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Quote by Anthony Giddens

“Risk concerns future happenings - as related to present practices - and the colonising of the future therefore opens up new settings of risk, some of which are institutionally organised.”

Quote by Anthony Giddens

Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Work

Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

This book delves into the complexities of self-identity as it intersects with societal changes in the late modern era, examining how individuals navigate personal identity in a rapidly evolving social landscape. more

Author

Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens is a British sociologist and political theorist, born on January 18, 1938. He is one of the most influential sociologists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, known for his work on structuration theory and the study of modernity. more

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“[C]ultivated risk-taking represents an 'experiment with trust' (in the sense of basic trust) which consequently has implications for an individual's self-identity. (...) In cultivated risk-taking, the encounter with danger and its resolution are bound up in the same activity, whereas in other consequential settings the payoff of chosen strategies may not be seen for years afterwards.”

Years May Self Individual Risk Danger Identity Activity Strategy Bounds Experiments Setting Chosen Settings Encounters Resolution Implications Risk-taking Self Identity Payoff

Author:Anthony Giddens

“Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects (...), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptable/appropriate/recommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims.”

“Abstract systems depend on trust, yet they provide none of the moral rewards which can be obtained from personalised trust, or were often available in traditional settings from the moral frameworks within which everyday life was undertaken. Moreover, the wholesale penetration of abstract systems into daily life creates risks which the individual is not well placed to confront; high-consequence risks fall into this category. Greater interdependence, up to and including globally independent systems, means greater vulnerability when untoward events occur that affect those systems as a whole.”

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“The thesis that risk assessment itself is inherently risky is nowhere better borne out than in the area of high-consequence risks.”

Risk Consequence Areas Assessment Thesis

Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“We now spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education. This, of course, is not surprising. The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time.”

Courses Deals Environment Risk Drink Smoke Urges Surprising

Book:Complete Essays: 1939-1956

Source: Complete Essays: 1939-1956

“In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.”

Reality Age Risk Middle Awareness Youth Immortality Middle Ages

Book:Devices and Desires

Source: Devices and Desires

“All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.”

Chance Quality Risk Unstable Ambiguous

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Silence is the safest policy if you are unsure of yourself.”

Ifs Silence Risk Policy Silence Is Unsure

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.”

Risk Ill Moderation Sobriety

Author:Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Just as a moral distinction is drawn between "those at risk" and "those posing a risk", health education routinely draws a distinction between the harm caused by external causes out of the individual's control and that caused by oneself. Lifestyle risk discourse overturns the notion that health hazards in postindustrial society are out of the individual's control. On the contrary, the dominant theme of lifestyle risk discourse is the responsibility of the individual to avoid health risks for the sake of his or her own health as well as the greater good of society.”