Preface -- Which risk society, and for whom? -- The sociology of risk and the ineliminability of realism -- Risk society and systematic social theory -- Thinking with Bourdieu, Marx, and Weber to analyse contemporary inequalities and class -- Risk society and the distribution of bads -- Risk illusion and organized irresponsibility in contemporary finance -- Conclusion: beyond the quiet politics of risk.

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 to bridge the gap between these two fields using Beck’s theory of risk society to explore how the digital economy’s momentum of innovation is generating risks and limiting the scope of existing democratic decision-making via the power of the digital economy to create social faits accomplis outside of democratic control. Three (...) specific risks emerging from the dynamics of innovation of digital economies are discussed as vignettes to illustrate these developments: (1) the remaking of interpersonal co-presence and solitary life; (2) the growing threats of AI to intensify unemployment and inequality; and (3) the impact on the environment of an ‘always on’ and ‘always upgrading’ digital communication ecosystem. With the gap between the potential and the actual use value of the digitalization of the infrastructure of life continuing to grow, this article argues that a different relationship between digital innovation and private and public spheres needs to be established to protect the effectiveness of contemporary democracy. (shrink)

This paper examines contemporary digital insecurity through a critical confrontation with Metcalfe’s Law. Metcalfe’s Law—which states that the value of a network grows proportionally to the square of the size of the network—has been cited as a key reason for the astronomical growth in user base and market values of digital companies. This paper proposes a corresponding tendency alongside Metcalfe’s Law, namely that, as digital networks grow in size, there is a tendency towards a corresponding growth in systemic risk. Building (...) on theories of systemic risk, this paper identifies key factors intensifying systemic risk, including: increasing network size increases the complexity and ‘attack surface’ of a network; increasing network size increases the ‘target-rich’ nature of the network; and the ‘layered’ robustness of the internet infrastructure in cases of cyber-security failures can provide an undamaged carrier of digital systemic risk. This paper then proceeds to show how developments in generative AI threaten to massively amplify the risks of ever-expanding digital networks. (shrink)

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. (shrink)