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This article contributes to the politicisation of smart urbanism and data-driven governance by making visible some of the potential inequalities emerging from these transitions through a provisional risk-class analysis. To pursue this analysis, it focuses on the case of smart urbanism and its associated process of data-driven governance in China. It looks specifically at the manner in which Chinese smart urbanism, in terms of its security measures, including widespread use of facial recognition and the roll-out of social credit scoring, is affecting inequalities. This article proposes risk-class analysis as a toolbox that can pose new questions in the search for what types of potential risks and inequalities emerge from the smart urbanism and data-driven governance being rolled out in the Chinese context.

The 2008 financial crisis illustrated the potential for the failure of a single industry to threaten the functioning of the entire economy. By reconstructing the ecological approach to systemic ris...

Polanyi’s (1957 [1944]) The Great Transformation stands as a towering analysis of the industrial revolution and a powerful social warning against social and natural damage driven by the pursuit of maximal economic value. Polanyi envisioned that the ‘discovery of society’, due to its radical neglect during the industrial revolution, led to this new social knowledge resulting in the end of laissez-faire and the self-regulating market. Yet, the most recent phase of the industrial revolution, the digital phase, suggests that many of the same failures to manage industrial revolutions are occurring again. In particular, looking at the emerging digital economy through the prism of Polanyi’s social theory, this article argues that the changes driven by the digital economy, specifically in terms of the reshaping of attention and sociality and the increasing potential for ‘normal catastrophes’, suggests that Polanyi’s lesson of the destructive power of the self-regulating market is again being neglected.

Low-carbon innovation is usually depicted as an exemplar of pursuit of the common good, in both mainstream policy discussion and the emerging orthodoxy of transition studies. Yet it may emerge as a key means of intensifying inequality. We analyse low-carbon innovation as a social and political process through the prism of differential risk-classes, focusing on the pivotal global case of emergence of the Chinese middle-class in seaboard megacities, especially regarding the profound challenges of urban e-mobility transition. This approach shows emergence of this still-forming sociopolitical grouping as tightly and complementarily coupled with the assembling of innovations that meaningfully tackle global risks, such as climate change, while also intensifying existing inequalities. Misrecognition of the duality of low-carbon innovations as both moral technologies and as relatively expensive consumer products has the potentiality to be a key mechanism of this process, thereby serving to reproduce, constitute and legitimize inequalities in novel and unexpected ways.

In an age of accelerating wealth at the very top and accelerating risks at the bottom, there is a clear disjunction between the flow of social benefits and social damages produced by different actors and their share of these respective benefits and damages. Yet, the specific processes that generate the dualization of tracks of accumulation of rewards or accumulation of risks and precarity are still up for debate. In tackling this dual process in a way that is attuned to the critical contribution of contemporary forms of the law to this uneven accumulation of wealth and of risks, this paper focuses on organized irresponsibility—where individuals can cumulatively contribute to risks, but avoid individual culpability—and how relations of organized irresponsibility provide extensive opportunities for risk arbitrage. Risk arbitrage is correspondingly a process where actors, whether it be individuals or larger organizations, can produce social risk, appropriate benefit from these risks, and disproportionately avoid the consequences of the risks so as to benefit from the overall “cycle of reward and risk”—even if society as a whole is worse off. The paper identifies organized irresponsibility as fundamentally undergirded by mismatches between existing configurations of law and the existing complexity of the processes of the production of social goods and risks. This paper proceeds to show how gaps in the law enable the organized irresponsibility principle—that given a level of risk production, the greater the number of actors involved and the greater complexity between causes and the risk’s impacts, the less overall culpability that tends to be assigned. It then shows how the organized irresponsibility principle enables relationships of risk arbitrage that intensify contemporary risk and inequality.

Recent treatments of environmental justice have highlighted the need to move beyond focusing upon inequalities in the distribution of environmental risks to address other aspects of environmental injustice, including unequal participation and recognition. While acknowledging the importance of extending environmental justice to include these other dimensions of justice, this paper argues that more, not less, analytical attention needs to be devoted to the diverse logics of distribution of environmental risks. In light of continuing dilemmas associated with whether environmental inequalities can be just or, alternatively, that environmental inequality and injustice are co-extensive, this paper proposes to untangle some key connections between environmental inequalities and injustice through a critical confrontation of environmental justice with risk-class analysis. Focusing on the positional or relational distribution of environmental bads as analysed in risk-class analysis, this paper argues that bringing these two bodies of knowledge together can illuminate how relational inequalities have characteristics that make them particularly illegitimate from a justice perspective, thus making an advance in identifying key connections between environmental inequality and injustice.

Beck’s rejection of the relevance of class in Risk Society has had an immense impact on both the fields of class analysis and the sociology of risk. In outlining a novel theory of the systemic impo...

The study of digital economies and the sociology of risk have, with few exceptions, a relationship of benign mutual neglect despite possible important connections between the two. This article aims...

The theory of the treadmill of production highlights how the constant search for economic growth leads to advanced economies being stuck on a “treadmill,” where their well-being is not improved by economic growth, yet the impacts of this pursuit of growth causes massive, unsustainable environmental damages. In interrogating the specific driving force that keeps the irrational system of the treadmill so powerfully in place, the theory of the treadmill of production focuses on how those who control the production process, corporations, are the primary agents driving the treadmill, while also highlighting how the state and workers generally continue to provide support for the treadmill's continued reproduction. In thinking about ways to begin to unwind the treadmill, there is a clear need to explore why workers, who are also consumers and citizens, continue to support (reluctantly or not) the treadmill of production. Through an analysis of the positional economy of consumption, this paper identifies key stakes that individual consumers have in expanding their income and consumption levels through the treadmill of production, despite the widespread inefficacy of the treadmill to increase aggregate satisfaction levels. This theory of the positional economy of consumption identifies the structural forces that lock individuals into increasing their income and levels of “defensive consumption” merely to maintain their existing levels of social practices and the well-being generated from them, thus further supporting the reproduction of the treadmill of production. La theorie de l'‘engrenage de la production’ (‘treadmill of production’) demontre en quoi la recherche constante de croissance economique enferme les economies avancees dans un ‘engrenage’, ou leur bien-etre n'est pas ameliore par la croissance economique, mais ou les impacts de la poursuite de la croissance se traduisent par des dommages environnementaux massifs et irreparables. En analysant les forces specifiques qui preservent ce systeme avec autant de pouvoir, cette theorie insiste sur l'importance de ceux qui controlent le processus de production (les corporations) en tant que principaux agents appuyant cet ‘engrenage’, tout en soulignant comment, d'une maniere generale, l'Etat et les travailleurs persistent a soutenir sa perpetuation. En pensant aux manieres d'arreter cet ‘engranage’, il y a un besoin evident d'etudier pourquoi les travailleurs, qui sont aussi consommateurs et citoyens, persistent a soutenir (a contrecœur ou pas) cet ‘engrenage’ de la production. Grâce a une analyse de l'economie positionnelle de la consommation, cet article identifie les principaux interets qu'ont les consommateurs individuels a augmenter leurs revenus et leurs niveaux de consommation au sein de cet engrenage de la production, en depit de son inefficacite generale a ameliorer les niveaux de satisfactions agreges. Cette theorie de l'economie positionnelle de la consommation identifie les forces structurelles qui enferment les individus dans une recherche d'augmentation de leurs revenus et de leurs niveaux de ‘consommation defensive’, seulement pour maintenir leurs niveaux actuels de pratiques sociales et le bien-etre qui en decoule, contribuant ainsi a reproduire l'engrenage de la production.

Moving beyond Beck’s explicit opposition to Marx’s understanding of society, this article proposes to explore some of the deeper commonalities between Marxism and Beck’s theory of risk society. Rather than remaining at the level of propositional claims about society, at which Marx and Beck are opposed in several important ways, this article proposes to analyze these theories in terms of their key commonalities in the problem situations they address. In particular, this article identifies how both of these theories explore the implications of the development of productive forces and the resulting humanisation of nature in the context of widespread social estrangement. This article then identifies key commonalities in the structure of the theoretical solutions that each theory employs to address their commonly held problem situation. In this way, this article rethinks the relationship between Beck and Marx, as well as suggesting alternative ways of re-appropriating classical social theory.

This paper analyzes the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to show how processes associated with risk society – the social production and distribution of systemic financial risk in a context of organized irresponsibility – are contributing to the intensification of contemporary class-based inequalities. Utilizing a framework based in Bourdieusian class resources, the analysis moves beyond Beck's rejection of the relevance of class relations to systemic risk, and his critics’ denial that risk transforms existing logics of distribution, to identify key shifts in the relation between contemporary financial risk, power and inequality. The conclusions of this study, showing how systemic financial risk in contexts of organized irresponsibility contributes to differential ‘risk-classes’, suggest that risk is a key source of contemporary inequality and that reconstructing the theory of risk society can illuminate these changes.

The theory of the treadmill of production highlights how the constant search for economic growth leads to advanced economies being stuck on a "treadmill," where their well-being is not improved by economic growth, yet the impacts of this pursuit of growth causes massive, unsustainable environmental damages. In interrogating the specific driving force that keeps the irrational system of the treadmill so powerfully in place, the theory of the treadmill of production focuses on how those who control the production process, corporations, are the primary agents driving the treadmill, while also highlighting how the state and workers generally continue to provide support for the treadmill's continued reproduction. In thinking about ways to begin to unwind the treadmill, there is a clear need to explore why workers, who are also consumers and citizens, continue to support (reluctantly or not) the treadmill of production. Through an analysis of the positional economy of consumption, this paper identifies key stakes that individual consumers have in expanding their income and consumption levels through the treadmill of production, despite the widespread inefficacy of the treadmill to increase aggregate satisfaction levels. This theory of the positional economy of consumption identifies the structural forces that lock individuals into increasing their income and levels of "defensive consumption" merely to maintain their existing levels of social practices and the well-being generated from them, thus further supporting the reproduction of the treadmill of production. La théorie de l''engrenage de la production' ('treadmill of production') démontre en quoi la recherche constante de croissance économique enferme les économies avancées dans un 'engrenage', où leur bien-être n'est pas amélioré par la croissance économique, mais où les impacts de la poursuite de la croissance se traduisent par des dommages environnementaux massifs et irréparables. En analysant les forces spécifiques qui préservent ce système avec autant de pouvoir, cette théorie insiste sur l'importance de ceux qui contrôlent le processus de production (les corporations) en tant que principaux agents appuyant cet 'engrenage', tout en soulignant comment, d'une manière générale, l'Etat et les travailleurs persistent à soutenir sa perpétuation. En pensant aux manières d'arrêter cet 'engranage', il y a un besoin évident d'étudier pourquoi les travailleurs, qui sont aussi consommateurs et citoyens, persistent à soutenir (à contrecœur ou pas) cet 'engrenage' de la production. Grâce à une analyse de l'économie positionnelle de la consommation, cet article identifie les principaux intérêts qu'ont les consommateurs individuels à augmenter leurs revenus et leurs niveaux de consommation au sein de cet engrenage de la production, en dépit de son inefficacité générale à améliorer les niveaux de satisfactions agrégés. Cette théorie de l'économie positionnelle de la consommation identifie les forces structurelles qui enferment les individus dans une recherche d'augmentation de leurs revenus et de leurs niveaux de 'consommation défensive', seulement pour maintenir leurs niveaux actuels de pratiques sociales et le bien-être qui en découle, contribuant ainsi à reproduire l'engrenage de la production.

Ulrich Beck states in the Risk Society (1992) that the rise of the social production of risks in the risk society signals that class ceases to be of relevance; instead the hierarchical logic of class will be supplanted by the egalitarian logic of the distribution of risks. Several trenchant critiques of Beck's claim have justified the continued relevance of class to contemporary society. While these accounts have emphasized continuity, they have not attempted to chart, as this paper will, how the growing social production of risk increases the importance of class. This paper argues that it is Beck's undifferentiated, catastrophic account of risk that undergirds his rejection of class, and that by inserting an account of risk involving gradations in both damages and calculability into Beck's framework, his theory of risk society may be used to develop a critical theory of class. Such a theory can be used to reveal how wealth differentials associated with class relations actually increase in importance to individuals' life-chances in the risk society. With the growing production and distribution of bads, class inequalities gain added significance, since it will be relative wealth differentials that both enables the advantaged to minimize their risk exposure and imposes on others the necessity of facing the intensified risks of the risk society.

The 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath have been defining features of economic, political, and social life for the past seven years. Most of the world’s advanced economies suffered the worst macroeconomic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s (see Jenkins et al. 2013a: 1). The impacts were both immediate and severe; the crisis resulted in a 2.1 per cent decline in the size of the global economy between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009 (Keeley and Love 2010: 12). Elsewhere, it has been estimated that the global economy would have increased by $4 trillion had it not been for the crisis (Haldane 2010: 3). Likewise, there were massive increases in unemployment. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries set a post-World War II record of 8.7 per cent in 2010, with 17 million more people out of work than there were two years earlier (Keeley and Love 2010: 12). Amongst the other damaging effects of the crisis has been a massive increase in public debt. While research on financial crises has already established the significant impact of banking crises on public debt (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009: 172), the effects of the most recent crisis have been particularly extreme, with global public debt growing by an average of 9.3 per cent per year from 2007 to 2014. Advanced economies experienced a massive increase in their debt-to-GDP ratio, from 69 per cent in 2007 to over 100 per cent in 2014, which has resulted in difficult dilemmas for many countries (McKinsey 2015: 15, 21).

A core objective of this book is to identify the larger contribution of socially produced risks to transforming inequalities that are not being grasped in the existing risk or inequality literatures. This book aims to achieve this task by developing a framework that can integrate different risk processes so as to highlight the systematic contribution of socially produced risks to inequality. The previous chapter identified a key set of processes related to the relational distribution of environmental risks that are already contributing to the intensification of class-based inequalities, and which will increasingly do so as the effects of climate change grow. Given the significance of the impacts of these inequalities, exploring the effects of environmental risks is clearly a crucial research objective in itself; nevertheless, to identify the larger-scale, systematic social impacts of contemporary socially produced risks, it is imperative to explore how different risk processes beyond environmental risk can be integrated into this framework of the intersections of risk, power, and inequality. To pursue this goal, this chapter further redevelops the theoretical resources of the theory of risk society so as to move beyond the backgrounding of distinct risks as the separate side-effects of distinct silos of social life and works to identify certain key similarities between the distributional logics of contemporary environmental and financial risk.

Before proceeding to a re-theorization of risk society, it is necessary to situate the theory of risk society within contemporary sociology of risk. Beck’s work on risk society is one of the leading approaches, if not the leading approach, to risk in contemporary sociology (Lupton 1999; Zinn 2008), which has led to him becoming a central figure in sociological theory more generally (Outhwaite 2009). His work on risk society (Beck 199 2a, 1995a, 1999, 2009a) has had a significant impact on the discipline (for a selection, see Giddens 1990; Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994; Wynne 1996; Adam, Beck, and Van Loon 2000; Savage 2000; Bauman 2007; Atkinson 2010a), which has led to his growing ‘canonical’ status in British and European sociology (see Outhwaite 2009). Consequently, the centrality of the theory of risk society to contemporary sociology in itself suggests the importance of taking it as an object of study. Given its fundamental importance to contemporary sociology, a critical analysis and reconstruction of Beck’s theorization of risk society could in itself have a significant impact on the sociology of risk, social theory, and the study of contemporary inequalities.

Having proceeded through two chapters on social theory and risk, a chapter on class, and two chapters concerning the relation between risk and contemporary widening inequalities, it is now necessary to address three key questions in this concluding chapter. Firstly, what has been established? Secondly, what is novel about these conclusions? Lastly, it is necessary to answer the ‘so what’ question; that is, what contribution to social knowledge can be made by advancing the debate regarding risk and class inequalities? The conclusion will provide an answer to each of these questions, with its structure following the order of these questions closely.

Despite the analytical insight that Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society provides into key aspects of contemporary social life, the theory of risk society has been subject to important criticisms. One of the most powerful criticisms of Beck’s theorization of risk society is that Beck ‘totalizes’ risk, treating risk as if it is the ‘centre’ of contemporary social and material life, thus neglecting other important factors (Dean 1999: 181–2; Rasborg 2012: 10). This criticism creates a particularly important challenge for this study. Conceiving of risk as the sole ‘centre’ of social relations precludes the exploration of other key structuring factors, such as class relations or the interrelations between risk and class. Another aspect of Beck’s theory of risk society that has received extensive critical attention is his understanding of risk society as an epoch fundamentally different than previous epochs based on the qualitatively different roles of risk in the emerging risk society (Scott 2000; see also Lupton 1999; Mythen 2004: 39; Savage 2009b). Given these two fundamental criticisms it is necessary to ask: is the theory of risk society the appropriate basis for developing an understanding of contemporary risk?

A series of important sociological works characterize the contemporary age in terms of a fundamental break from earlier forms of modernity. These various descriptions of the current age, such as ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman 2000), the ‘network society’ (Castells 2000), an age of ‘mobile hybrids’ (Urry 2000) and ‘risk society’ (Beck 1992a), despite their differences, are unified by their emphasis on a heightened sense of discontinuity with the past. For several of these theorists this fundamental shift in the social conditions of contemporary society likewise requires a shift in the basic methods of sociology (Urry 2007) and of the concepts used in social analysis (Beck 1992a). One of the most important and contentious of these claims regarding the need to jettison prior sociological concepts, which forms a key departure point of this study, is Ulrich Beck’s declaration that in the risk society the concept ‘class’ will no longer be adequate to understand this new emerging social reality (Beck 1992a).

While many different types of inequalities will be referenced in this book, inequality primarily will be addressed through the conceptual framework of ‘class’. Class analysis’ extensive theoretical development over the last century and a half, touching on core aspects of the explanatory and normative dimensions of inequality (see inter alia Sayer 2005), provides a powerful set of theoretical resources with which to analyse some of the key relations between socially produced risks and inequalities.