Industrialization and the distribution of wealth and risk

Based on Ulrich Beck’s 1992 book, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, published by Sage)

When I use the word ‘safe’ or ‘security,’ what does that mean to you?

How do we go about minimizing our risks? What kinds of environmental risks have brought us to this point? There was Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Union Carbide and Bhopal, India, the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown in the Ukraine, the Love Canal in New York State, the U.S. Military’s use of depleted uranium in weaponry, technological failures like the Teton Dam, depletion of the earth’s ozone layer, global warming, the infamous Hanford Site in Tri Cities, Washington, the SARS outbreak in China, other potential public health risks like avian flu and ‘Mad Cow disease,’ recent outbreaks of E. coli from contaminated food, the West Texas fertilizer plant explosion, and thousands of other hazards, some of which we know about, others that we don’t. Yet.

Who defines what constitutes a risk?

We’ve talked just a bit about risk in this class. Keep in mind our discussion of income maximizing versus risk minimizing. Income maximizing was associated with market economies, industrialization, capitalism and the lot.

German sociologist Ulrich Beck adds a twist to discussion of risk. He says that just as modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteenth century and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial society and another modernity is coming into being. Can you guess what he thinks will form the foundation of that society?

But why risk? Beck says industrial society is producing many risks. Some examples include pollution, toxins, congestion, crime (urbanization, inequalities). In what he refers to as ‘modern’ society, the production of goods and the distribution of wealth were of primary concern. That process has unfortunately led to the mass production of hazards, and they are not distributed randomly. In fact, in some cases, they’re global in nature–something happens in one part of the world can affect people in another part, and even the producers of risks may themselves be at risk. Science has attempted at least outwardly to ‘tame’ risks. Think of the POET model and technology. But at the same time, many of the risks that need taming were products of technological development and this ‘modernization’ process.

What are some risks that science and technology have addressed?

• Natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfire, drought, flood, earthquake, etc.)
• Human-made risks (e.g., fire, death-by-automobile)
• Public health, immunizations, medical research
• The food chain. Humans weren’t always at the top, you know. Some of the earliest technologies were no doubt designed to facilitate the upward mobility of the human species through the food chain. Nature was dangerous, civilization was safe.

So, how successful have we been in taming chance? Can we buy our way out of some risks?

Beck suggests that many ‘modern’ risks are qualitatively different (yet more):

• Nuclear weapons
• Bhopal and Union Carbide (how many don’t we know about?)
• Petroleum, petrochemicals (refineries, Nigeria, Houston, Louisiana)
• Pesticide use
• Buildings (molds, sick buildings)
• Occupational hazards
• Transportation (SUVs)-automobiles in general
• Power generation (coal-fired, natural gas, nuclear)
• Industrial processes and toxic by-products
• Global markets and food inspection
• GMOs
• You name it (even potato chips–a view and a counter)

Many of our risks are a result of developments in science and technology-the process of modernization. We’ve come to depend on ‘experts’ in many areas of our lives. For instance, when you hear a story about the economy, and what it’s doing and why, can you ruminate on the economist’s analysis? What about when the next one comes on and says the opposite of the previous one? We rely on science and technology to propose solutions, to explain the issues, even to identify the problems, and to inform important policy decisions. Any problems with that?

Wealth and risk

Beck says that ‘in advanced modernity, the social production of wealth is systematically accompanied by the social production of risks.’ Where (economic) scarcity (and poverty) reigns, modernization penetrates-offering promises of wealth through scientific and technological advances. That’s what the international development model has all been about, and we’ve discussed how the model, market economies, technologies, all have cultural baggage that goes with them and may be incompatible with other cultures.

Critics of modernization ask ‘what has science produced?’ Massive weaponry, global environmental problems, side effects of the industrial process. Of course, we also get indoor plumbing, ziploc bags, swimming pools, antibiotics and vaccines, refrigeration, telescopes, microscopes, etc. Many of us probably wouldn’t be alive were it not for some of the things that this process has produced. But the risks are different, sez Beck. Iin societies where scarcity isn’t as big of an issue (at least in the forefront of the masses’ consciousness)–that is, the ‘developed’ countries–there has been a shift from a ‘wealth-distributing’ society to a ‘risk-distributing’ society. It’s an ongoing process, not complete by any means. We’re in transition, he says.

What does he mean? Well, the risks he talks about are potentially catastrophic in scope, not personal risks. For instance, deforestation is a global, not a local or regional phenomenon. Why? Because the demand for timber is global–it doesn’t make sense to talk about resource depletion and its environmental consequences as the problem of the country where it’s occurring, since it is often caused by consumption in other areas of the world and can have far-reaching ecological consequences (forests are dying because of environmental change, too, and without forests, especially in the tropical belts, fixing CO2, well ….).

Early industrialization versus modernization

Risks in the 19th century were often apparent (from Beck’s book):

Excrement piles up everywhere, in the streets, at the turnpikes, in the carriages . . . the facades of Parisian houses are decomposing from urine . . . the socially organized constipation threatens to pull all of Paris into the process of putrescent decomposition’

The ‘filth theory’ was the way that the public health problems of the 19th century were understood–where there was filth, there was disease. Of course now we know that it wasn’t filth, but germs. Obviously there can be a correlation between the two, but filth in and of itself isn’t disease-causing. Because germs are invisible to the unaided eye, the germ theory was also difficult to show (without technology). In many ways, modern risks are ‘invisible,’ and their effects may not appear for decades. We often need science just to identify them for us. Beck would say that one way to look at the differences between 19th and 20th century societies was the difference between an under supply of technology (sanitation) versus an over supply of production (and all of its by-products). Jay Leno, long ago when he was still funny, was once complaining about nuclear scientists saying that it is more dangerous to cross the street than to live near a nuclear power plant. Yeah, he said, ‘but if I cross the street and get hit by a car, we don’t have to phone Sweden and tell them not to eat the vegetables for a few hundred years.’ In other words, the probability of a meltdown may be small, but if it happens, the catastrophic potential is great.

Beck’s analysis

• Risk is no longer just personal, individual – there are risks that we share (free riders, commons)-for example SARS, Mad Cow, global warming, nuclear fallout, deforestation, water shortages.
• Also, these risks are borne by other plant and animal species (many on which humans directly depend)–this is not just a human problem
• Risk can be ‘invisible’
  • We can’t even calculate many of these risks (which allows us to dismiss them as inconclusive). For instance, look at the uncertainty surrounding global warming. It’s easy to put off its discussion because its effects may be 50-100 or more years into the future;
  • Unknown and unintended consequences become dominant forces–not just a small part of the effects of a technology, but the main effects of a technology
  • What we know about some risks comes often through experts, scientists, with specialized knowledge, not through direct experience
• This leads to an increased reliance on experts (and experts often define risk in terms of mortality–which may or may not be sufficient?)
• Risks are not distributed evenly–we talked about this under the headings of environmental justice and racism
• We can speculate as to who is most affected, though. Any ideas?
• These modern risks are difficult to avoid, however–the irony is that the producers of risk (those who have generated and accumulated wealth from modernization) at some point are as vulnerable to them as anyone else. It’s sort of a ‘Boomerang effect’ (go back to the three functions of the environment . . . as we become more global, it’s harder to separate them). For instance, the U.S. may ban certain pesticides for use by American farmers as unsafe. But petrochemical companies may then import them overseas. Farmers use them there and the produce is imported back into the United States, where it’s not that difficult to sneak through the food inspection process.
• Modern risks can lead to global-level inequalities. We discussed in class the use of third world countries as dumping grounds for toxic waste. The free movement of labor around the world often results because some countries offer cheap wages and lax environmental regulations for factories. The lure of jobs attracts people to cities, which can’t absorb the growth, and there are few infrastructures for clean water, sanitation, or disposal of toxic waste.
• Public and private, multinational organizations and power-Many times governments have limited opportunities to regulate, control the activities of multinational corporations. For instance, in the article by Bullard (environmental racism) he points to the North American Free Trade Agreement, and how any changes in government law or policy that affects a company’s profits is liable to compensation for the losses by the government.
• There is a complex interconnection with modern risk. As Beck says, ‘the life of a blade of grass in the Bavarian Forest ultimately comes to depend on the making and keeping of international agreements.’

Now, as with any social change, there are winners and losers. In this case, big business will likely do well. There are lots of risks that need mitigating. For instance, waste disposal is a huge growth industry, and one not easily entered by mom n’ pop firms. The ‘experts’ are also well-placed–politicians and the public rely on expertise to identify and address risks, and inform the public. But who gets to define them, frame these risks in public? What constitutes a risk?

Risk assessment often uses ‘average’ exposure to risks to tell us about whether something is hazardous. For instance, here’s a line from Beck’s book from a German government agency’s report:

‘in mother’s milk beta-hexachlorocyclohexane, hexachlorobenzol and DDT are often found in significant concentrations.’ The toxins are removed from the market (we hope … ). Their origin is undetermined.’

From another:

‘exposure of the population to lead is not dangerous on average. Only in the vicinity of industrial emitters are dangerous concentrations of lead sometimes found in children.’

Averages can be misleading. For instance the average per capita income of a country wouldn’t identify gross inequalities (a different measure, such as media income, might). Averages don’t tell us about distributions. But we often talk in parts per million in the atmosphere, for instance, even if we know that some areas are much more likely to have toxins than others. This gets at the notion of ‘average’ risk as misleading, but even the ‘average risk’ levels may be lethal for some groups (e.g., people with compromised immune systems may die from West Nile Virus).

It would be wise to spend a little time thinking about Beck’s ‘risk society’ and applying it to a real issue, such as global warming–maybe the mother of all risks for the human species–which in many ways is a global phenomenon that is a result of individuals just going about their lives (e.g., driving cars, going to work, turning on light switches, dumping their garbage, buying stuff), although extracting those individuals from the high-energy sociotechnical systems of which they’re a part is an artificial exercise.