Anxiety in a 'Risk' Society (Health, Risk and Society)

176 Pages·2001·0.63 MB·English

by  Iain Wilkinson

Anxiety in a risk society
Few would dispute that we are living at a time of high anxiety and uncertainty
in which many of us will experience a crisis of identity at some point or another.
At the same time, news media provide us with a daily catalogue of disasters
from around the globe to remind us that we inhabit a world of crisis,insecurity
and hazard. Anxiety in a risk society:
• looks at the problem of contemporary anxiety from a sociological perspective
• highlights its significance for the ways we make sense of risk and uncertainty
• argues that the relationship between anxiety and risk hinges on the nature of
anxiety.
Iain Wilkinson believes that there is much for sociologists to learn from those
who have made the condition of anxiety the focus of their life’s work. By
making the problem of anxiety the focus of sociological inquiry,a critical van-
tage point can be gained from which to attempt an answer to the question:Are
we more anxious because we are more ‘risk conscious’? This is an original and
thought-provoking contribution to the understanding of late modernity as a risk
society.
Iain Wilkinsonis a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Plymouth.
HEALTH,RISK AND SOCIETY
Series editor
Graham Hart
MRCSocial and Public Health Sciences Unit,Glagsow
In recent years,social scientific interest in risk has increased enormously. In the
health field,risk is seen as having the potential to bridge the gap between indi-
viduals, communities and the larger social structure, with a theoretical
framework which unifies concerns around a number of contemporary health
issues. This new series will explore the concept of risk in detail,and address
some of the most active areas of current health and research practice.
Previous titles in the series:
Risk and misfortune
Judith Green
The endangered self
Managing the social risk of HIV
Gill Green and Elisa J. Sobo
Bodybuilding,drugs and risk
Lee F. Monaghan (in production)
Anxiety in a risk society
Iain Wilkinson
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
©2001 Iain Wilkinson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in an y form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented,including photocopying and recording,or in any
information storage or retrieval system,without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wilkinson,Iain,1969–
Anxiety in a risk society/Iain Wilkinson.
p. cm. – (Health, risk and society)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Risk–Sociological aspects. 2. Anxiety–Sociological aspects.
I. Title. II. Series.
HM1101 W55 2001
302′.12–dc21 00-046013
ISBN 0-415-22680-5 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-22681-3 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-46546-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-77370-5 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Part I
The problem of anxiety
1 Towards a sociological conception of the problem of anxiety 15
2 Social indicators of anxiety 42
3 Coping:from personal style to cultural critique 65
Part II
Anxiety and risk
4 Anxiety in relation to risk 87
5 A speculative age 113
6 Conclusion 136
Notes 141
References 143
Index 157
v

Preface
Anxiety,like fear,joy and melancholy,is that most individual of feelings,but
yet one that we all share,to a greater or lesser degree,more or less frequently.
Sociology has a long history of analysing what appear to be individual ills in
terms of the social conditions in which they arise. Durkheim demonstrated how
the very personal decision to end one’s own life is in fact patterned by culture,
and suicide is a social as well as individual phenomenon. In the same vein,
Brown and Harris investigated the social aetiology of depression in working-
class women,and this too proved to be highly associated with social structural
location,and life circumstances and events. Iain Wilkinson continues this tra-
dition with his study of anxiety,both in its aetiology and in responses to it,but
goes further than this in his interrogation of the way in which the term has been
employed (and sometimes appropriated) by social theorists in recent years,
most particularly in the literature on risk. Demonstrating beyond any doubt
that anxiety is not the exclusive provenance of psychology or psychiatry,
Wilkinson brings to the subject a clarity of thought and writing which renders
his arguments a pleasure to read (even though the topic is at the core of our daily
concerns and troubles). Seeking to connect what C. Wright Mills identified as
the public sphere of structure with the personal realm of experience,he demon-
strates that anxiety is both a function of larger changes in society and of the
individual experience of un-ease:‘anxiety is conceived not so much as a per-
sonality defect,but rather,as a... consequence of the social predicaments and
cultural contradictions in which individuals... live out their day-to-day lives’.
While Wilkinson alerts us to the continuing prescience and insights of the
psychoanalytic writings of Freud and Fromm,it is difficult to separate his pur-
pose in this book – of using the social theories of risk to better understand
anxiety – from the efforts of others over 150 years to analyse our responses to
vii
ANXIETY IN A RISK SOCIETY
the entire project of modernity. Durkheim’s work on suicide was in the context
of a larger issue,the constituents and causes of anomie – literally,normlessness,
or an absence of guidance and sense of what is true and right. Marx in his early
writing grappled with alienation,and was clear that this was an individual as
well as a social condition. Even Weber’s preoccupation with Verstehen(more
properly translated as ‘meaning’rather than ‘understanding’) was an attempt to
confront the existential challenge to the individual of a bureaucratised social
world. While anomie,alienation and the striving for meaning in social life are
not immediately synonymous with anxiety,this engagement with and attempt to
understand the distress experienced by people faced with an uncertain present
and future are a common feature of an established sociology of industrialisation,
and indeed of modernity,a tradition that today we associate with Beck,Giddens
and Bauman. But if one were to choose,it is an echo of Weber that resonates
most strongly in Wilkinson’s book, when he refers to our anxieties as being
associated with ‘the conviction that there is a deficit of meaning in the world’.
By holding out the hope,and alerting us to the value,of the discourses of risk
as a means of articulating and addressing the nature of anxiety,Iain Wilkinson
does us a major service in clarifying the social meaning,parameters and con-
stituents of this most individual of emotional experiences.
Graham Hart
Series Editor
Health,Risk and Society
viii
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Ray Pahl for encouraging me to write this book and for all his
helpful advice. Special thanks are due to David Morgan for his inspiring con-
versations and friendship. Many thanks also to my editor,Graham Hart,for his
support throughout this project. I dedicate this book to Anna,whose love sus-
tains me.
ix