to deal with risk such as with the at-risk register but spreads out during the 2000s across a large number of different social domains and topics. The characterisation of at-risk groups, at-risk children, at-risk a...

This chapter develops the argument that language is a constitutive part of both the social realm and the production and dissemination of news coverage through the media. It provides an overview of available research on technological and linguistic changes in the print news media including the Wapping revolution, debates about media standards (tablo...

This chapter summarises the results and discusses them against the backdrop of sociological theorising. The central shift for the proliferation of at risk constructs in The Times occurred in the 1960s and 1970s during which a new regime was established which connects to the transformation of production, new scientific knowledge and technologies, po...

The examination of the lengthy at the risk construct shows a substantial shift from the voluntary exposure to substantial harm to rhetorical use in recent decades. The at the risk construct already occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when reporting heroic risk-taking. From the beginning there was also a rhetorical use of the constru...

The final chapter summarises the major results of the book. The book based on the assumption that understanding and influencing people’s risk-taking require approaching risk-taking from the point of view of the risk-taker and their embeddedness in the social world. In everyday life, people are exposed to decision-making situations or seek such situ...

Risk-taking implies uncertainty and possibly disastrous outcomes. This chapter explores the different ways how people manage such uncertainties when taking risks. Following a modernist world view, it starts with distinguishing instrumental rationality from so-called non-rational strategies such as hope, ideology and faith and shows that both are ef...

This chapter introduces a number of fundamental distinctions underpinned by a body of qualitative research. Most basically it distinguishes risk-taking rationales, agency, and dimensions. These differ systematically when people take risks as an end it itself, as a means to an end or as a response to vulnerability. It continues with exploring the ti...

This chapter slightly changes the perspective from the people’s experience of risk-taking in everyday life to the broader social forces, which shape risk-taking experiences, such as socio-structural (e.g. social class and gender), organisational, occupational and biographical forces. This also includes the loss of agency when risk-taking is driven...

The notion of risk-taking is used inconsistently in risk studies. This chapter explores the notions of risk behaviour and voluntary risk-taking to define risk-taking as an activity, which results from the negotiations, conflicts and identity work people conduct when position themselves in a structurally and culturally shaped social world. The chapt...

By now the book has approached risk-taking as something individuals and social groups do while all kinds of social forces shape their activities and sense-making. Risk-taking implies not only a decision, a decision-making situation, and a possible gain and harm. It also requires an agent whether a person or organisation or any other social unit whi...

Different disciplines approach risk-taking differently. This chapter revisits behavioural biology, cognitive psychology, rational choice theory and lay-expert debate and explores the contribution of sociological risk theories such as cultural approach, risk society and governmentality regarding their contribution to the understanding of risk-taking...

This chapter explores different understandings of risk-taking in academia before positioning the notion of risk-taking within the historical development of modernisation. However, the modern dream comes with an irresolvable tension. Risk-taking aims for a better future but at the same time produces the uncertainties of possible harm. Risk-minimisat...

This book outlines and systematises findings from a growing body of research that examines the different rationales, dimensions and dynamics of risk-taking in current societies; providing insight into the different motivations and social roots of risk-taking to advance scholarly debates and improve social regulation. Conceptually, the book goes be...

This book presents a case study of the proliferation of at risk-language in The Times news coverage from 1785 to 2009, illuminating the changing social experience of risk. Zinn presents an historical examination of the forces which have shaped the language of risk over time, and considers how linguistic developments in recent decades are underpinne...

1999 war für mich in zweierlei Hinsicht ein wegweisendes und risikoreiches Jahr. Ich schloss meine Dissertation zum Übergang junger Erwachsener ins Erwerbsleben ab und suchte nach einer neuen beruflichen Perspektive. Als ich an einem sonnigen Tag zu einem Vorstellungsgespräch am Lehrstuhl Bonß zur Bundeswehruni nach Neubiberg herausfuhr, wusste ich...

This chapter summarises the implications of the four sections for the sociology of risk and uncertainty. It analyses what these developments in methodology, methods, and research strategies have to offer for interdisciplinary risk research in general. The chapter will conclude with suggestions for further development and research.

This chapter suggests using linguistic tools to examine the social understanding and management of risk. The approach bases on the assumption that risk language shapes and is shaped by the ways people think about and act on risk. In recent decades linguists developed a growing body of tools which facilitates the analysis of increasingly available d...

This book examines the social forces which shape the changing use of ‘at risk’ constructs in The Times news coverage from 1785 to 2009. Discussing the empirical results against the backdrop of mainstream risk theory such as cultural theory, risk society and governmentality the book specifies and advances understanding of historical changes in the m...

The study provides evidence for the increasing usage of risk words in reporting on health and illness. Chronic and civilisation illnesses are well represented and contribute to this trend. Infectious diseases often inform short risk hypes. AIDS’ long-term presence has become a less prominent topic, as treatment improves and panic subsides. An epide...

The book generates new insights into the link between language and social change, and provides a new strategy to examine claims of sociological theorising utilising a systemic functional theory of language. While we have developed an in-depth account of how risk language is deployed in print news, and how it has changed, it is not yet known how ris...

The analysis starts with descriptive findings focusing on general lexical and grammatical trends. It progresses from surface-level features (number of risk words, word classes of risk words) towards more complex, linguistically nuanced patterns (e.g. risk as pre-head nominal modifier). Subsequently, we test hypotheses and try to find answers to the...

After synthesising claims about the risk of a range of relevant sociological theories, we aim for an open approach which allows addressing different and changing meanings of risk in social debates. We argue that language reflects both public debates about risk and long-term social change. We argue that frequency counting of lexical items cannot pro...

The study synthesises corpus assisted discourse studies as a methodology, systemic functional linguistics as a theory of language, and sociological theories about social change as a theoretical framework. The data under investigation—all sentences published in the NYT between 1987 and 2014—was chosen for sociological and methodological reasons: soc...

This book investigates to what extent claims of common social science risk theories such as risk society, governmentality, risk and culture, risk colonisation and culture of fear are reflected in linguistic changes in print news media. The authors provide a corpus-based investigation of risk words in The New York Times (1987-2014) and a case study...

Examining long term social change is one of the most rewarding but time-consuming challenges for sociological research. Historical analyses are often the only way to understand present-day social conditions such as the perception and management of risk in the UK. This article reports research which breaks new ground by utilising corpus linguistic t...

Beck's Risk Society (1992) triggered large debates about a societal shift characterized by growing controversies about humanly produced risks. The media plays a central role in this process, providing knowledge and an arena for public debate. However, scholars working in risk studies have paid little attention to long-term linguistic changes in the...

Dealing with and taking risks are central issues of current societies which had been characterised by heightened debates and conflicts about risk (Beck, Giddens). Even though there is good knowledge available, policies and strategies to reduce people’s risk-taking are often less successful than expected. Experts are puzzled about common people not...

How people deal with risk and uncertainty has fuelled public and academic debate in recent decades. Researchers have shown that common distinctions between rational and ‘irrational’ strategies underestimate the complexity of how people approach an uncertain future. I suggested in 2008 that strategies in-between do not follow standards of instrument...

Social debates about nature are changing. Understandings of nature as largely independent of human activity and available for exploitation have given way to concerns about its protection, and have further shifted towards strategies focused on actively managing and producing nature. This article aims to make sense of this shift using a risk framewor...

In recent decades the increasing digitisation of newspaper archives has opened new opportunities for the social sciences to examine social change. This is of particular interest for the sociology of risk and uncertainty, where different approaches compete to explain historical social transformations. This chapter reports results from an ongoing res...

The current study of risk is dominated by the risk minimisation approach that frames risk and risk-taking as something undesirable that should be avoided as much as possible. However, this approach to risk often fails to consider the broader conditions and motivations of risk-taking and to examine why people expose themselves to danger. In this edi...

p>This site contains our report, the parse tree data, and an IPython Notebook that can be used to manipulate the dataset and reproduce our results.</p

Globalising changes in recent decades have produced great impacts on young lives, and youth sociologists have been analysing how young people negotiate change and uncertainty in their lives. This article complements existing research by a case study on Cambodia, where young people have in recent years been charged to deal with drastic social change...

In this article, we examine the conceptual importance of integrating risk and intersectionality theory for the study of how risk and various forms of inequality intersect and are mutually constitutive. We argue that an intersectional perspective can advance risk research by incorporating more effectively the role of such social categories as gender...

The planning and political negotiation processes of sustainable energy production in Australia are contradictory processes. A number of different players from Commonwealth, State Government and regional level got involved to transform the Latrobe Valley region that has the dirtiest coal fired power stations in Australia. We examined the interwove...

In the past few decades, societies in Asia have experienced rapid and dramatic changes in their economic, social and political spheres. Despite the wide diversity among these countries, a few general trends can be observed. Globalization has swept across Asia, bringing intensive economic interactions, with a strong commitment to liberalism and mark...

Large representative surveys have become a valuable resource to inform public policy in an increasingly complex modern world. They provide authority to policy since they are considered objective, neutral and scientific. In contrast, this article conceives the production of knowledge as an interactive process. We argue that the conduct of large soci...

Increasingly, social policies combine to intensify old risks and create new social risks with unequal consequences for men and women. These risks include those created by changing normative expectations and the resulting tensions between social policy, paid employment and family life. Policy reliance on highly aggregated standardised outcome data a...

In social policy debates and research over recent years, ‘risk’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘the life course’ have become influential topics. In this themed section we will revisit these concepts and analyse how they have influenced policy debates and research in Australia and elsewhere. The contributions were developed as part of a research collaborat...

‘Risk’, ‘social inclusion’ and the ‘life course’ have become key notions in social policy after the Golden Age of welfare capitalism. This article reviews some of the key debates and developments in Australian social policy and research that underpin the contributions to this themed section. From ‘new social risks’ to ‘the great risk shift’ and the...

This presentation will reflect on issues related to key concepts (risk, social inclusion, life course) in the debates on social policy. After the last financial crisis (which was relatively mild for Australia for a number of reasons) Kevin Rudd (the former Prime Minister) and left wing social policy researchers suggested that the time is ripe for a...

The importance of risk-taking for present day societies might be uncontested; however, explaining the sources or the reasons for risk-taking activities is complex. This presentation will review contributions from a number of disciplines, in particular, psychology, economics, biology and sociology. These understand (voluntary) risk-taking as rooted...

Since the seminal work of Hochschild (1983) on the emotion management 1 of flight attendants,the early focus on women's work in the service industry has been broadened. More occupations and different dimensions have been examined. The article contributes to this research using the sociology of risk and uncertainty to advance understandings of emoti...

This special issue on ‘Risk and the Media’ explores relationships between risk theory in the social sciences and media studies' analyses of risk. Arguing that attempts to bring these two ‘risk and media’ fields together have been only sporadic, the editors deliberately adopt a reflexive view. They draw attention to their different approaches, as so...

How individuals deal with risk and uncertainties in the context of an organizational culture is a neglected area in the sociology of risk and uncertainty. This contribution reports from an explorative qualitative study (n=14) which examines the intersection of biographical experiences and organizational culture in the perspective of risk and uncert...

This article introduces the special issue 'risk as discourse' which is based on contributions at a session at the CADAAD 2008 conference in Hertfordshire, UK. The aim of the session and this special issue is to trigger cross-disciplinary work which connects risk sociology and corpus linguistics research strategies to advance our understanding of so...

This contribution introduces different perspectives of research which combine the concepts biography, risk and uncertainty. It starts with outlining the assumption that biographical research and risk research could gain from an exchange of concepts and research strategies. In a first step I will argue that in risk research the concept of the subjec...

This article responds to Judith Green's (2009, p. 493-508, this issue) contribution 'Is it time for the sociology of health to abandon "risk"?' It agrees with some of Green's criticisms of risk studies, but argues that rather than abandoning the concept of risk it should be refined and developed. Even though Green is right to have concerns about na...

Written by leading experts in the field, Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty is an introduction to mainstream theorizing on risk and uncertainty in sociology. Provides an overview of the historical developments and conceptual aspects of risk Identifies why theorizing on risk is necessary and highlights specific sociological contributions to thi...

Why Theorize Risk and Uncertainty?The Conceptualization of RiskThe Historical Development of the Notion of “Risk”The Sociological Contribution to Interdisciplinary Risk ResearchSociological Streams of Theorizing Risk and UncertaintyNotes

Within sociology risk and uncertainty has become a major interest, most notably with the publication of Beck's Risk Society (1992). There are, however, a number of different approaches available, which define the object of research slightly differently. This has raised concerns as to whether risk sociology has a shared object of research. While it...

Within interdisciplinary risk research, strategies for managing risk and uncertainty based on cognitive rationality are seen as more effective than non-rational strategies, such as hope, belief, or avoidance. However this dichotomy between rational and irrational strategies neglects a whole range of everyday approaches to risk that are neither comp...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of “risk” in relation to old age. Ideas are explored linked with what has been termed as the “risk society” and the extent to which it has become part of the organizing ground of how we define and organise the “personal” and “social spaces” in which to grow old in western modernity. Des...

This book is designed as an introduction to recent social science work on risk and is intended primarily for students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology, although it will also be useful for those studying political science, government, public policy, and economics. It is written by leading experts actively involved in research in the f...

This book is designed as an introduction to recent social science work on risk and is intended primarily for students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology, although it will also be useful for those studying political science, government, public policy, and economics. It is written by leading experts actively involved in research in the f...

This book is designed as an introduction to recent social science work on risk and is intended primarily for students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology, although it will also be useful for those studying political science, government, public policy, and economics. It is written by leading experts actively involved in research in the f...

This book is designed as an introduction to recent social science work on risk and is intended primarily for students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology, although it will also be useful for those studying political science, government, public policy, and economics. It is written by leading experts actively involved in research in the f...

This book is designed as an introduction to recent social science work on risk and is intended primarily for students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology, although it will also be useful for those studying political science, government, public policy, and economics. It is written by leading experts actively involved in research in the f...

This book is designed as an introduction to recent social science work on risk and is intended primarily for students in sociology, social psychology, and psychology, although it will also be useful for those studying political science, government, public policy, and economics. It is written by leading experts actively involved in research in the f...