Cover -- Risk and Technological Culture: Towards a sociology of virulence -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: Technological culture and risk -- The ascendance of risk -- Risk, technology and culture -- Information and communication technologies -- Rationale -- PART I Theoretical framework -- 2 Cultivating risks: Paradoxes in the work of Ulrich Beck -- Excess modernization -- Individualization and reflexivity -- The communicative logic of risk: autopoietic systems -- Confronting subpolitics -- Reason without faith -- 3 Enrolling risks in technocultural practices: Notes on Actor Network Theory -- Technoscience in action -- Actor networks: the fixation of risks -- Representations and virtual objects -- Risk as a virtual object: the case of BSE/vCJD -- Conclusion -- 4 Assemblages and deviations: Biophilosophical reflections on risk -- Politics, embodiment and technoculture: diffractions of Donna Haraway -- Symbiosis and assemblage: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari -- A nomadology of risk -- Contingency, risk and the monad: Jean-François Lyotard's apocalypse -- 5 A theoretical framework: Risk as the critical limit of technological culture -- The logic of en-presenting: visualization, signification and objectification -- The Four Riders of the Apocalypse -- PART II The Four Riders of the Apocalypse -- 6 Cultivating waste: Excessive risks in an economy of opportunities -- Waste and risk -- Politicizing waste -- Technological culture's response: a biopolitics of waste -- Conclusion: waste as a virulent abject of modernity -- 7 Emergent pathogen virulence: Understanding epidemics in apocalypse culture -- Emergent pathogen virulence: Ebola -- Explanations of increased pathogen virulence -- Signs of the times: an emergent apocalypse culture -- Enrolling virulence -- Conclusion.

8 Cyberrisks: Telematic symbiosis and computer viruses -- Exposing 'the' environment: a cybernetic turn -- Virtual risks and telematic symbiosis -- Cyberrisks -- The jouissance of viral terrorism -- Neutralize the neurosis! -- 9 Race, riots and risk: Media technologies and the engineering of moral panics -- The warfare state -- Moral panics -- Racialization through mythification -- The beating of Rodney King -- The verdict -- Media hybridities -- Conclusion -- 10 Conclusion: Risk and apocalypse culture -- Recapitulation -- Against the autopoiesis of risk aversion: symbiosis and the nomadic war machine -- Apocalypse cultures -- Fidelity -- Dangers and saving powers -- Notes -- References -- Index.

The question as to whether we are now entering a risk society has become a key debate in contemporary social theory. Risk and Technological Culture presents a critical discussion of the main theories of risk from Ulrich Becks foundational work to that of his contemporaries such as Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash and assesses the extent to which risk has impacted on modern societies. In this discussion van Loon demonstrates how new technologies are transforming the character of risk and examines the relationship between technological culture and society through substantive chapters on topics such as waste, emerging viruses, communication technologies and urban disorders. In so doing this innovative new book extends the debate to encompass theorists such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jean-François Lyotard.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.