Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers

Overview
Risk and Culture (1982), co-authored by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, launches a compelling challenge to technical and individualistic accounts of risk. The book claims that what societies label as "risks" and how they choose to confront them are products of cultural patterns and social organization rather than neutral reflections of objective probabilities. It reframes controversies over technological and environmental dangers as contests between competing social solidarities and institutional arrangements.

Central argument
Douglas and Wildavsky argue that risk perceptions are selective: communities emphasize some hazards while downplaying others because those choices sustain particular social orders and moral priorities. Risk is treated not as a property intrinsic to events but as a social judgement shaped by cultural predispositions. The authors contend that technical assessments, however rigorous, cannot fully explain public responses because they ignore how groups construct meaning, assign blame, and protect valued relationships.

Grid-group framework
The book develops and applies the "grid-group" cultural theory, a two-dimensional schema that maps social life along axes of group integration and grid regulation. Group measures the strength of boundary and solidarity; grid captures the degree to which behavior is constrained by rules and roles. From combinations of high and low values on these axes emerge distinct cultural types, such as hierarchical, egalitarian, individualist, and fatalist, each with characteristic ways of perceiving and managing risk. These cultural biases predict which dangers attract attention, which experts are trusted, and which mitigation strategies are favored.

Selection of dangers and social function
Douglas and Wildavsky emphasize that identifying hazards serves social functions: it can legitimize institutions, mobilize support, or defend collective identities. For example, hierarchical settings tend to defer to expert authority and prefer controlled technical solutions, while egalitarian contexts are more likely to highlight industrial inequality and call for precaution. Individualist settings emphasize entrepreneurial resilience and accept certain risks as the price of innovation. The result is that risk debates often reveal underlying struggles over authority, solidarity, and worth.

Method and examples
The authors employ comparative historical analysis and case studies drawn from technological controversies and environmental debates, ranging from industrial hazards to nuclear power. They contrast their approach with psychometric models that attribute public attitudes to cognitive biases, arguing instead for a sociological lens that attends to institutional location and cultural allegiances. Evidence is marshaled to show patterned correlations between social settings and the kinds of threats perceived as salient.

Impact and critiques
Risk and Culture has been influential across anthropology, sociology, policy studies, and risk analysis, stimulating research into how values shape science-policy controversies and risk communication. Critics have argued that the theory can be overgeneralizing or deterministic, that it sometimes underplays material conditions and power dynamics, and that empirical tests produce mixed support. Others contend that the framework underestimates the role of economic and political interests in shaping risk agendas. Despite these debates, the book remains a pivotal intervention that shifted attention from technical calculation to cultural meaning.

Legacy and relevance
The cultural theory of risk continues to inform contemporary discussions about climate change, public health, and technology controversies by highlighting why consensus about dangers so often proves elusive. Its core insight, that societies "select" dangers through the lenses of social structure and cultural bias, encourages policymakers and communicators to account for plural perspectives and institutional contexts when designing responses. The framework invites ongoing empirical refinement while offering a durable vocabulary for thinking about how communities live with uncertainty.