Risk Citizenship in Complex Risk Society

Abstract

The particular manners and intensities of South Korea’s compressed economic development and social change have engendered a risk society with correspondingly particular risk characteristics. South Korea can be characterized as a complex risk society in which various risk factors and symptoms of developed, un(der)developed, slapdash, and compressive societies are present simultaneously and interactively. It is thus necessary to adopt the notion or concept of risk citizenship and elaborate on its practical (and possibly theoretical) characteristics in sociopolitical and other domains if we are to understand the unique (but perhaps not unprecedented) nature of such risk-accommodative political economy. Where risks are perceived, diagnosed, commanded, praised, and rewarded in terms of their probable or supposed transformative contributory quality, they cannot simply be prevented, avoided, minimized, or hedged in personal, familial, communal, industrial, and governmental activities. Where whatever transformative contributory risks are detected or promoted, we should explore their citizenship implications.