This book arose out of an international symposium – ‘The Risk Society: Modernity and the Environment’ – organised at Lancaster University in May 1992 by the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) and the Department of Sociology. The symposium was founded on a critical examination of the perspectives of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, focusing on modernity, risk and the cultural dimensions of contemporary environmental issues. It occurred at a time when dominant understandings of risk and environmental issues were undergoing what many at the symposium felt to be an unreflexive shift towards a highly globalised, scientised and universalistic idiom.

The Lancaster meeting brought together for the first time a range of European social theorists and scholars interested in these issues, not only as academic fare but also in terms of their profound importance to latemodern society, and to the turbulent debate over the meaning of European Union. The book is inspired by a shared conviction that more creative intellectual work is needed if we are to engage fully with the social, cultural and political dimensions of these issues, dimensions whose complexities are being obscured by the dominant modes of thought in policy and academic circles.

We are grateful to our authors for the work and commitment they have shown in responding to our editorial efforts to offer a more coherent framework of debate than would be offered by a simple collection of papers. We are also grateful to those many symposium participants from all parts of Europe whose ideas and contributions do not appear as chapter. Thanks are also due to Anne Stubbins for her highly effective organisational support, and to Robert Rojek at Sage for his continued interest and calm reassurance. The UK's Economic and Social Research Council provided funding for the symposium, as well as for CSEC's ongoing research programme on Science, Culture and the Environment. This and the continuing intellectual support of Robin Grove-White and other colleagues in CSEC, together with that of members of the Department of Sociology, and the Lancaster Cultural Change Network have played a crucial role in making this volume possible.