Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers

by Aaron Wildavsky and Mary Douglas

Book Overview

The concern of many Americans with dangers to the natural environment is not justified rationally, according to the authors, but results from American cultural biases and the political goals of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520050630
• ISBN13: 9780520050631
• Release Date: October 1983
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A Classic

This book is a classic in the study of risk perception. It is the genesis of the so-called "cultural theory of risk," which is an alternative to the dominant rational-actor and psychometric theories of risk perception. Douglas and Wildavsky's basic claim is that individuals conform their perceptions of various societal and personal risks to their preferred visions of a good society. Although (as noted by Gintis in his review) Risk and Culture is only casually empirical, it furnished a blueprint for a subsequent program of rigorous empirical study that is by now very far advanced and that corroborates Douglas's and Wildavsky's account.