Paper: The inequality of managing modern risk.
"Owners of foolproof vessels and skilled navigators view the sea as the site of exciting adventure; those condemned to unsound and hazardous dinghies would rather hide behind wave-breakers and think of sailing with trepidation" - Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist
Late modernity presents a new era of risk, instability and precarity, with vastly different structures and dynamics than those that were present in traditional society, industrial society and early modernity. This paper uses theories by sociologists Ulrich Beck, Margaret Archer and Zygmunt Bauman to understand the unique characteristics that define late modernity, honing in on structural incongruity, instability, fragmentation and new forms of risks, among others.
These theories reveal that changing labour structures, the breakdown of social classes and groups, and the exponential production of new, self-producing, de-centralised risks require individuals to manage their lives in new ways. People are required to design and manage their own lives as lone agents within a constantly shifting context. As routine knowledge and action become ever less powerful in navigating the shifting world of modernity, 'reflexivity' offers a disposition, a set of traits and a set of skills with the potential to find opportunity within the risk. The nature of reflexivity, however, creates a new type of inequality where only those individuals able to react quickly, transfer knowledge across contexts and remain confident and happy while unbound by social and economic ties, can truly succeed.
As powerful, global structural forces continue to shift, the true power of reflexivity in helping individuals to stay afloat is yet to be proven. So, while reflexive personal traits are increasingly important in managing contemporary life, they may serve as a band-aid fix for the structural flux that late modernity presents.
Read paper: The inequality of modern risk: reflexivity in late modernity.
(This academic paper was written while studying a Graduate Certificate in Arts (Sociology) at The University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia)
(Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash)