Global risk and the surveillance state: a sociology of new terrorism

The way the notion of risk permeates society on a global scale has arguably been forever altered after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York were brought down by hijacked planes. Today, the threat of terrorism is constantly present, to the extent that terrorism becomes a cause that must be explicitly excluded, or labelled a possibility, before a complete investigation has been undertaken. For sociologists, the concept of risk is important, as it affects how we behave, respond, and react in daily life. Ulrich Beck’s (1992) concept of the risk society, in which the concept of risk arguably permeates every aspect of our lives, describes how risk calculations have become increasingly important in Western society, so that people’s lives are increasingly occupied with ‘preventing the worst’ (p. 49). Beck argues that people are negotiating their lives in a context of unanticipated hazards, some of which become central to their individual lives, and to the way society functions. Risk is about the potential future impacting on the present (Boyne 2001). In a globalised world, as national borders become decreasingly important to trade, where information technology changes how we communicate, and where the global economy has an impact on households everywhere in the world, the notion of risk has also changed. Not only is human responsibility increasingly attached to the causes of risk (Lupton 2006), but the origins of risk exposure have moved beyond the local or national, and are increasingly global in nature - particularly the risk of terrorism.3r