Risk Society and Reflexive Modernisation: Can Our Generation Have Total Fulfilment?

We face risk on a daily basis, from the mundane “I’ll cross on the red man because there’s no cars coming that I can see” to the life‐changing “Should I take on £27,000 plus in university loans so I better myself?”. We can never truly calculate outcomes of risks, but what we can do is make informed decisions, using reason and logic. Perhaps the thought process is not quite as conscious in the moments we are making decisions, but it is there, a ‘background phenomenon’ (Giddens, 1991: 181). We, the generation I am part of, have been skilled to balance risks, to assess the good and the bad, the pros and the cons of all of our decisions. It is the price we have paid for being brought up in a risk society, the niggle in the back of our minds, the consequences of our actions.