Social exclusion

Despite his neglect of class inequalities, Beck’s theorization of risk society, of risks as distributional positions, and of the inadequacies of the contemporary politics of risk, provides rich avenues for researching contemporary inequalities. This brief review sketches some of the strengths and limitations of Beck’s theory of risk society for understanding social inequalities. Beck argued in his classic Risk Society (1992) that risk society is a new type of modernity, in which the social production, definition, and distribution of risks are becoming a fundamental problem in social and political life.