Risk and Everyday Life (Key Ideas)

Risk and Everyday Life examines how people respond to, experience and think about risk as part of their everyday lives.

Bringing together original empirical research and sociocultural theory, the authors examine how people define risk and what risks they see as affecting them, for example in relation to immigration, employment and family life. They emphasise the need to take account of the cultural dimensions of risk and risk-taking to understand how risk is experienced as part of everyday life and consider the influence that gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, occupation, geographical location and nationality have on our perceptions and experience of risk.

Drawing on the work of key theorists - Ulrich Beck, Scott Lash, and Mary Douglas - the authors examine and critique theories of risk in the light of their own research and presents case studies which show how notions of risk interact with day-to-day concerns.

John Tulloch is Professor at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Cardiff

Deborah Lupton is SHARP professor in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney, working in the Center for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Center and leading the Vitalities Lab. She is the author/co-author of 17 books, the latest of which are Digital Sociology (Routledge, 2015), The Quantified Self (Polity, 2016), Digital Health (Routledge, 2017), Fat, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2018), and Data Selves (Polity, 2019). She is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and holds an honorary doctor of social science degree awarded by the University of Copenhagen.