Robert Buddan
Anthony Giddens, a British social thinker, has helped to make the idea of the 'risk society' well known. As societies modernise, he says, the very consequences of modernisation increase risks to citizens. Daily concerns over food availability and food safety, the safety and security of life in the home and on the streets, climate change and natural disasters, human cloning and unintentionally dangerous genetic manipulation, technologies of mental and physical violence, all typify the symbols of modernisation that pose great risks to society's members.
The consequences of technology and industry cannot be anticipated. Society becomes a threat to the very citizens it is supposed to care for. Citizens become more anxious and fearful as society becomes riskier. They trust government, science, intellectuals and experts less. Public policies are developed more and more with a view to manage risk. Modern society is increasingly preoccupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that itself has produced.
This is a very different idea from the Victorian idea of society, which prevailed before. In that idea society was ideally a source of welfare, safety and progress, and its members would enjoy these through core institutions like family, church, school, and state. These institutions were vital to build and sustain in order to nurture people and social order. They improved education and character and lead to collective progress. Society is seen as a benign space and family, church, state, and school should be trusted to protect, educate and improve.
Elders have a responsibility to protect, teach and develop the moral character of the young. The young have a responsibility to learn, respect, work, be independent and raise their own family according to the values by which they were raised. Social failures in school, parenting, respect for authority, and so on, are a result of the breakdown of values and attitudes and so societies must go back to traditional family (and other Victorian) values.
NATION BUILDING AGAINST RISK
It might be that the first period of nation building in Jamaica was based on this Victorian formula and it emphasised family, schools, church, community, and state and a positive belief in society and its progress. Its liberal, Christian, welfarist principles encouraged the idea that more people should have greater access to the benefits of these institutions. However, over the past decade or two a new attitude to society seems to have emerged.
Hopes for a caring and compassionate society became symptomatic of the rise of what might now be called the risk society in which sexual molestation of children, violence in schools, domestic violence in homes, and dangerous streets and neighbourhoods lead to gated communities and security surveillance monitors everywhere.
Society can react through denial, apathy or transformation. A series of sectoral presentations in parliament indicate some recognition of this risk society and the option of transformation. Dr Fenton Ferguson's portfolio is opposition spokesman on health, environment and global warming, symbolic of our high-risk society and world. He identifies food, oil/energy, and climate change as the three top crises facing Jamaica today.
Dr Ferguson sees his mission as one to alert government and society of the threat these pose to the erosion of social gains achieved over the years and the need for spending that is sustainability and strategies that are preventative. These are, in fact, two key prescriptions for dealing with risks in society.
Social work practitioners and social theorists talk much today about families at risk, children at risk, men at risk, and women at risk. The answer to risk is security so we also hear about national security, food security, and energy security. 'Youth in Crisis' was in fact the main theme of Senator Basil Waite's sectoral presentation and his call is to invest in our youth if we are to secure Jamaica's future.
The security of the future is another main concern in the risk society. The Economic and Social Survey (2007), Waite pointed out, showed that children and youth between 12 and 30 committed 69 per cent of major crimes. He recommends that a Child Equal Opportunity Trust be established and paid for by collecting the vast amounts of all categories of taxes lost annually though evasion and avoidance.
Basil Waite and Lisa Hanna spoke about the need to secure and safeguard the future. Ms Hanna believes that youth programmes should be consolidated under a ministry of youth, and 186,000 young people who are out of school and out of work should be especially targeted. This would reduce crime, increase economic activity and earn much more in taxes than it would cost to integrate these young persons into the society and mitigate the risks they pose.
Dr Peter Phillips said that crime and violence were Jamaica's most serious problems. They traumatise society. His theme was 'Building a Safe and Secure Society: The Urgent Challenge of Our generation'. Violence is part of our culture and it threatens nation building and the integrity of the state itself. Dr Phillips believes that the country needs the same kind of national mobilisation against crime and violence that it enjoyed in the mobilisation for independence.
THE UNSAFE SOCIETY
Dr Ferguson pointed to figures for all types of injuries reported at six hospitals (collected by Dr Elizabeth Ward) at the Ministry of Health in 2004. It showed that an intimate partner, a relative or a friend caused 30 per cent of injuries. Close relationships carried risks of violence. Another 46 per cent were caused by acquaintances. Strangers and others like the police only caused 22 per cent. Arguments and fights caused some 76 per cent of injuries by people within one's circle. The data showed that 39 per cent of these injuries occurred in the home. Another 47 per cent took place in the streets or in a public area. The home is a dangerous place. Almost 60 per cent of these injuries occurred in the age groups 29 and younger.
What is to be done? Dr Ferguson wants sustainable and preventative measures to treat and protect the nation's health. Today, the global rise in the cost of energy, climate change affecting the spread of vector borne and other communicable diseases, the global food crisis and threat to the survival of the poor and marginalised are all seeds for violence and trauma, he says. He proposes what amounts to a national task force to monitor all the risks that these pose to the society.
The problem can be looked at in a different way. Basil Waite looks at the data for education and finds that the poor are much more likely to drop out of school at 15 to 16 and it gets worse between 19 and 24. They do worse in subjects like English and mathematics. The problem is inequality and the solution is to invest the uncollected taxable wealth in the education of the poor. Society is at risk when it perpetuates poverty.
Peter Phillips suggests that the independent state itself must be saved from those forces that would compromise it through corruption. The response must be through transformation. Hanna, Waite and Ferguson all say that the Jamaican people should be given the tools to overcome. They are optimistic about people's abilities and resilience. In the final analysis, there is a positive message. The risk society does not have to cause fear and anxiety and a feeling of foreboding about the future. But we must risk by investing in people.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
