Risk society. Production and environment

Abstract

The concept of risk society is based on the fact that in current societies the production of social richness is aligned with a growing social production of risk. The progression and increase of these risks is having clear political and economical consequences. A first direct effect consists in the implementation of governmental policies oriented to the control and reduction of risks, as a direct consequence of the greater visibility that environmental problems have for the public opinion. In the same way that, from an economic perspective, we can establish a clear parallelism between the theory of ecological modernization and the new ecoproductive strategies. This article intends to provide a general view of the whole process, departing from the concept of risk society, and establishing later parallelisms with the new eco-productive strategies, the process of ecological modernization and a last reflection: are we walking towards a new productive model?