Risk and 'The Other' [Paperback]

This book explores personal responses to risk from a social psychological framework.From earthquakes to epidemics, AIDS to war, the mass media bring into our lives the awareness of risk. But how do people respond to this increased awareness? Using a social psychological framework, this book attempts to expla in how, within a given social and cultural context, individuals make sense of impending crisis. In particular it explores the phenomenon of a widespread sense of personal invulnerability when faced with risk: the 'not me' factor. This book will appeal to an international audience of post-graduates, academics and researchers in the social sciences.From earthquakes to epidemics, AIDS to war, the mass media bring into our lives the awareness of risk. But how do people respond to this increased awareness? Using a social psychological framework, this book attempts to expla in how, within a given social and cultural context, individuals make sense of impending crisis. In particular it explores the phenomenon of a widespread sense of personal invulnerability when faced with risk: the 'not me' factor. This book will appeal to an international audience of post-graduates, academics and researchers in the social sciences.This book forges a social psychological framework for understanding the human response to risks ranging from nuclear wars to industrial accidents, from earthquakes to epidemics. Its key concern is to highlight and to explain the widespread sense of personal invulnerability to danger. The social scientific study of people's responses to risk tends to focus on either their narrow cognitive or their broad socio-cultural roots. The approach in this book slots into the gap between these poles. It elucidates how individuals, steeped in various societies, cultures and groups, make sense of impending crises. Since the response to risk is essentially a response to a menacing, threatening event, emotional factors form a key component of this response. Interestinglylƒ0