Risk as Moral Danger
The Social and Political Functions of Risk Discourse in Public Health
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5789262 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Deborah Lupton |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 425-435 |
| Publication date | 1993-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Health Services (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-7314 • E-ISSN: 1541-4469 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2190/16ay-e2gc-dfld-51x2 |
| PMID | 8375947 |
| OpenAlex | W2087460300 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 257 |
| References cited | 29 |
Risk is a concept with multiple meanings and is ideologically loaded. The author reviews the literature on risk perception and risk as a sociocultural construct, with particular reference to the domain of public health. Pertinent examples of the political and moral function of risk discourse in public health are given. The author concludes that risk discourse is often used to blame the victim, to displace the real reasons for ill-health upon the individual, and to express outrage at behavior deemed socially unacceptable, thereby exerting control over the body politic as well as the body corporeal. Risk discourse is redolent with the ideologies of mortality, danger, and divine retribution. Risk, as it is used in modern society, therefore cannot be considered a neutral term
Blame · Outrage · Risk society · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology · Public Health Policies and Education · Risk Perception and Management
O salutarismo de Robert Crawford e as atualizações do autoritarismo sanitário nosso de cada dia
El cuerpo y los peligros cotidianos
Situating young people's experiences of risk and identity
Planning older people's discharge from acute hospital care
Rhetoric, reality and risk outcomes in sex work
Sterically Hindered Ketones via Palladium-Catalyzed Suzuki–Miyaura Cross-Coupling of Amides by N–C(O) Activation
Dangerous Love
Guilt, Fear, Stigma and Knowledge Gaps
Femininity, Responsibility, and the Technological Imperative
Risk, Control and Gender
“It just goes against the grain.” Public understandings of genetically modified (GM) food in the UK
Sixty-five days
HIV and Aids hitting home
Media framing and trust
The Covid-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality
The white racial frame of public health discourses about racialized health differences and “disparities”
Face Masks During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Toward stakeholders’ understanding of media reporting on doctor–patient relationship issues
Jeunes en prison
The nitrous oxide problem in Swedish prohibitionist drug policy
Balancing rights and risks
Discourses of risk in lay accounts of microbiological safety and BSE
‘I’m not clear on what the risk is’
Discourses of “religion” in public health research
Perceptions, knowledge and guidelines developed by health professionals in the post-epidemic context of the Zika virus
‘We thought if it’s going to take two years then we need to start that now’
Assessing and managing risk and uncertainty
Contextualising risk, constructing choice
Danger from above? A quantitative study of perceptions of hazards from falling rockets in the Altai region of Siberia
Enmeshed in controversy
On interpretative risk perception research
On ‘risk work’
Rhetoric, reality and risk outcomes in sex work
Risk
‘Passive Drinking’
Digital ‘solutions’ to unhealthy lifestyle ‘problems’
Risk, choice and the ‘girl vaccine’
Conceiving of risk in childbirth
Risk, emotion and responsibility
Embodying risk, embodying political rationality
Bottom-up meets top-down
Situating young people's experiences of risk and identity
The influence of popular media on perceptions of personal and population risk in possible disease outbreaks
Risk perception of women during high risk pregnancy
Conceptualising the experience of health risk
‘I’m managing myself’
Resistance through risk
Conflicting knowledges on risk
Health regulations and social experiences of ‘high-risk’ pregnancies among young working-class women in Brazil
Organisational learning, or organised irresponsibility? Risk, opacity and lesson learning about mental health related deaths
Institutionen der Normativität
Understanding risk in criminal justice
The moral dangers of home birth
Doing the right thing
Liberating the wanderers
Dilemmas in qualitative health research
‘I'm not a real risk-taker’
Perceptions of HIV risk amongst heterosexually identifying migrants from Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa living in Australia
What lies in the shadows
Caesarean or vaginarean epidemics ? Techno-birth, risk and obstetric practice in Turkey
Adherence and the Moral Construction of the Self
Surprise Reveals the Affective-Moral Economies in Cancer Illness Narratives
Perceptions of Risk, Vulnerability, and Disease Prevention in Rural Burkina Faso
Reproduction and Genetic Responsibility
Healthcare Professionals’ Discursive Constructions of Parental Vaccine Hesitancy
How Covid-19 is (and is not) changing the way we talk about sex and dating
Panic computing
Why are they worried? Concern about Aids in rural Malawi
Speaking for Ourselves
Health dispossessions and the moralization of disease
Emociones y relaciones en tiempos de la Covid-19
Percepções, conhecimentos e orientações desenvolvidas por profissionais de saúde no contexto pós-epidemia do vírus Zika
The ‘risk environment’
Road to Ruin
Behavior Change in America
La péridurale, un non-choix ? Ethnographie des formes de résistance à une innovation « miracle »
Si hay un riesgo quiero poder elegir”
Cuerpos tóxicos
A Study on the Evaluation of the Public Health Governance in Countries along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Categorizations of Trust and Distrust in the Classifications and Social Representations of Food among Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women in Spain—Applying the Cultural Domains’ Pile Sort Technique
Women in gambling studies
Halo and spillover effect illustrations for selected beneficial medical devices and drugs
Standing up to the beast’
Challenging the imperative of health? Smoking and justifications of risk-taking
Sex’ – it’s not only women’s work
Pregnancy prevention, reproductive health risk and morality
To the horror of experts’
Stigmatizing surveillance
Blood is thicker than water
Research on Risk and Risk in Research
Navigating the Paradoxes of Neoliberalism
Visualizing Risk
Parents are the best prevention’? Troubling assumptions in cannabis policy and prevention discourses in the context of legalization in Canada
Strengthening drug policy and practice through ethics engagement
Le pourquoi du spectacle
They Are Not My Problem
Negotiating the riskscapes of convenience food
Public health versus performer privates
The effect of symbolic racism on environmental concern and environmental action
On the Streets
Social Benefit versus Technological Risk
You are Dangerous to Your Health
Illness as Metaphor; Aids and its Metaphors
Risk as a Forensic Resource
The attitude/behavior discrepancy as a methodological artifact
The Sociological Study of Aids
A crisis of community anxiety and mistrust
On looking risk in the eye
Risk communication and public confidence in health departments
Blaming the victim
Appraising the health of health risk appraisal
The Social Fabric at Risk
The cultural impact of the 'Aids' test
The Self as Risk Taker
Media Discourse and the Social Construction of Risk
| Unique citing works | 257 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,59 |
| Citation span | 1970 - 2026 (57) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 253 |