A Framework of Intersectional Risk Theory in the Age of Ambivalence, 1st ed. 2020 Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty Series

This book brings feminist theories and concepts to the sociology of risk in an attempt to carve out a framework for intersectional risk theories in times of ambivalence.

The authors purport that risk is pervasive in the Global North, and is fast becoming a hegemonic governing principle. In order to understand this crucial aspect of society, sociological risk theories and risk analysis must go beyond power and social inequalities, to incorporate an intersectional risk approach that takes into account gender, race and other critical perspectives. Their proposed framework will provide the tools to assess how risk is situated in different configurations of power, revealing cracks and openings in the weft of power and rethinking risk governance in contemporary society. 

By utilising an intersectional and nuanced analysis, the everyday understanding, practices and discourses of risk can be explored and better understood. This book will be of interest to scholars and students who value the importance of establishing interdisciplinary networks between risk theory, sociology, politics and more in order to study the contemporary world.

1. The Age of Ambivalence

2. Conceptual Frames: Risk and Intersectionality

3. Risk, Inequality, and (Post) Structure: Risks as Governing

4. The Performative Aspects of Risk and the Constitution of Subjects

5. Doing, Redoing, and Doing Away: Performing Risk

6. The Lived Experience of Risk: Multiple Standpoints and Agencies

7. Risk Networks: Actors, Actants, and Assemblages

8. Methodological Applications

9. Risk, Intersectionality, and Ambivalence—A Way to Understand Inequality

Epilogue: Imagining the Future Differently. 

Katarina Giritli Nygren is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Forum for Gender Studies, Mid Sweden University, Sweden.

Anna Olofsson is Professor of Sociology at Risk and Crisis Research Centre, Mid Sweden University, Sweden. 

Susanna Öhman is Associate Professor of Sociology at Risk and Crisis Research Centre, Mid Sweden University, Sweden. 

Fills a gap in the literature of risk by taking into account class, gender, race, sexual behaviour, and other lines of differentiation and inequality

Presents a qualified account of what 'risk society' amounts to in late modern, liberal and pluralist society

Contributes a framework that can be applied methodologically in concrete empirical studies