UK Global Health Programme

Risk is an abstraction that represents the likelihood of specific outcomes. As such, risks appear largely external to us- particular events occur whether we want them to or not. In effect, risks have always been around, however, that we conceive of something as being a risk, is a product of social progress and the evolution of human consciousness. The ability to discern patterns, and their limitations, in nature, in order to subject these to our actions, has enabled development. In turn, the meaning and history of risk have changed too. Our understanding of risk reflects our own confidence – or lack of it – in human will and agency. Hence, it has gone through several qualitative transformations from randomness to chance and probability and, a more recent focus on uncertainty (1). In recent years, there has also been a phenomenal quantitative growth in references to risk. The word exploded into the academic literature in the 1990s, coinciding roughly with the translation into English of Ulrich Beck’s sociological best-seller, Risk Society, in 1992 (2). Since that time, the number of conferences, courses, centres and journals, focusing on, or making use of, the word risk, have expanded rapidly too. This development begs our understanding. Do we face more risks today? Have we becom