World Risk Society and War Against Terror

I interpret the 'war against terror', declared following September 11 2001, as adopting concepts drawn from the work of Ulrich Beck, as a projection of world risk society. Despite its global character, war against terror is constructed through outmoded vocabularies of national security and sovereignty, within which the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalized. This exclusion contributes to the intensification rather than reduction of terror and terrorism. In so doing the moment of violence inscribed within the concept of the political resurfaces in the constitution of war against terror, Homeland Security, and the identities and anxieties that they reproduce. Contrary to Slavoj Žižek's claim that risk society is incapable of resolving the dilemmas that it exposes, Beck's approach cuts across established ideological and methodological boundaries, anticipating key transformations of discourse required to address the prevailing global predicament through the vocabularies and logic of cosmopolitan risk, rather than those of absolute security, terror and war.     

Aspects of social differentiation in rural England,c. 1580–1660

The article attempts to identify and account for changes in local social relations which accompanied economic and social‐structural change in early‐modern England. An overview of recent findings is provided to highlight both the enduring characteristics of rural society in the period and the elements of change. Next it is argued that the aspects of change can be interpreted as a process of incorporation with economic, administrative and cultural dimensions which had the ultimate effect of promoting integration nationally, but differentiation locally. Particular illustration of this general argument is given in an examination of change in the Essex village of Terling.     

The critical path to growth

Growth has for long been accepted as one of the major objectives of most people. Recently it has been challenged from a number of directions and the challengers have been counter-challenged. The inadequacy of scientific evidence lays the field open for much controversy, but the questions which have been brought into prominence are of great importance and demand answers. These answers in turn require knowledge associated with many branches of the physical, biological and social sciences. The techniques of operational research can be and are being used to assemble and blend the evidence. These techniques can also show up the gaps and the obstacles in the path to progress.Slightly revised version of a paper presented at the Sixth Conference of the International Federation of Operations Research Societies, Dublin, Ireland, August 1972.