Key Concepts in Health Studies provides a much needed guide to the central concepts used across the subject, and offers the reader a comprehensive overview of the core topics, theories and debates. Drawing together the fundamentals within the disciplines of health, nursing, and social policy this book is an ideal text both for students studying health in a range of academic fields, and for health and social care practitioners. From ageism to public health, and gender to obesity, the book offers an exciting guide to the multidisciplinary field.

Risk Society

Risk society

The late-modern societies that we live within now possess the technological and material resources to potentially identify and manage many forms of ‘risk’ (to health, to profit, to the environment) that hitherto had been beyond any form of control. This new ‘risk culture’ (Beck, 1992) has resulted in a much greater awareness of the extent of ‘risk’ within society. This ‘reflexive modernism’ reflects the shift from ignorance or private fears about the unknown to a widespread knowledge about the world we have created. Within the ‘risk society’, knowledge of risks has ‘become the motor of the self-politicisation of modernity’(Beck, 1992: 181). However, ‘risk awareness’ has consequences for both society and for individuals, for even though risk has always been a feature of ...

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