Sociológia del riesgo

Sociología del riesgo (Risk: A Sociological Theory) takes up a concept, risk, that appears across many different sciences and everyday contexts, and gives it a specifically sociological treatment. Niklas Luhmann had been developing his general systems theory of society for three decades by the time this book appeared, and it folds the concept of risk, drawn partly from economics, into that larger theoretical framework. Central to his argument is a distinction between risk and mere danger: risk refers to possible future loss that follows from one's own decisions, while danger refers to loss attributed to external causes. For Luhmann, disappointment and the unplanned are a normal, structural feature of social life rather than an aberration, and the book examines how modern society, faced with decisions whose outcomes cannot be fully known in advance, has developed distinctive ways of handling that uncertainty. Credits: Luhmann, N. (1992). Sociológia del riesgo. Guadalajara, Jalisco, México: Universidad Iberoamericana y Universidad de Guadalajara.