Looking at the topic from a cross-cultural perspective, the contributors challenge the Eurocentric frameworks within which notions of risk are more commonly considered; arguing that perceptions of danger, and sources of anxiety, are far more socially and culturally constructed -- and far more contingent -- than risk theorists generally admit. Perceptions of risk, they argue, are contested, inherently unstable, and liable to change over time and place -- as can be seen ia the way that anxieties about nuclear war were superseded by new worries such as global warming, genetic engineering, and AIDS, whether in the West or in southern India. Whether discussing the truth claims of scientists and environmentalists, or distinguishing between lay and scientific notions or risk, the contributors to this volume consider risk ethnographically as well as theoretically. They provide a much-needed new dimension to a concept that until now has been over theorized but all too rarely properly scrutinized.
