Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. āHelen Keller1
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didnāt do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. āMark Twain2
As the famous authors Helen Keller and Mark Twain emphasise in the above quotes, security is a myth, and taking risks is a necessary and rewarding part of life. Similarly, an abundance of comments on social media emphasises that risk-taking is an ordinary but important element of life and the ābiggest risk in life is not taking a risk at all. Life is all about risk as we do not ever know the outcome of any situation, so there is always a risk in it not working out at all. We live our lives through making certain choices and then decide on what risks we should takeā.3 Thus, risk-taking is not only for entrepreneurs who decide to invest in a new technology such as fracking, or politicians who allow genetically modified food to enter the market. Taking risks is also about average peopleās decisions such as to take on a job, or who to marry (or whether to marry at all), whether to invest in bonds or buy a house, whether to make a contract with one or another health insurer, whether to holiday in Cambodia or at home, whether to ride a motorcycle or climb the Alps.
However, taking risks is not only a necessary and ordinary part of life. Risk-taking is also about interrupting the ordinariness and repetitiveness of life which rewards us with an intensified feeling of being alive. Opposing the rather mundane understanding, this position sees taking real risks as an opportunity which rarely opens in everyday life and grants us the possibility of proving our composure, of showing character or even greatness (Goffman 1969). As the Philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle explained in an English-language lecture: āIs being in life just being born? Probably not. To me, risking your life is not dying yet, itās integrating that you could be dying in your own life. Being completely alive is a task, itās not at all a given thing. Itās not just about being present to the world, itās being present to yourself, reaching an intensity that is in itself a way of being rebornā. There is no doubt that for Dufourmantelle risk-taking was not only an abstract academic reflection (Dufourmantelle 2011) when at 21 July 2017 she entered the water at a beach in Ramatuelleāa seaside commune in Franceās CĆ“te dāAzur regionāto save two children struggling about 45 metres from the shore. Tragically, the 53-year-old Dufourmantelle paid a high price for her courageous attempt to selflessly save the children in trouble. She was swept away by the strong currents and could not be resuscitated whereas the children were finally saved by lifeguards.
Dufourmantelleās tragedy reminds us that risk-taking is about the possibility that things can turn out badly, that the negative possibility we wanted to avoid sometimes materialises. It is then in hindsight that questions are raised as to whether it was worth taking a risk, whether the undesired outcome could have been prevented, and whether there is somebody else to blame. Experts and expert knowledge will come forward to judge about risk-taking, and politicians may eventually take decisions to prevent us from taking risks with a potentially catastrophic outcome. Thus, risk-taking is not only a mundane experience. It is not merely about an intensified feeling of being alive. It becomes part of the social machinery which produces knowledge to make sure that the taking of unreasonable risks is prevented or reduced as it burdens society with high costs. For example, environmental experts give advice on how to protect against the risks of flooding when living in flood-prone areas, health experts advise pregnant women not to drink alcohol or smoke during pregnancy, financial experts advise that we should invest in pension schemes to secure that we can have a decent lifestyle when retiring from active work life. The major purpose of those actions is preventing unreasonable risk-taking (and exposure to risk) and reducing the social costs of such activities. Therefore, experts are often puzzled that all the good knowledge and expert advice does not prevent people from worrying about the wrong issues and exposing themselves to āunreasonableā risks (Renn 2014).
However, there are many examples which show that available knowledge is not always straight forward, and it is sometimes difficult to agree which risks people can reasonably take or not. A particular domain of concern and controversial debate is the sphere of risk-taking by young people. The key issue is where to draw the line between dangerous risk-taking that should be prevented, such as drink driving, unprotected sex and illicit drug consumption. Or how such activities could at least be reduced as much as possible such as becoming a regular smoker. At the same time, it is widely acknowledged that learning to take risks and to prepare for the possibility that risk-taking can turn out badly is an essential part of adolescence. The social desire to protect young people has become so intense that educators have started to emphasise that youth should be allowed to take more risks to prepare them for managing the challenges of adult life, thus necessitating that from time to time they make risky decisions (Biesta 2014; Gill 2007; Lightfoot 1997).
There is not only a social demand to reduce risk. There is also a social need for people who are prepared to take high risks. Jobs such as in commercial fishing, mining, and transport (e.g. road train driving in Australia), construction workers, tree loppers, defence force, (woodland) firefighters, pilots and rubbish collectors are known for the comparatively high fatality rates (compare, for example, for Australia: Safe Work Australia 2018, for the USA: Bureau of Labour Statistics 2017). Thus, one might argue that it is socially desirable to allow people to make up their own mind which risks they want to take and reward people for high risk-taking. Indeed, not all high-risk occupations come with high income. Contemporary societies all over the world are characterised by significantāand in recent decades growing inequalitiesāand risk is part of it. Different social groups are exposed to decision-making situations where they must take risks which can vary quite considerably, from potential death to taking a small financial loss. Some groups are disadvantaged to a degree that they take high risks to meet normative standards. Others are in such desperate situations that they take extreme risks to escape, for example, war, political prosecution and torture.
Thus, risk-taking has many faces and people engage in risk-taking under different conditions for different reasons. Therefore, Understanding Risk-Taking aims to shed light on the question: Why and how do people take risks?
The book contributes to the broader realm of risk studies (Burgess et al. 2016) and responds to John Adams appeal of the mid-1990s that āthe starting point of any theory of risk must be that everyone willingly takes risksā (1995: 16). At the time, he asserted that risk researchers mainly ignore the role of risk-taking. Since his bleak diagnosis, a growing body of qualitative research has started to make sense of risk-taking, but there is no attempt yet to develop the insights of this research into a theoretical framework. This book c...