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CRITICAL STUDIES IN RISK AND UNCERTAINTY
Understanding
Risk-Taking
Jens O. Zinn
Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty
Series Editors
Patrick Brown
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Anna Olofsson
Mid Sweden University
Östersund, Sweden
Jens O. Zinn
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Palgrave’s Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty series publishes mon-
ographs, edited volumes and Palgrave Pivots that capture and analyse
how societies, organisations, groups and individuals experience and con-
front uncertain futures. An array of approaches for mitigating vulner-
ability to undesired futures has emerged within social contexts around
the world and across history, with risk being seen as an especially salient
technique to have emerged within, while also characterising, processes
of modernisation. These approaches have attracted the critical attention
of scholars across a wide range of social science and humanities disci-
plines including sociology, anthropology, geography, history, psychol-
ogy, economics, linguistics, philosophy and political science. This series
will provide a multidisciplinary home to consolidate this dynamic and
growing academic field, bringing together and representing the state of
the art on various topics within the broader domain of critical studies
of risk and uncertainty. It aims to provide cutting edge theoretical and
empirical, as well as established and emerging methodological contribu-
tions. The series welcomes projects on risk, trust, hope, intuition, emo-
tions and faith. Moreover, the series is sensitive to the broader political,
structural and socio-cultural conditions in which particular approaches
to complexity and uncertainty become legitimated ahead of others.
Explorations of the institutionalisation of approaches to uncertainty
within regulatory and other governmental regimes is also of interest.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15840
Jens O. Zinn
Understanding
Risk-Taking
Jens O. Zinn
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
ISSN 2523-7268 ISSN 2523-7276 (electronic)

Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty
ISBN 978-3-030-28649-1 ISBN 978-3-030-28650-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28650-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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Cover image: © John M Lund Photography Inc
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Acknowledgements
This publication is based on a manuscript I started during a research

visit at the Chair of Ortwin Renn at the University of Stuttgart as part
of a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award I received from the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation in 2015. I am grateful for the funding which
came with this award and allowed me to pursue a number of innovative
research activities which finally resulted in new research projects and
book publications.
I would also like to thank Patrick Brown, Andy Alaszewski, Isabel
Jackson and Anna Anderson for their helpful comments on an earlier
version of the manuscript to further improve the book in content and
style. It is always a pleasure to work with such inspiring colleagues.
Indeed, finishing the manuscript in time would not have been possible
with the patience and support of my partner Dr. Katrin Steinack, who
helped me in critical situations and helped me to keep coherence and
readability of the manuscript.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
References 11
2 The Meaning of Risk 15

2.1 The Modern Dream: Rationality and Calculability 18
2.2 A Historically New Experience 20
2.3 Limits to the Modern Dream 24
2.4 Tensions Within the Notion of Risk 26
2.5 Beyond the Calculative Orthodoxy 28
References 31
3 Different Disciplines 35
3.1 Biology–Psychology–Economics 35
3.2 From Public Responses to Risk to the Social
Enforcement of Risk-Taking 40
3.2.1 Challenging the Expert-Lay Distinction 42
3.2.2 Risk and Culture 46
3.2.3 Risk and Governmentality 49
3.2.4 Risk Society 53
3.2.5 Limits of Sociological Explanations 57
vii
viii Contents
3.3 Engaging with the Experience of Risk-Taking

in Everyday Life 60
References 61
4 The Notion of Risk-Taking 69

4.1 Risk Behaviour 70
4.2 Voluntary Risk-Taking 75
4.3 Risk-Taking 80
4.4 Understanding Risk-Taking 81
References 83
5 Key Characteristics of Risk-Taking 89

5.1 Central Distinctions of Risk-Taking 90
5.1.1 Risk-Taking Rationales 91
5.1.2 Risk-Taking Agency 94
5.1.3 Risk-Taking Dimensions 95
5.2 Getting Used to Risk-Taking 102
5.2.1 Learning Risk-Taking 103
5.2.2 Routinising Risk-Taking 106
5.2.3 Normalising Risk-Taking 107
5.3 Risk-Taking as Identity Management 109
5.3.1 Risk-Taking to Protect Identity 110
5.3.2 Identity, Risk-Taking and Distrust
in Institutions 116
5.4 Risk-Taking in Everyday Life 118
5.4.1 Risk-Taking and Social Milieus 120
5.4.2 Risk-Taking Practices in Everyday Life 127
5.4.3 Risk-Taking in the Virtual World 131
5.5 Concluding Comments: Reflexivity in Risk-Taking 135
References 138
6 Negotiating Social Forces 145

6.1 Socio-Structural Factors 147
6.1.1 Risk-Taking as Part of Traditional
Sociocultural Patterns 149
Contents ix
6.1.2 Risk-Taking to Prevent Harm and Stay

in Control 153
6.1.3 Risk-Taking to (Re)Gain Control 155
6.1.4 Exploring the Edge as Identity Work 159
6.1.5 Concluding Comments 167
6.2 Organisations and Occupations 168
6.2.1 Organisations 169
6.2.2 Occupations and Professions 173
6.2.3 Concluding Comments 178
6.3 Biographical Risk-Taking and the Life Course 179
6.3.1 Developing Identity and Social Innovation 182
6.3.2 Struggles to Meet Expectations
and Chance-Taking 188
6.3.3 Enabling Precautions 191
6.3.4 Biographical Socialisation and Illness 192
6.3.5 Typological Work on Risk and Uncertainty 195
6.4 Concluding Comments 212
References 213
7 Responsibilisation: Blaming or Empowering Risk-Taking 225

7.1 Responsibilisation of Individuals 228
7.1.1 Insurance 230
7.1.2 Social Policy 232
7.1.3 Technology 236
7.1.4 Responses 238
7.2 Social Work for Empowering Individuals 241
References 248
8 Reasonable Risk-Taking in Everyday Life 253

8.1 Rationality in Risk-Taking 254
8.2 The Reasonableness of ‘Non-Rational Action’ 258
8.3 Rationales In-Between 263
8.3.1 Trust 265
8.3.2 Intuition 274
8.3.3 Emotions 280
x Contents
8.4 A Combining Risk-Taking Rationales 288

8.4.1 Reasonable Risk-Taking in Everyday Life 290
References 296
9 Conclusions and Perspectives 307

References 314
Glossary 317
Bibliography 327
Index 363
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Documenta, Kassel/Germany 2017 27

Fig. 2.2 Bicycle travel per inhabitant per year and number
of cyclists killed per billion km 29
Fig. 2.3 The risk frame (Fillmore and Atkins) 31
Fig. 3.1 Grid-group typology (Mary Douglas) 36
Fig. 5.1 Risk-taking rationales 92
Fig. 5.2 Risk-taking rationales and agency 94
Fig. 5.3 Risk-taking rationales, agency and dimensions 95
Fig. 5.4 The risk-taking experience through time—learning,
routinising and responses 104
Fig. 5.5 The risk-taking experience through time: normalising
and scandalising 109
Fig. 5.6 Risk-taking for protecting identity: lifestyle, learned
behaviour and ontological security 111
Fig. 7.1 Two modes of responsibilisation: empowering and blaming 227
Fig. 8.1 Reasonable approaches to risk and uncertainty 289
xi
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Different discipline approaches to risk-taking 40

Table 3.2 From public response to risk to the social enforcement
of risk-taking 58
Table 4.1 The risk-taking domain: negotiations, conflicts, identity
work 80
Table 5.1 The risk-taking cycle 92
Table 6.1 Socio-structural factors and risk-taking 168
Table 6.2 Pressures encouraging risk-taking in organisations 173
Table 6.3 Risk-taking: professions and occupations 178
Table 6.4 Biographical risk-taking, patterns and examples 181
Table 6.5 Modes of biographical management 205
Table 6.6 Dimensions of transition patterns and time perspectives
of biographical uncertainty 208
Table 7.1 Characteristics of positive risk-taking 246
Table 7.2 Individual and organisational responsibilisation 247
Table 8.1 The double-edged sword: hopehope and faith in risk-taking 263
Table 8.2 Rational, non-rational and ‘in-between’ ways of dealing
with risk and uncertainty 264
Table 8.3 Components of trust 266
Table 8.4 Risk and trust 269
Table 8.5 Emotions and risk 287
xiii
1
Introduction
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the

children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the
long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
—Helen Keller1
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
—Mark Twain2
As the famous authors Helen Keller and Mark Twain emphasise in

the above quotes, security is a myth, and taking risks is a necessary
and rewarding part of life. Similarly, an abundance of comments on
social media emphasises that risk-taking is an ordinary but important
1Helen Keller (1880–1968), American author, political activist and lecturer was the first deaf-
blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910) or better known as Mark Twain was an American
writer, humourist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer.
© The Author(s) 2020 1

J. O. Zinn, Understanding Risk-Taking, Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28650-7_1
2
J. O. Zinn
element of life and the ‘biggest risk in life is not taking a risk at all.
Life is all about risk as we do not ever know the outcome of any sit-
uation, so there is always a risk in it not working out at all. We live
our lives through making certain choices and then decide on what risks
we should take’.3 Thus, risk-taking is not only for entrepreneurs who
decide to invest in a new technology such as fracking, or politicians
who allow genetically modified food to enter the market. Taking risks is
also about average people’s decisions such as to take on a job, or who to
marry (or whether to marry at all), whether to invest in bonds or buy a
house, whether to make a contract with one or another health insurer,
whether to holiday in Cambodia or at home, whether to ride a motor-
cycle or climb the Alps.
However, taking risks is not only a necessary and ordinary part of
life. Risk-taking is also about interrupting the ordinariness and repet-
itiveness of life which rewards us with an intensified feeling of being
alive. Opposing the rather mundane understanding, this position sees
taking real risks as an opportunity which rarely opens in everyday
life and grants us the possibility of proving our composure, of show-
ing character or even greatness (Goffman 1969). As the Philosopher
Anne Dufourmantelle explained in an English-language lecture:
‘Is being in life just being born? Probably not. To me, risking your life is
not dying yet, it’s integrating that you could be dying in your own life.
Being completely alive is a task, it’s not at all a given thing. It’s not just
about being present to the world, it’s being present to yourself, reaching
an intensity that is in itself a way of being reborn’. There is no doubt
that for Dufourmantelle risk-taking was not only an abstract academic
reflection (Dufourmantelle 2011) when at 21 July 2017 she entered the
water at a beach in Ramatuelle—a seaside commune in France’s Côte
d’Azur region—to save two children struggling about 45 metres from
the shore. Tragically, the 53-year-old Dufourmantelle paid a high price
for her courageous attempt to selflessly save the children in trouble.
3April 2016, at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/living-life-zero-risk-extremely-risky-louise-arm-
strong.
1 Introduction
3
She was swept away by the strong currents and could not be resuscitated
whereas the children were finally saved by lifeguards.
Dufourmantelle’s tragedy reminds us that risk-taking is about the
possibility that things can turn out badly, that the negative possibility
we wanted to avoid sometimes materialises. It is then in hindsight that
questions are raised as to whether it was worth taking a risk, whether
the undesired outcome could have been prevented, and whether there
is somebody else to blame. Experts and expert knowledge will come
forward to judge about risk-taking, and politicians may eventually take
decisions to prevent us from taking risks with a potentially catastrophic
outcome. Thus, risk-taking is not only a mundane experience. It is not
merely about an intensified feeling of being alive. It becomes part of the
social machinery which produces knowledge to make sure that the tak-
ing of unreasonable risks is prevented or reduced as it burdens society
with high costs. For example, environmental experts give advice on how
to protect against the risks of flooding when living in flood-prone areas,
health experts advise pregnant women not to drink alcohol or smoke
during pregnancy, financial experts advise that we should invest in pen-
sion schemes to secure that we can have a decent lifestyle when retiring
from active work life. The major purpose of those actions is preventing
unreasonable risk-taking (and exposure to risk) and reducing the social
costs of such activities. Therefore, experts are often puzzled that all the
good knowledge and expert advice does not prevent people from wor-
rying about the wrong issues and exposing themselves to ‘unreasonable’
risks (Renn 2014).
However, there are many examples which show that available knowl-
edge is not always straight forward, and it is sometimes difficult to agree
which risks people can reasonably take or not. A particular domain of
concern and controversial debate is the sphere of risk-taking by young
people. The key issue is where to draw the line between dangerous
risk-taking that should be prevented, such as drink driving, unprotected
sex and illicit drug consumption. Or how such activities could at least
be reduced as much as possible such as becoming a regular smoker.
At the same time, it is widely acknowledged that learning to take risks
and to prepare for the possibility that risk-taking can turn out badly
is an essential part of adolescence. The social desire to protect young
4
J. O. Zinn
people has become so intense that educators have started to emphasise

that youth should be allowed to take more risks to prepare them for
managing the challenges of adult life, thus necessitating that from time
to time they make risky decisions (Biesta 2014; Gill 2007; Lightfoot
1997).
There is not only a social demand to reduce risk. There is also a social
need for people who are prepared to take high risks. Jobs such as in
commercial fishing, mining, and transport (e.g. road train driving in
Australia), construction workers, tree loppers, defence force, (woodland)
firefighters, pilots and rubbish collectors are known for the compara-
tively high fatality rates (compare, for example, for Australia: Safe Work
Australia 2018, for the USA: Bureau of Labour Statistics 2017). Thus,
one might argue that it is socially desirable to allow people to make up
their own mind which risks they want to take and reward people for
high risk-taking. Indeed, not all high-risk occupations come with high
income. Contemporary societies all over the world are characterised by
significant—and in recent decades growing inequalities—and risk is
part of it. Different social groups are exposed to decision-making sit-
uations where they must take risks which can vary quite considerably,
from potential death to taking a small financial loss. Some groups are
disadvantaged to a degree that they take high risks to meet normative
standards. Others are in such desperate situations that they take extreme
risks to escape, for example, war, political prosecution and torture.
Thus, risk-taking has many faces and people engage in risk-
taking under different conditions for different reasons. Therefore,
Understanding Risk-Taking aims to shed light on the question: Why and
how do people take risks?
The book contributes to the broader realm of risk studies (Burgess
et al. 2016) and responds to John Adams appeal of the mid-1990s that
‘the starting point of any theory of risk must be that everyone willingly
takes risks’ (1995: 16). At the time, he asserted that risk researchers
mainly ignore the role of risk-taking. Since his bleak diagnosis, a grow-
ing body of qualitative research has started to make sense of risk-taking,
but there is no attempt yet to develop the insights of this research into
a theoretical framework. This book contributes to such an ambitious
enterprise and starts to systematise this research domain by introducing
1 Introduction
5
several distinctions and concepts to describe and structure available

knowledge about risk-taking.
With its purpose to understand risk-taking, the book stands in a
long tradition of historical debate emphasising a fundamental differ-
ence between the methodologies of understanding (Verstehen) in con-
trast to explaining (Erklären) (Dilthey 1904; von Wright 1971; Apel
1982). Anglophone textbooks group under the notion of the interpre-
tivist (understanding) paradigm a range of approaches such as herme-
neutics, phenomenology, ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism.
However, there is no need to narrow risk-taking to the social aspects in
contrast to material conditions or the cognitive in contrast to emotional
dimension (or debates about whether one or the other should be given
priority). The more modest purpose of the book is to contribute con-
ceptual tools and sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1954) for the analysis and
understanding of risk-taking rather than engaging in detailed analysis
of the methodological and philosophical debates to develop a compre-
hensive theory. There are long traditions in theorising that scholars pro-
tect against critique and try to modify to fit new insights (Kelle 1994).
In contrast, the idea of the book is to summarise and systematise how
risk-taking research makes sense of empirically observable activities.
On a personal level, the book documents my journey into risk-taking
which began about ten years ago. I started to think about risk-taking in
new ways beyond the dominant paradigm that frames people’s risk-taking
as the result of misinformation and ignorance or thrill-seeking. I learned
that most people have good but very different reasons to take risks
which rest on their personal experiences, their life situation, the desire
to realise their dreams or to protect their loved ones. What might look
like misinformed or unreasonable actions from the outside often turns
out to be a reasonable response to people’s social reality. Therefore, I
started to explore available research and developed conceptual ideas
partly published in earlier articles over the years (Zinn 2008, 2015,
2016, 2019) which inform and provide the basis for this book.
My aim here is not to provide an exhaustive overview of risk-
taking research or a comprehensive theory. Instead, the book refers to
different approaches and concepts in a rather eclectic fashion to iden-
tify central dimensions and aspects of risk-taking. Providing examples
6
J. O. Zinn
from available research, the book thus pursues an empirically grounded,

bottom-up rather than macro-level top-down, approach of societal
theorising. It follows what has been called a practice turn in social the-
ory (Schatzki et al. 2001; Flyvbjerg 2001; Stern 2003) in two ways. It
relates the development of theoretical concepts closely to observable
social practice. It understands theorising as an open practice to which
it contributes loosely coupled concepts to advance understanding of
empirical observable phenomena.
The book starts its journey into risk-taking with Chapter 2 which
explores the historical roots of risk and its linguistic expression as how
people experience the reality of everyday life is mediated by the histor-
ical development of ideas and the language available to express mean-
ing (Koselleck 1989a, b). There is broad consensus in risk studies
that the notion of risk is part and parcel of Western modernisation, a
complex social process during which the structural and cultural social
life fundamentally changed (van der Loo and van Reijen 1997). There
had already been semantics such as danger, threat and peril. However,
Luhmann suggested that there has been a new contradictory social
experience which fostered the development and regular use of a new
concept: risk (Luhmann 1993: 11). The notion of risk combines both
the need to put something at stake for improving life and the desire to
prevent and reduce possible harm. The chapter concludes by suggesting
that everyday life risk-taking is characterised by the tension between the
need to take risks and the desire to reduce risk.
Taking this insight as a starting point, Chapter 3 explores how
different disciplines contribute to the understanding of risk-taking. The
review of different approaches to risk shows how behavioural biology,
cognitive psychology and rational choice/economics all provide different
kinds of knowledge (Renn 1992; Althaus 2005). For example, behav-
ioural biologists have argued that risk-taking is an evolutionary devel-
oped drive. People therefore seek risk-taking in situations of boredom.
Cognitive psychologists have shown that human brains do usually not
think mathematically but use heuristics which work well in many cases
but can lead to systematic biases in people’s judgements. The norma-
tive assumption of rational decision-making is therefore the excep-
tion rather than the rule and rational considerations can only explain
1 Introduction
7
a relatively small part of risk-taking activities. However, sociological

approaches, such as the cultural approach, the risk society and govern-
mentality, even though referring to the social realm, tend to focus on
social macro-processes and overgeneralised models of the self (Arnoldi
2009; Lupton 1999, 2013; Zinn 2008). They therefore lack the ana-
lytical tools for the analysis and understanding of social risk-taking on
the societal micro-level, when individual desires are confronted with the
reality of everyday life. Before such tools for the analysis of risk-taking
can be developed and introduced, some conceptual clarifications are
needed.
For this purpose, Chapter 4 engages with the often-inconsistent use
of concepts in risk studies and argues for a clear distinction between
risk behaviour, voluntary risk-taking and risk-taking. Sometimes risk
behaviour and risk-taking are used as exchangeable concepts. The dis-
tinction between risk-taking and voluntary risk-taking is also blurry. It
is at least contestable when in a socially shaped world risks are taken
mainly voluntarily and when they result from specific living condi-
tions or life situations. This debate provides the ground for the notion
of risk-taking that underpins the book. It sees risk-taking as an active
engagement with the material and culturally interpreted circumstances
of life even when such engagement is sometimes routinised and requires
different degrees of skills. Risk-taking is an ongoing—at times conflict-
ual—process during which people positions themselves in the world
that includes the negotiation of (social) identity. The chapter concludes
with defining risk-taking as an activity people are at least to some degree
aware of (Tulloch and Lupton 2003). This is justified by the observa-
tion that against the assumption of risk-taking resulting primarily from
lacking knowledge or ignorance, risk-takers often know at least to some
degree that they expose themselves to risk and that the outcomes could
be serious or even fatal.
Based on these introductory conceptual considerations, Chapter 5
starts with some basic distinctions to systematise risk-taking. Research
differs substantially regarding at least three different rationales of
risk-taking. Taking risks as an end in itself, such as in risky leisure sports
like skydiving or free climbing, differs clearly from cases were risks
are taken for a particular purpose such as securing a decent income as
8
J. O. Zinn
an oil rig worker or a valued identity as an aid worker. Both must be

distinguished from risk-taking as a response to vulnerability when peo-
ple are under pressure to take high risk (Hayenhjelm 2006). These
rationales connect to different degrees of agency. Indeed, some people
possess strong agency and feel in full control when taking risks while
others have little choice other than to take risks. Research also pro-
vides evidence for risk-taking being a tool which is used to protect or
regain control over one’s life. These are cases when risk-taking becomes
an important resource to secure social status or to foster substantial
changes in one’s life. Finally, there are at least three dimensions studies
repeatedly refer to when researching risk-taking: first, the abilities and
skills which are required and further honed through risk-taking. These
can be specific skills but also mental toughness and showing composure
when taking risks (Lyng 1990; Goffman 1969). Another dimension is
social recognition which connects to feelings of self-worth and the sense
of meaningfulness in life (Honneth 1995, 2007). Finally, the desire
for safety and security of body and health but also material existence is
strongly related to risk-taking in particular when basic needs (Maslow
1970) and ontological security (Giddens 1991) are affected.
The chapter also outlines the importance of three further aspects of
risk-taking. One aspect refers to the time dimension of risk-taking.
As a process, risk-taking requires the learning of skills which become
routinised with repeating conduct and thereby change the experience
and focus of risk-taking. In contrast to examples where the risk is in
the centre, the chapter suggests that normalised risk-taking refers to
activities when risk-taking is a side effect of an activity. Normalisation
refers to the institutional contexts which present risk as an expectable
side effect. But in contrast to an active involvement, when the risks are
the driver, normalised risk-taking stands for an acceptance that a desired
activity (e.g. competitive cycling, aid work) comes with some risk.
Another aspect addresses the relationship between self-identity and
the social contexts. Rather than engaging in debates about decentred,
fragmented or other new forms of identity formation, for the purpose
of the book it is sufficient that identity work is considered an ongoing
process during which identity is developed, negotiated and sometimes
protected. Risk is part of this process in different ways. Many studies
1 Introduction
9
have shown that risks are taken to reach a valued identity but often, as
is argued here, to protect one’s identity. Then risks are downplayed, for
example, the negative effect of smoking during pregnancy. However,
the risk to become socially branded an irresponsible mother requires
that these mothers reframe their risk-taking. From an institutional
perspective, identity links to trust in institutions. Scholars analysing
societies through the lens of modernisation theory believe that trust in
traditional institutions is decreasing (Giddens 2002) while individual-
ised and critical forms of trust increase (Giddens 1990, 1991; Bonß and
Zinn 2005: 91). To the degree such developments are observable, then
risk-taking rather than institutional management of risk would become
more frequent.
Trust, knowledge and the negotiation of normative expectations are
rooted in everyday life. Several approaches conceptualise how the social
shapes everyday life interactions and thereby not only reproduces social
processes but forms the conditions of risk-taking. From Bourdieu’s
‘theory of practice’ to modern ‘practice theory’ approaches try to com-
bine the social with the material/embodied reality including emotional
in contrast to cognitive dimensions of risk-taking. This contrasts with
the organisation of virtual world communication which has become an
important resource for risk-taking but lacks face-to-face-materiality and
embodiment. The chapter concludes with comments on the character of
reflexivity in risk-taking which is a key issue in almost all research.
Chapter 6 turns to research on three central social forces shaping
risk-taking. These are on a most general level socio-structural forces,
on a meso-level organisations and occupations and on a micro-level
the biographical factors shaped by the changing conditions of the life
course. It starts with a range of broader structural factors which are
identified by relatively abstract concepts such as social class, gender,
culture and others which all refer to a bundle of aspects which combine
and interact with others and can mutually intensify or weaken their
force (Olofsson et al. 2014). It revisits the fundamental assumption that
people can use risk-taking to prevent harm or to (re)gain agency regard-
ing their life and it concludes with the suggestion that even edgework
is structured by socio-structural forces. The focus on structural forces
tends to neglect how work and occupations among others mediate
10
J. O. Zinn
such socio-structural experiences. At the same time, organisational as

well as professional factors mediate but also make their own contribu-
tion. For example, one’s professional identity can encourage risk-taking
to secure an occupational position in competitive labour markets or
organisations can develop a corporate identity which encourages self-
exploitation of employees and as part of it risk-taking such as working
overtime and ignoring security regulations. Finally, the chapter explores
the forces which shape risk-taking as a result of life course experi-
ences and biographical expectations. For example, people take risks
to change an expectable traditional life course to something they con-
sider more desirable (e.g. challenging gender norms). Many studies also
highlight how risks are taken when struggling to meet normative expec-
tations. At the same time, precautionary measures help to make high-
risk decisions such as in the case of marriage. Expecting the possibility
of divorce has encouraged women to take precautions in case moving
together with a partner does not work out (Lewis 2005). Some schol-
ars suggest grasping biographical experiences as a socialisation instance
itself. Research shows how earlier life influences what risks to take when
an onset of illness pushes people out of their normal life expectations
(Bury 1982). The chapter explores the different ways of how people
engage with their life through a number of studies that developed typol-
ogies of people’s approaches to the future and include reflections and
engagement with risk.
The focus of the earlier parts of the book is individual risk-taking in
its social contexts. Risk-taking has also become part of social regula-
tion (e.g. Marston et al. 2010) and has been identified as an important
resource in social work (Morgan 2004). Chapter 7, meanwhile, engages
with trends to shift responsibility from organisations and institutions to
individuals and thereby produce risky decision-making situations. Such
responsibilisation has been at the core of the debate in social and pub-
lic policy (Hacker 2006). However, not everyone is made responsible in
the same way. At the same time, specific social groups considered risky
or at risk are not allowed to take responsibility for their life. Social work
scholars have argued that allowing vulnerable service users to take risks
can significantly improve their quality of life (Morgan 2004; Titterton
2004, 2011; Robertson and Collinson 2011). Research has not only
1 Introduction
11
argued that risk-taking is a valuable resource necessary to help patients

to find back into autonomous and desired life but that risk-taking may
even be central to overcoming psychological problems (Felton 2015).
Chapter 8 revisits the question how risk-taking is conducted in
everyday life. It suggests that when people take risks, they do not only
refer to evidence and a rational weighing of pros and cons of available
options. As Tom Horlick-Jones et al. (2007) have convincingly argued,
people combine a wide range of different strategies, competing inter-
ests and knowledge sources in a bricolage of reasoning when making
sense of risk. This chapter suggests systemising such strategies, referring
first to the orthodox distinction between rational approaches to risk in
contrast to non-rational approaches such as hope, faith and ideology. It
also introduces the notion of ‘in-between’ for approaches which are nei-
ther fully rational nor ‘irrational’ such as intuition, emotion and trust.
Instead of the implicit normativity of the dichotomy of rational/irra-
tional, the chapter suggests considering all those activities as reasonable
approaches which have under specific conditions clear advantages com-
pared to the others (Zinn 2008, 2016).
Chapter 9 summarises the major insights and the conceptual tools
provided. The book promotes an eclectic use of available theories where
the fit of a theory to a social phenomenon is mainly an empirical ques-
tion. In a nutshell, the book aims to provide a deeper understanding
of risk-taking and its roots in the social realm. It provides concep-
tual resources and empirical examples for researching risk-taking and
thereby the promotion of well-informed and high-quality research on
pressing social issues.
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2
The Meaning of Risk
The meaning of risk is anything but self-evident (Garland 2003). In the

insurance industry ‘risk’ refers to actuarial risk, which is defined as ‘The
possibility that something that is covered by an insurance agreement
will actually happen. Insurance companies have to calculate actuarial
risks carefully in order to be sure of making a profit’ (Longman Business
English Dictionary). Such an actuarial risk might refer to, for example,
the likelihood and costs of liability events in a particular group, such as
young drivers.1
A doctor or nurse when conducting screening to determine the risk
that a foetus develops ‘trisomy 21’ (‘Down Syndrome’) refers to epide-
miological knowledge. Common tests are based on a large body of data
that enables calculations regarding the likelihood that such a syndrome
develops in a specific child. The so-called Triple-Test has been widely
used but has become increasingly contested because of its compara-
tively uncertain results. In the 1990s, a positive test meant that a couple
1Interestingly,I have recently found a different explanation as well, that it is about the risk that
the risk calculation is wrong: ‘Actuarial risks are the risks that the assumptions that actuaries
implement into a model to price a specific insurance policy may turn out wrong or somewhat
inaccurate’ (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/actuarialrisk.asp).
© The Author(s) 2020 15

J. O. Zinn, Understanding Risk-Taking, Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28650-7_2
16
J. O. Zinn
had to decide whether they would agree to a more intrusive test which
would come with the risk of miscarriage and when they may consider
performing an abortion (Lupton 1999b).2
Political risk management can rarely rely on statistical evidence but
comes with different degrees of unknowns and often high political risk.
When the Syrian civil war resulted in a large number of refugees com-
ing to Europe, European politicians balanced their political risks differ-
ently and adapted their political responses accordingly. For example, the
German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that ‘we can manage’ (‘Wir
schaffen das!’) the large number of refugees coming to Europe. Others,
such as Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, rejected taking
on more refugees and presented them as a risk or threat to the country,
as ‘Muslim invaders’, and successfully built his re-election campaign in
2018 on concerns about too many refugees entering the country.
Equally, parents take risks when deciding about the school for their
children. They might balance the costs for private schooling and public
schooling or the lifestyle they could have by saving on educational costs.
They might refer to the schools’ website and schools’ performance meas-
ures as provided by state institutions or programs, such as the Australian
National Assessment program NAPLAN or the British school perfor-
mance measures.3 While such evaluations are meant to provide some
guidance, they are contested and often difficult to interpret as they meas-
ure school successes of the past and are thus unable to provide a reliable
prognosis for new students at that particular school. Parents’ decisions
base usually on a mix of soft knowledge, for example advice from oth-
ers, a reputation a school or head teacher has built over years and indeed
other factors, such as getting access, proximity, costs and social circles.
It is a complex decision-making process, which is determined by far
more than the quality of the school. Parents’ beliefs and values regarding
schooling and education vary as well.
2Nowadays more reliable and less intrusive tests are available but still do not provide certainty.
3Compare for the UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/school-performance-tables-
about-the-data or Australia: http://www.nap.edu.au/.
2 The Meaning of Risk
17
These examples define ‘risk’ as an expression of danger or threat that

is somehow linked to humans, but the notion of risk comes with many
different nuances. Risk might be construed as the reality or possibility
of a threat. The threat might be external or depend on decisions. It is
sometimes mathematically calculated and expressed in terms of proba-
bility and the size of damage, but often the threat is part of a decision,
which includes a possible gain (compare Box 2.1).
Box 2.1 Defining ‘risk’

• Risk as an expression of danger or threat (Lupton 1999a; Douglas 1985)
• Part of a (statistical) calculation (Ewald 1991; Dean 1999)
• Technical definition of risk: riskevent = probabilityevent × damageevent
• The possibility of an undesired event (Aven and Renn 2009)
• Part of a decision with opportunities and possible harm (Luhmann
1993).
Indeed, all these notions of risk contrast with fatalism and supersti-
tious beliefs and practices, for example in the context of road safety
in Pakistan (Kayani et al. 2012, 2017) and South Africa (Peltzer and
Renner 2003). The possibility of (fatal) accidents are ‘attributed to an
all-powerful agent (e.g. God)’ in the case of fatalism or to “other super-
natural forces that can be propitiated (with sacrifices, offering, prayers)
averted (with amulets, spells, charms) or even controlled (with magic
and witchcraft)” in the case of superstitious beliefs (Kayani et al.
2017: 22). Even though such practices and beliefs are still found in
the Western world, there is little doubt that understandings the pos-
sibility of harm has changed historically and that there are also differ-
ent nuances in the meaning of risk (Bernstein 1996; Bonß 1995; Zinn
2018). Therefore, a good understanding of present-day concerns and
talk about risk in the Western world requires knowledge of the broader
historical contexts and cosmologies, and of scholarly debates, which
consider risk a key concept of our times (Beck 2009; Giddens 2002).
This chapter explores how the notion of risk is interwoven with long-
term social changes.
18
J. O. Zinn
There is good evidence that today’s understanding of risk is shaped

by modernisation (Bernstein 1996; Bonß 1995; Luhmann 1993), a
complex process, which developed in recent centuries and combines a
number of interwoven structural, cultural, psychological and physical
changes that have formed our current world and gives its development
direction (van der Loo and van Reijen 1997: 11). Such changes are the
advancement of an industrial production process, growing urbanisa-
tion, the relative loss of influence of religion and magical practices in
the West, the so-called rationalisation of modern life, democratisation
processes in many countries, reduction of existential poverty, a grow-
ing emphasis of the individual. More recently, fundamental changes
have taken place with the advancements in the information and com-
munication technologies, such as broader access to the Internet and
mobile phones. Economic and cultural globalisation, soaring national
and international inequalities, climate change, international terrorism,
global migration and demographic aging in many Western and Asian
industrialised societies fundamentally challenge modern narratives of
the world. These processes also influence the ways individuals and insti-
tutions manage risks. The following section returns to the origins of the
risk semantic to argue that the notion of risk itself is characterised by
an indissoluble tension. The modern dream of a continuous growth of
knowledge and rationalisation, including enhanced control and reduc-
tion of possible harm (Parsons 1964, 1966), contrasts with the unavoid-
able dangers of risk-taking that is necessary for social innovation and
advancement and which is part and parcel of the modern condition
(Wildavsky 1988).
2.1 The Modern Dream: Rationality

and Calculability
Most influential for the understanding of the modernisation process
in Western societies has been Max Weber’s work The Protestantic Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). While there is some debate about
the concrete processes and causalities proposed in Weber’s work, there
19
is little doubt that complex societal processes, which involved religion,

the economy and the advancement of science, drove Western societies
towards increasing rationalisation. Weber understands this shift as a
comprehensive transformation that includes psychological motivations,
cultural values and beliefs and the structure of society. Rationalisation
does not only refer to cost-benefit calculations in individual behaviour
but the belief that we should base our decisions on (empirical) knowl-
edge rather than ideology and faith. The rationalisation process includes
the way in which societies organise themselves as it shows by the
bureaucratic organisation of society characterised by purpose, evidence,
and a generally demystified and disenchanted approach to social reality.
Weber is quite explicit that modernity is characterised by a specific
attitude or world view rather than an objective increase in knowledge.
This is surprising considering the development of science and uni-
versities and the success of positive knowledge and its application in
medicine and other social domains (Box 2.2). Weber emphasises that
rationalisation stands not merely for an increase of knowledge of the
conditions, humanity lives under. Instead, he formulates that it is ‘the
knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any time’.
The rationalisation process is mainly directed against the belief in mag-
ical means and mysterious powers modernisation would overcome.
Instead, the world and its uncertainties and unknowns are increasingly
approached by ‘technical means and calculations ’. Thereby, the modern-
isation process shows a clear affinity to the modern measure-and-man-
age-orthodoxy of interdisciplinary risk research that emphasises the
calculation, minimisation and prevention of risk (such as in safety science
[Kuhlmann 1986] or risk analysis [Aven 2015]).
Box 2.2 Rationalisation (Max Weber)
The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not … indicate

an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one
lives. It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one
but wished one could learn it at any time. Hence, it means that princi-
pally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but
20
J. O. Zinn
rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This
means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse
to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the
savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and
calculations perform the service. This above all is what intellectualization
means.
Weber, M. (1948 [1919]): Science as a Vocation: 139
Historical research such as Against the Gods—The Remarkable Story of

Risk (Bernstein 1996) and The Taming of Chance (Hacking 1990) sup-
port the hypothesis that the history of statistics and the increasing
pervasiveness of the risk semantic are connected (compare also Bonß
1997). Similarly, the study of Skolbekken (1995) on The Risk Epidemic
in Medical Journals in the period from 1967 to 1991 in the USA,
Britain and Scandinavia supports the view that the notion of risk is
fundamentally linked to the development of probability theory and sta-
tistics, increased focus on risk management and health promotion and
recent developments in computer technology. It is important to note
that authors such as Skolbekken also emphasise that the so-called risk
epidemic results not only from technical change. Instead, it indicates
a cultural shift, for example, in how health and illness are approached:
‘risk has been reified, i.e. established as natural phenomena which can only
be identified by means of scientific tools, and not as products of human con-
duct ’ (Skolbekken 1995: 297).
2.2 A Historically New Experience

There is a lot of support for above claims that the notion of risk and
the development of statistics and probability theory developed in par-
allel, but this is only one side of the story. The modern dream that a
world, which has been experienced as unknown and inaccessible could
increasingly become controllable and calculable remains unfulfilled. As
Weber stated, it is the modern world view rather than the experienced
reality that everything can be managed by science (statistics, probability
21
theory) in principle. Even in a highly rationalised modern world, the

future provides good and bad surprises. Common arguments suggest
that the world is too complex or that our technological means are not
well enough developed. Others, such as Beck (1992, 2009) emphasised
the unexpected side effects of modernisation which challenge the mod-
ern world view while Taleb (2007) highlighted that unexpected events,
which he called black swans, are unpreventable (compare for a critical
debate of the concept: Aven 2013). Even though all these suggestions
play their role and are important for understanding risk, an additional
assumption underpins this book.
Risk-taking is a necessary and positive part of modernisation but
comes with uncertainty and sometimes harm. It is a central part of any
innovation and social advancement. When exploring the unknown, tak-
ing risks is required to learn and advance knowledge but it is a necessary
part of risk-taking that the outcomes are uncertain, and the possibility
of both negative and positive surprises are immanent (Wildavsky 1988).
The longing for knowledge and path-breaking discoveries sometimes
come with a high price as in the case of Marie Curie’s research on radi-
ation, which resulted in severe illness and her death. Risk-taking runs
parallel with the desire to keep us safe.4
Such harm does not only appear unexpectedly as in the case of Curie.
Gaining new knowledge is an exciting and risky adventure as the his-
tory of aviation from Leonardo da Vinci to today’s modern passenger
planes illustrates. This other side of the modern dream, the active taking
of risk, is nowhere better epitomised as in the risk attitudes of modern
adventurers such as Fridtjof Nansen, the famous Norwegian Explorer of
the arctic world. In a speech on the Spirit of Adventure at St. Andrews
University Nansen looked back on his life and encouraged students
to take risks that would make a difference to advance knowledge and
humanity (compare Box 2.3).
4The late modern forms of security seem relatively fragile compared to a more comprehensive
understanding of security typical for earlier times. Here, security had the form of Geborgenheit,
which represents embeddedness in a static order that stabilises the human psyche by stable exter-
nal social structures (Kaufmann 1970; Bonß and Zinn 2016: 102).
22
J. O. Zinn
Box 2.3 The Spirit of Adventure (Fridtjof Nansen)
The spirit of adventure… urges mankind forward on the way towards

knowledge … For most of us ordinary people life is a voyage from har-
bour to harbour, along a fairly safe coast. We run no great risks… But
what about the things worth doing, the achievements, the aims to live
and die for? You have to take risks and cannot allow yourself to be fright-
ened by them when you are convinced that you are following the right
course. Nothing worth having in life is ever attained without taking risks.
But they should be in reasonable proportion to the results which you
hope to attain by your enterprise, and should not merely depend on luck,
giving your ability to overcome the risks no chance of coming into play.
Even an animal may have that kind of foolhardiness; and success can give
you no real satisfaction if it depends on mere accident.
Nansen, F.: Speech at St. Andrews University at 3rd November 1926
Although Nansen distinguishes the routines of ordinary life from adven-

turous activities and sees them justified by the contribution they can
make to knowledge and social advancement, the notion of exposing
yourself to possible harm to achieve something individually or socially
desirable is a common motive in modernising societies.
In this vein, Niklas Luhmann suggested that such a concept of
risk-taking links to fundamental socio-structural changes of modernis-
ing societies. When he traced back the etymological roots of the risk
semantic, he found earlier evidence for the occurrence and increasing
usage of ‘risk’ from the 1400s to 1500s onwards before statistics and
probability theory started to influence the social sphere and our under-
standing of risk. He argues that the notion of risk found significant
application in the domains of navigation and trade and the early forms
of maritime insurance. However, he emphasises that the notion of risk
was often used ‘in contracts regulating who is to bear a loss in the event
of its occurrence ’. The term spreads since the 1500s probably because
of printing and is now used in all kinds of contexts. Luhmann sug-
gests that the term became more common when new social experiences
23
required a new expression since it was not well described by available

concepts (Luhmann 1993: 10f.):
Since the existing language has words for danger, venture, chance, luck,
courage, fear, adventure (aventuyre) etc. at its disposal, we may assume
that a new term comes into use to indicate a problem situation that can-
not be expressed precisely enough with the vocabulary available. On the
other hand, the word goes beyond the original context (for instance in
the quotation ‘non voler arrischiar la sua vita per la sua religione’), so that
it is not easy to reconstruct the reasons of the new concept coming into
existence on the basis of these random occurrences of the term. With this
proviso we presume that the problem lies in the realization that certain
advantages are to be gained only if something is at stake. It is not a matter
of the costs, which can be calculated beforehand and traded off against
the advantages. It is rather a matter of a decision that, as can be foreseen,
will be subsequently regretted if a loss that one had hoped to avert occurs.
In this way, the modern dream is characterised by the problem that

decision-making has to deal with the unavoidability of uncertainty of
possible harm when we would like to gain some advantages. We might
try to calculate and manage possible undesired outcomes to make them
manageable. However, the future remains uncertain and might provide
undesired outcomes for us. The well-known economist John Maynard
Keynes expressed this relationship between rational calculation and
decision-making quite clearly:
… human decisions… whether personal or political or economic, can-

not depend on strict mathematical expectation, since the basis for making
such calculation does not exist; and that it is our innate urge to activ-
ity [animal spirits] which makes the wheels go round, our rational selves
choosing between the alternatives as best we are able, calculating where
we can, but often falling back for our motive on whim or sentiment or
chance. (Keynes 1936: 161–63)
For risk-taking as a means to change the future, uncertainty is constitu-

tive. Therefore, as Keynes notes, knowledge of the past is valuable but
at the same time comes with systematic limits when we are dealing with
24
J. O. Zinn
innovation and the unknowns of the future. This is the case not only for
entrepreneurs in the realm of economics but a typical characteristic of
everyday life.
2.3 Limits to the Modern Dream

The modern dream of the calculative manageability of risk or the world
more generally and evidence-based decision-making in particular has
systematic limits. In professional as well as everyday life decision-mak-
ing, we do not follow a (pure) calculative approach. This has not only to
do with the systematic difference between the complexity of the world
and the complexity of our calculations or the values in decision-making
situations. Decision-making research, such as by Amos Tversky and
Daniel Kahneman, shows that humans do not only rely on num-
bers and pure evidence when making decisions regarding the future
(1974, 1981, 1988, compare Sect. 7.3.2). This becomes most obvious
when social resources cannot be used for decision-making, but people
are exposed to a decision-making situation in which they have limited
knowledge and time. In this situation, people do not only refer to evi-
dence, but they use short cuts and heuristics for decision-making. Quite
common is the availability heuristic, which builds on the ease with
which an event comes to one’s mind. This works well when assessing
the frequency or probability of the occurrence of events that happen
more often since we recall them better and faster than events that occur
less frequently. For example, the likelihood of aviation accidents is com-
monly overestimated compared to traffic accidents, which are usually
underestimated. The reason is that other factors, such as media cover-
age, influence our subjective awareness of such accidents (Tversky and
Kahneman 1974, 1981). While there is a clear normative preference
in economics for a mathematical model of decision-making, Tversky
and Kahneman’s work famously showed that under specific conditions
the neoclassical model of rational decision-making ‘does not provide an
adequate foundation for a descriptive theory of decision-making ’ (1988:
167). Tversky and Kahneman emphasise lay people’s deviation from the
mathematically proven best decisions. They were able to do so because
25
there was a decent mathematical model. However, in real-life risk-taking

situations, such a model is often not available, and the relevant factors
and their odds are known neither by lay people nor by experts.
Therefore, the research team around Gerd Gigerenzer, following a
similar approach as Tversky and Kahneman, emphasised the utility of
Fast and Frugal Heuristics (Gigerenzer et al. 2001) that humans use to
make decisions under uncertainty. Their research showed that under
many real-life conditions, when information is limited or too com-
plex, such heuristics are more successful than attempts of mathemati-
cal calculation and rational weighing. Gigerenzer argues that having less
information can even lead to better decisions (Gigerenzer 2007). For
example, Gigerenzer and colleagues showed in a study that a portfo-
lio of shares composed on the basis of the recognition heuristic could
perform better than portfolios composed by experts. They randomly
selected people of the street and asked them which names of compa-
nies they recognised from a list of the companies traded at the stock
market. In an official competition using their random portfolio, they
outperformed major funds of leading investment banks (Borges et al.
2001). The argument is that having too much information available can
make it difficult to select the crucial information for the prediction of
the future.
In summary, decision-making research shows that it depends on the
decision-making problem which strategy provides better outcomes. Pure
mathematical models only work well when the decision-making condi-
tions are largely determined and of limited complexity. In other situa-
tions, other strategies such as Fast and Frugal Heuristics or Gut Feelings
can provide better results.
However, there is a more systematic problem with this research.
As long as the task and its conditions are clearly defined and separa-
ble, success can be easily determined at least in hindsight. In everyday
life risk-taking, the conditions of a decision might change and might
require subsequent decisions. Preferences, risks and outcomes are nego-
tiated in interactive social processes. One might sometimes not even be
aware of when it is time to decide and to take a risk. Furthermore, the
problem with risk-taking remains that the knowledge about the future
is not only uncertain but risk-taking itself changes the future and one’s
26
J. O. Zinn
world views and preferences. Thus, the outcomes of risk-taking and its
positive and negative surprises are only known in hindsight, however
hard we try to determine the future beforehand.
As has been argued, the two central tenets of the modern notion of
risk are ideal types which have systematic limits both professionals and
people in everyday life have to deal with. These two guiding ideas con-
stitute a central tension in the modern notion of risk. This book suggests
that a good understanding of risk activities requires seeing them in con-
text of the broader social contexts of the stream of decision-making in
everyday life. Then one must make decisions in face of competing risks
and managing the tensions between preventing, avoiding and reducing
risk and the desire to take risks to change the future.
2.4 Tensions Within the Notion of Risk

As outlined above, the modern dream consists of two central ten-
ets (Box 2.4): first, the evidence-based and calculative control of the
future, which includes the prevention and reduction of risk and sec-
ond, knowledge- and purpose-based risk-taking for a (however defined)
gain. Nevertheless, both concepts of risk remain imperfect. The risk-
calculation orthodoxy is a model based on an unrealisable ideal. There
is never enough knowledge to fully determine the probabilities of future
events and indeed, some risks might even be largely unknown. There
is an overabundance of possibilities, and one must decide what risks to
focus on and what risks to take. Without any uncertainty regarding the
future, there would be no space to act in order to make the world a bet-
ter place. In this perspective ‘being safe’ would be a scary vision of the
future as suggested by the artwork at the exhibition of contemporary art
documenta 2017 in Kassel/Germany (Fig. 2.1) while ‘uncertainty makes
us free ’ (Bernstein 1996: 229).
The lack of knowledge drives risk-taking as a strategy to find out
about the unknowns of the future and to prevent possible harm and/
or to develop new opportunities. However, with increasing knowledge
also non-knowledge increases. There is no escape from this contradic-
tory mode of knowledge production and growth of non-knowledge and
27
Fig. 2.1 Documenta, Kassel/Germany 2017 (Source Private photo, author 2017)
uncertainty. It is a central characteristic of risk-taking that one will only

know in hindsight about outcomes of a decision (and even then, the
evaluation of outcomes might be contested). Both aspects—risk reduc-
tion and avoidance on the one hand and risk-taking and the possibil-
ity of unexpected harm on the other amalgamate in the notion of risk.
How this tension works out in social and individual practice of everyday
life is an empirical question.
Box 2.4 Tensions within the notion of risk

Risk minimization
The desire to avoid, prevent or reduce possible harm.
Risk-taking
The uncertainties and risks of decision-making situations.
When a couple wants to enter in the ‘safe haven’ of marriage, they must
make a risky decision that can work well but might turn out badly
later. When parents aim to provide their child with the best education,
sending it to a high-reputation catholic school might look like a good
choice, but can also expose the child to molester priests. When buying
28
J. O. Zinn
a dream home, the buyer might learn at a later point that it is built on
a poisonous waste dump and had already significantly impaired health.
Buying a summer house at the sea might look like a good investment
until media coverage on climate change and sea-level rise lets the value
of properties drop in an effected area. These examples are more or less
likely but at the same time they make clear that one has to be alert and
to be prepared for unlikely and unknown events. Indeed, all these activ-
ities to improve the future can come with negative and positive sur-
prises. One might also be more worried about not meeting normative
expectations rather than the unexpected ‘disasters’ mentioned above.
The risk tensions cannot be solved but they can be dealt with in different
ways. A central argument of this book is that the crux for understanding
people’s risk-taking lies beyond the calculative orthodoxy (see Chapter
7). However, this in-principle argument still lacks social depth when it
comes to understanding risk-taking in everyday life.
2.5 Beyond the Calculative Orthodoxy

The dominant view in risk studies supports an evidence-based approach
to risk, building on the calculative orthodoxy of modernity and sharply
distinguishes between the reality of risk and its perception. This view
builds on the ideal of Enlightenment to overcome ideologies, faith
and blind trust and to underpin decisions with provable evidence
instead. Behavioural biologists (Gigerenzer) and cognitive psychologists
(Tversky and Kahneman) contribute general insights about tenden-
cies in risk-taking behaviour but have difficulties to explain its social
dynamics and diversity.
For example, it is difficult to understand why in some country’s
cyclists have to wear helmets as in Australia or the USA while in other
countries they do not, such as in Germany and the Netherlands where
much more people regularly cycle but far less get killed by billion kilo-
metres of bicycle travel (compare Fig. 2.2).
Equally, one might wonder why is it common in some countries to
wear surgical masks to prevent spreading of diseases, such as in Japan
29
Fig. 2.2 Bicycle travel per inhabitant per year and number of cyclists killed per
billion km (Source ITF 2013: 114)
while people in most Western countries do not wear them even if we

sometimes wish they would (Burgess and Horii 2012).
The focus on knowledge, risk minimisation and risk misinterpreta-
tion contributes relatively little to understanding these differences and it
is often not clear or questionable to what degree they determine safety
procedures and protection against harm. There is no doubt that good
decision-making requires good knowledge and the desire to reduce
harm. The difficulty is that a narrow focus on knowledge, its limits and
lack, contributes to neglecting the more complex processes involved
when people deal with and take risk in everyday life. These processes
involve values, norms and power structures embedded in social insti-
tutions and everyday practices. Since they are deeply rooted in the
social world (Schutz and Luckmann 1973 [1983]), they are often not
recognised as the social roots of judgements, instead they appear as
30
J. O. Zinn
unquestioned truth about how things should be done (Garfinkel 1967).

Thus, challenging them often triggers surprise, disbelieve and rejec-
tion (Douglas 1992) and makes it particularly difficult to include them
when considering how risk tensions are dealt with in practice.
Given that social reality is largely shaped through language (Berger
and Luckmann 1966), it is helpful to consider how language reflects
and influences the way how we think about risk. The linguistic distinc-
tion between risk as noun and risk as verb helps to understand how lan-
guage carries a systematic difference in the meaning of risk. Risk as noun
refers to ‘risk’ as a thing that is negative and means ‘danger’ or ‘threat’
(Douglas 1990: 3, 1992: 24). Scholarship supports such a view, which
frames risk as an objective fact that can be measured, calculated, esti-
mated or prevented. It does not invite to address the social processes
surrounding the risk and how we respond to it. The objective risk is
sharply distinguished from the subjective perception of these processes
and the social mediation and management of risk.
When we refer to risk in its verbal form as in ‘risking’ or ‘risk-taking’,
a complex frame is mobilised (compare Fig. 2.3). It includes an actor
who takes a risk but who is not necessarily the bearer of the risk-
taking; this could be borne by other victims. There is a valued object,
a decision-making situation, a decision, a goal and harm as two possible
outcomes.
It is less the detailed linguistic analysis, which is important but the
analytical perspective that broadens the analysis more naturally into
all kinds of contextual aspects essential to the understanding of risk
issues. All these aspects tend to be ignored when one approaches risk
as a ‘thing’ rather than an activity. When approaching risk as a process
of doing, the social aspects more easily enter the debate, since risk does
not exist independently of the people, organisations or other social
instances, which perform risk (Girtili Nygren et al. 2017).
In this perspective, a risk does not exist independently of the risk-
taker (or an observer establishing the link between risker and risks/
gains). Both are indissolubly connected. Risk is defined through this
connection. Climbing a mountain might be a high risk for an inexpe-
rienced person but a boring exercise for an experienced climber. The
decision to invest in a new technology might provide a high gain for a
31
Fig. 2.3 The risk frame (Fillmore and Atkins) (Source Fillmore and Atkins 1992: 84)
company but bear a high risk for the community, which lives close to
the production plant. Taking the risk of a highly dangerous boat jour-
ney to Europe might be a high and often deadly risk for the refugee but
more bearable than both suffering existential poverty and hunger and
the shame not having tried everything to overcome it.
In this way, I suggest approaching risk through its built-in tensions
between risk-taking and risk minimisation. The knowledge about
risk—including the contested processes of its selection, negotiation and
acknowledgement in everyday life—involves decision-making, which
risks to take and which knowledge to consider. It is thereby shaped by
all kinds of social forces.
However, different disciplines provide different insights to the roots
of risk-taking and as a result suggest different responses and strategies
to manage risk-taking. Therefore, the following two chapters explore
the scope and limits of these approaches to understand social processes
of risk-taking in its social contexts before mapping the research on the
everyday experience and taking of risk.
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died away. And, greatly to her own astonishment, she found her
head falling heavily upon that of her new friend.
“Ah, child, it is selfish of me to make you talk!” cried Mrs. Dale.
“You are faint, and must rest now. Come and talk to me some other
time.”
Mabin overcame the faintness which had seized her, and quite
suddenly raised her head again. The little excitement of the hope
held out to her brought all her senses back.
“Come and see you! Oh, may I? I should like to so much!”
The girl almost nestled, as she spoke, against her new friend.
But over Mrs. Dale’s fair, childlike face there came at once a sort
of shadow, as if a terrible remembrance had suddenly taken the
power for all pleasurable emotion from her. It almost seemed to
Mabin that the little hands made a movement as if to push her away.
And then there burst forth from the infantile red lips some words
which struck terror into her young hearer, so bitter, so full of sadness,
of biting remorse, were they:
“No, child, no. You must not come. I am too wicked!”
The girl was struck dumb. She wanted to comfort pretty Mrs. Dale;
she wanted to laugh at her self-accusation, to express incredulity,
amusement. But in the face of that look of anguish, of that
inexpressibly mournful cry straight from the heart, she could not
even open her lips. She knew that there was some grief here which
no words of comfort could touch.
So deeply absorbed was she in the silent compassion which kept
her with lowered eyelids and mute lips, that she was quite startled
when Mrs. Dale’s voice, speaking in her ordinary tones, struck again
upon her ear.
“That young fellow who picked you up is one of the Vicar’s sons,
isn’t he?”
“Yes,” answered Mabin in a rather colder voice.
“He seems a very nice lad, and very much interested in—
somebody?” suggested Mrs. Dale archly.
Mabin laughed.
“Yes, so he is. But it is not the ‘somebody’ you mean,” answered
she. “Mrs. Bonnington, that’s his mother, says he can think about
nothing but—Mrs. Dale!”
Again the sweet face changed; and it was in a low voice full of
sadness that the lady in black said, slowly and deliberately:
“I hope with all my heart that she has made a mistake.” Then, with
a rapid gesture, as if brushing away some thought which was full of
untold terror, she added with a shudder: “Don’t let us talk about it. It
is too horrible!”
CHAPTER III.
AN INVITATION AND A WARNING.
Mabin’s sprained ankle was a more serious affair than she had
supposed. For a month she never left the house, and for another she
went out in a wheel-chair, or hopped about on a pair of crutches.
And during all that time she caught no glimpse of the pretty
neighbor who had done her such eminent service at the time of the
accident. In vain she had hung about the road outside “The Towers”
looking up at the west side of the house, which was built into the wall
alongside the road, trying to distinguish the fair, blue-eyed face at
one of the windows which peeped sombrely out of the ivy.
Dreary the place looked, Mabin thought, as she pondered over the
mystery surrounding the lady in black. The lowest window visible
from the road was about three feet above the girl’s head; and all she
could see was a pair of crimson moreen curtains, which, she
thought, harmonized ill with what she had seen of the tenant of the
gloomy house. The house had long been “To let, Furnished.” But
why had not dainty Mrs. Dale improved away those curtains?
Mabin did not usually trouble her head about such trifles as
furniture; but she had enshrouded the figure of the pretty widow in
romance; and she felt that her fairy queen was not living up to her
proper standard in contenting herself with crimson moreen.
“What are you looking at so intently?”
Mabin, who, leaning on her crutches, was gazing up at that
mysteriously interesting window, started violently as she saw a white
hand, glistening with diamonds, thrust suddenly out through the ivy
in the midst of a space which she had taken for blank wall.
And, parting the close-growing branches, Mrs. Dale peeped out,
pink and fair and smiling, from a window at the same level as the
one Mabin had been watching, but so thickly covered with ivy that
the girl had not suspected its existence.
“I—I was looking for you. I was hoping to see you,” stammered
Mabin.
“And now that you have seen me, won’t you please condescend to
see a little more of me?” asked Mrs. Dale. “I won’t eat you up if you
come into my den. Look, here is another inhabitant whom I have
entrapped. But there are strawberries enough for three.”
Mabin hesitated; not from any scruples about the propriety of
visiting the lady about whom so much gossip was talked, certainly,
but because she was shy, and because the thought of a meeting and
a talk with her ideal heroine and a stranger seemed rather
formidable.
But Mrs. Dale would not allow her time to refuse.
“I will send the other inhabitant down to let you in,” said she.
And the ivy closed again, and Mabin could hear the lady’s voice
giving some directions to some person within. She moved
mechanically, on her crutches, toward the high closed gates. And by
the time she reached them they were opening, and Rudolph was
holding them back for her.
The girl could not repress a slight exclamation of astonishment.
Rudolph reddened.
“You are surprised to see me,” said he, rather bashfully. “I hope
you won’t refuse to come in because I am here? I will go away rather
than that.”
Mabin hesitated. She was not very worldly-wise, but it seemed to
her that there was something rather strange about his presence in
the house where the rest of the Vicar’s family were not allowed to
enter. And at the same moment she remembered Mrs. Dale’s
apparent horror at the idea of the young fellow’s admiration for her.
Rudolph’s color deepened still more.
“Why are you always so rude to me, Mabin, or I suppose I ought to
say—Miss Rose?” asked he quickly. “Doesn’t it seem rather unfair,
when you come to think of it? We were great chums once, you
know? Weren’t we?”
“When we were children, yes,” replied Mabin stiffly.
“And why not now?”
The blood rushed to the girl’s forehead.
“How can you ask?” she said, indignantly. “When I owe my
lameness to you?”
Rudolph stared at her, as if uncertain whether he heard aright.
“To me?”
“Why, yes. Surely you don’t pretend it was not you who threw the
stone which knocked my bicycle over?”
The stiff haughtiness with which she said this melted suddenly into
apologetic alarm when she saw by the change to fierce indignation in
Rudolph that she had made another, and most absurd blunder. At
first he could only stare at her in speechless anger and amazement.
“Do you take me for a street-urchin?” he asked at last.
Mabin recovered herself a little, and refused to be withered up.
“Your brothers do it,” she said below her breath.
“Then I’ll give the little beggars a good hiding the first time I catch
them at it,” said Rudolph sharply. “But I should have thought you
could distinguish the difference between a man and a schoolboy,
and not have visited their sins upon me.”
Mabin felt miserable. She blushed, she stammered when she tried
to speak; and the tears came into her eyes.
“I—I’m sorry!” she said in a constrained voice. “I—I see, I might
have known. But you know—you were rude to me—that very day—
when I saw you at Seagate!”
“Ah! I remember! I asked you to have a cigarette. It was
injudicious, not rude. You should have made a distinction again.”
There was an awkward silence. Rudolph was still resentful; but
when he saw the downcast eyes, and the tears which were
beginning to fringe the long black lashes, he found himself softening.
And, putting her hand too hastily into her pocket for the handkerchief
to wipe away her tears, Mabin dropped one of her crutches.
“Let me help you along,” said he in a gentle voice, as he picked up
the fallen crutch. “I don’t like to see a girl using those things.”
And, without waiting for her permission, he thrust the crutch under
one arm, and insisted on supporting the unwilling girl with the other.
And as they crossed the broad gravelled space to the portico, in the
shade of the trees, Mabin felt a curious sensation of peace and of
pleasure, and suddenly looked up at her companion with a frank
smile.
“I’m very glad we’re friends again,” said she.
And he, smiling too, but with a little more malice, a little more guile,
than she, answered readily:
“Why, so am I. But I must remind you that it is your fault, not mine,
that we have ever been anything else.”
Mabin hung her head, feeling rather guilty, but with yet more
enjoyment of the present reconciliation than remorse for the past
estrangement. Instead of taking her straight in, Rudolph led her
across the gravel to a flower-border, where, in a little open patch of
sunlight, a rosebush grew. It was a “Mrs. John Lang,” and the huge
pink blossoms were in their full beauty and fragrance.
“I’ve brought you here,” he said didactically, “to read you a moral
lesson. Here we have a rose, full of beauty and sweetness to every
one, but without any thorns. While some Roses I know——”
“Are all thorns to everybody, and are without any beauty,” finished
Mabin for him, laughing, “and without any sweetness.”
“No, no, not at all. But they seldom let you come near enough to
admire the beauty, and they are rather chary of their sweetness.
Now I hope you’ll profit by this lesson.”
“To be sure I—shan’t!” replied Mabin with a rather doleful smile. “I
do try to be less—less objectionable—sometimes,” she added with
seriousness which made Rudolph smile. “But it doesn’t seem to be
very successful. I think I’m going to give up the effort and accept the
fate of ‘an awful example’ as serenely as I can.”
Rudolph tried not to let his smile grow too broad for politeness.
“You are an odd girl,” he said at last. “Or is it another insult to tell
you so?”
Mabin shook her head.
“If it’s an insult,” answered she, “it is one that I’m used to.”
“One is almost as much afraid of saying anything complimentary to
you as of giving you what you call insults,” he began cautiously.
“Otherwise I would tell you that I like ‘odd’ people, people who don’t
always say and do the right thing, that is.”
“Then you ought to appreciate me,” retorted Mabin quickly. “For
everybody says I always do and say the wrong thing!”
“I do appreciate you.”
Mabin laughed and blushed.
“I only said that in fun,” she said awkwardly.
“Well, I said what I did in earnest.”
“Mrs. Dale will be wondering what has become of us,” said Mabin.
She was not at all anxious to go in; but the pleasure she felt in this
talk with Rudolph had grown rather alarming to her reserve. She
began to fear that she would spoil it all by one of her far-famed
blunders of speech. And so she chose to cut short the enjoyment
while it could remain a recollection of unalloyed delight.
Rudolph, on his side, was in no hurry to go in; although he took a
step obediently toward the portico.
From a feeling of perversity which she could not have accounted
for, Mabin chose to talk about Mrs. Dale as they went slowly toward
the house.
“I have been longing to see her ever since my accident,” she said.
“But although I have been always hovering about the place, wishing
she would come out, to-day is the very first time I have caught sight
of her.”
“That is exactly my own experience,” said Rudolph. “She seems to
have given up driving about the place, and to have shut herself up in
this dreary old house just like a nun.”
“Oh!” said Mabin, feeling quite relieved to hear that he had not, as
she had supposed, been in the society of the beautiful widow
constantly since the day of the accident.
“Yes,” he went on. “I was passing by only half an hour ago, when I
glanced up at the windows, and Mrs. Dale stopped me to ask if I had
heard how you were. And then she asked me in, saying she felt
lonely. And so should I, so would any one, in that mouldy old house
all alone.”
“Poor lady! I am so sorry for her!” said Mabin.
Rudolph looked at her quickly.
“Do you feel like that about her too?” said he earnestly. “All the
other people one meets are either jealous of her beauty, or envious
of her handsome turnout, or angry with her for not wanting to make
their acquaintance.”
“I am very sorry for her,” answered the girl gravely. “I feel certain
that she has had some very great sorrow—”
“Why, yes, her husband’s death,” suggested Rudolph.
“Oh, yes, that of course,” assented Mabin, surprised to find that
the universal doubts whether Mrs. Dale really was a widow had
infected her also. “But something even more than that, I should think.
I have an idea that there is something tragic in her story, if one only
knew it.”
Rudolph said nothing to this, but he looked at his companion with
a quick glance of surprise, as if he himself shared her opinion, and
was astonished to find it echoed.
They were under the portico now, and as their footsteps sounded
on the stone, they saw through the open door into the dark hall and
heard Mrs. Dale’s soft voice calling to them.
“It takes ever so much longer to get a thing done than to do it
one’s self!” she exclaimed brightly, with a sigh, as she came out of
the room on the left, and invited them to go in. “I could have brought
Miss Rose in in half the time, even if she had fought to get away. Did
she fight?” went on Mrs. Dale with arch innocence.
They were in the room by this time, and Mabin, coming in out of
the glare of the sun, stood for a few seconds without seeing
anything. Then her hands were gently taken, and she found herself
pushed into a low chair.
“Bring her some strawberries, Mr. Bonnington,” said Mrs. Dale. “By
the by, I may as well remark that I don’t intend to call you Mr.
Bonnington very long. I shall drop into plain ‘Rudolph’ very soon, if
only to give a fresh shock to the neighborhood, to whom I am
Shocker in ordinary.”
“The sooner the better. I can’t understand anybody’s being Mr.
Bonnington but my father. Now he looks equal to the dignity, while I
don’t. I always feel that there is a syllable too many for me, and that
people despise me in consequence.”
Mabin, who had recovered the use of her eyes, felt rather envious.
The quick give and take of light talk like this was so different from the
solemn conversations carried on at home, where her father laid
down the law and everybody else agreed with him, that she felt this
levity, while pleasant and amusing, to be something which would
have caused the good folk at home to look askance.
“And how have you been, child, since that unhappy day when I
saw you last?”
And Mrs. Dale came to the next chair, and piled sugar on the
strawberries.
“Oh, I’ve been getting on all right, but it is tiresome not to be able
to walk without those things. And it has made me in everybody’s
way,” sighed Mabin.
“How is that?”
“Papa could have let the house to go abroad, as he wanted to,
when the accident happened. Only I couldn’t well be moved then.
And now that I could go, he has lost the house he had heard of at
Geneva, and one which he could have now is too small for us. So
that I feel I am in the way again.”
“Do you mean,” asked Mrs. Dale quite eagerly, “that they could go
if only they could dispose of you?”
“Yes. There is one room short.”
Little Mrs. Dale sprang up, and the color in her cheeks grew
pinker.
“Do you think,” she asked, after a moment’s pause, “that your
parents would allow you to stay with me? If you would come?” she
finished with a plaintive note of entreaty on the last words.
“Oh, I am sure they would, and I am sure I would!” cried Mabin,
with undisguised delight.
And then quite suddenly the face of the black-robed lady grew
ashy gray, and she sank down into her chair trembling from head to
foot.
“No. I—I mustn’t ask you,” she said hoarsely.
And there was a silence, during which both her young hearers cast
down their eyes, feeling that they dared not look at her. It was Mabin
who spoke first. Putting her hand between the two white hands of
Mrs. Dale, she said gently:
“Is it because you are lonely you want me to come?”
She did venture to look up then, startled by the shiver which
convulsed Mrs. Dale as she spoke. And in the blue eyes she saw a
look of terror which she never forgot.
“Lonely! Oh, child, you will never know how lonely!” burst from her
pale lips.
“Then I will come,” said Mabin. “I should like to come.”
There was another silence. Mrs. Dale had evidently to put strong
constraint upon herself to check an outburst of emotional gratitude.
Rudolph, moved himself by the little scene, was looking out of the
window. The lady in black presently spoke again, very gravely:
“I don’t think you will be very much bored, dear, and you will be
doing a great kindness to a fellow-creature. And yet—I hardly like—I
don’t feel that I ought——”
“But I feel that I must and shall,” said Mabin brightly. “You don’t
know how beautiful it would be for me to feel that at last, for a little
while, I shouldn’t be in the way!”
And the overgrown girl, who was snubbed at home, had tears in
her eyes at the remembrance of the kind touch which she had felt on
the day of her accident. Mrs. Dale was too much moved to say much
more, but it was agreed between the ladies that the suggestion
should be formally made by the tenant of “The Towers” to the heads
of the household at “Stone House” without delay, that Mabin should
stay with her new friend during the absence abroad of the rest of the
Rose family.
Mabin did notice, while they talked, that Rudolph remained not
only silent but somewhat constrained; but it was not until she took
her leave of Mrs. Dale, and he followed her out, that the young girl
attached any importance to his reserve.
Once out of hearing of Mrs. Dale, who stood on the stone steps to
bid them good-by, Rudolph asked her abruptly:
“Do you think they’ll let you come?”
“Oh, yes, they’ll only be too glad to get rid of me. Why do you ask
in that tone?”
“Well, there is something I think I ought to tell you, if you are
thinking of staying with Mrs. Dale.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It is that she is being watched.”
“Watched!”
“Yes, by a stranger, a man whom I have never seen in the place
before. He hovers about this place, keeping out of range of possible
eyes in the house, at all hours of the day and even of the night.”
“But how do you know this?”
The words slipped out of her mouth, and it was not until she saw
Rudolph redden that she saw that she was too inquisitive.
“I am sure of what I say, anyhow,” said he quietly.
Mabin looked thoughtful.
“I don’t care!” she said at last.
“I thought you wouldn’t.”
“And I shan’t tell anybody anything about it.”
“I was sure you wouldn’t.”
“But I shall tell Mrs. Dale.”
Rudolph stopped and looked at her.
“I think you had better not do that,” he said.
“But why should a person watch her, except with the intention of
trying to do her some harm?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I think if you do tell her, knowing how
highly nervous she is, you will do her more harm than ever the
mysterious watcher would. Perhaps you would even drive her out of
the place, in which case most assuredly the watcher would go after
her, while if we keep her here perhaps we may manage to draw his
fangs.”
Mabin felt frightened. Then, being a matter-of-fact girl, she got the
better of this feeling quickly, and looked up keenly at her companion.
“What do you exactly mean by that?” she asked.
“Only that I will get hold of the man quietly and find out what his
little game is. Though I can guess.”
“Well, you can tell me what your guess is?”
“Why, debt, of course. One can see she is inclined to be
extravagant, and very likely she has run up bills somewhere. Don’t
you think that seems likely?”
His tone was rather anxious, Mabin thought. But she answered
indignantly:
“No, I don’t. It would be very dishonorable to run away without
paying one’s debts, and I don’t think you much of a friend to poor
Mrs. Dale to suggest such a thing!”
Rudolph looked not guilty, but grave.
“Well” said he, “people don’t hang about a place, at the risk of
getting taken up ‘on suspicion of loitering, for the purpose of
committing a felony,’ without some reason.”
“Why,” cried Mabin triumphantly, “that is the reason! Mrs. Dale has
some lovely diamond rings, and the loitering gentleman wants to
steal them!”
“Well, perhaps you are right,” said Rudolph doubtfully.
“I am sure of it!” retorted Mabin resolutely. And she held out her
hand. “Good-by, and thank you for your help.”
“And you will remember my parable about the Roses?” said he, as
he took her hand and thought he liked gray eyes after all better than
blue ones.
“Perhaps,” said Mabin cautiously, as she hopped away on her
crutches.
CHAPTER IV.
WAS IT A RECOGNITION?
While Mabin was still talking to Rudolph in the road between “The
Towers” and “Stone House,” a tall parlormaid, in snow-white French
cap and ends, passed them, on her way from the former to the latter
house, bearing a letter in her hand.
And when Mabin reached home, she found that the Powers had
already received Mrs. Dale’s invitation to Mabin.
In truth it had put both husband and wife into a position of some
difficulty. For while, on the one hand, they were delighted at this
opportunity of getting “the one too many” off their hands for a time,
yet there were the opinions of their neighbors to be considered; and
the tide of public feeling had set in strongly against the lady in black.
If her hair had been dark instead of fair, it would have made all the
difference. The beauty which goes with brown hair and a more or
less dark complexion is not so startling, not so sensational, as the
loveliness of pink and white and gold which made Mrs. Dale so
conspicuous. If again, she had not been in mourning, and such
pretty mourning, they would have been readier to make allowance
for her eccentricities. But the knowing ones had begun to discover
that there were discrepancies in her attire, that her mourning was
either too deep for diamond rings to be permissible, or not deep
enough for the heavy black veil she wore.
So that, in short, it was now almost universally admitted that this
person with the too showy carriage and horses, and the dangerously
pretty face, was an individual to be avoided, and it was decided that
her reluctance to enter the best society of the place, when that
society had held out its uninviting arms to her, arose from a
wholesome fear that the wise women of the place would “find her
out.”
Mr. Rose read Mrs. Dale’s note twice through, very slowly, as if
trying to discover hidden meanings in its simple words. Then he
looked at his wife, who was watching him rather anxiously.
“Well, my dear, and what do you think?” asked he.
It pleased him to ask her opinion thus on most things, not that he
ever had any intention of heeding her wishes in preference to his
own, but in the hope that she would express some modest inclination
one way or the other, to give him an impetus in the opposite
direction.
“I think, dear, that it would hardly do,” murmured the lady, hoping
that for once her husband would fall in with her views. “You must
have heard the way in which people talk about this Mrs. Dale, so that
it would be thought very strange if we let Mabin stay with her. Don’t
you think it was rather underhand of her to get hold of the child this
afternoon?”
“Underhand! Certainly not,” replied Mr. Rose with decision. “The
most natural thing in the world, considering how kind she was to the
girl at the time of her accident. And as for the talk of the place, why, if
you listened to all the old women say you would never go outside
your door for fear your neighbors should think you were going to
steal their hens!”
There was a pause. She would not irritate him by another remark.
So he presently went on:
“I suppose you think the Vicar’s wife would scold you?”
“Not scold, of course, but I am sure she would disapprove,” said
Mrs. Rose meekly.
“Ah! I thought so. Well, I will give the old lady something to talk
about then. Mabin shall stay with Mrs. Dale if she wishes.”
Mrs. Rose sighed heavily.
“She will wish it, of course. Girls always wish to do the very things
which are not proper for them.”
“You may be quite satisfied, Emily, that what I allow my daughter
to do is quite proper,” said Mr. Rose severely, as he left the room.
Mrs. Rose sighed. She had not told him, because it would have
been of no use, that she had to be more particular than he about
Mabin, because, being the girl’s step-mother only, she was the more
exposed to the gossip of the neighborhood—a force she dreaded—
than her husband was. But she vented her ill-humor on Mabin
herself, whom she informed very acidly that if she chose to go to
“this Mrs. Dale,” and was not comfortable with her, the fault was hers
and her father’s.
Mabin received these remarks meekly, rejoicing in the
approaching holiday. She had nothing very serious to complain of in
her treatment under her father’s roof, but the snubs of her father, the
tacit dislike of her step-mother, and the fact that the difference in age
between her half-sisters and herself left her much alone, all
combined to make her welcome the change.
Emily and Ethel, who were fourteen and twelve years of age,
insipid and spiritless young persons with little brown eyes and little
brown pigtails, teased her with questions about her visit of the
afternoon.
“Is it true that her hair’s dyed?” asked Emily, getting Mabin into a
corner after tea.
“No, of course it’s not,” was the indignant answer.
“Oh, well, you needn’t be so angry. Miss Bradley said she was
sure it was, and that she knew the very stuff she used.”
“Miss Bradley had better try the stuff on her own wisp then,”
retorted Mabin angrily.
“What is the house like inside, Mabin?” asked Ethel, who, though
only twelve, was quite as great a gossip as there was in the parish.
“Why, there were chairs and tables in it, just as there are in every
other house. What do you suppose it was like?”
“Mabin, don’t snub the children. Their interest is very natural,” said
Mr. Rose peevishly from the other end of the room.
“Horsehair and mahogany, red moreen curtains, and a black
marble clock on the mantelpiece,” said Mabin laconically.
“Why, that doesn’t sound very nice, that you should be in such a
hurry to go there!” objected Ethel. “But perhaps the other rooms are
better.”
“Very likely,” said Mabin.
But Mabin was really just a little bit alarmed at her own good
fortune in getting her father’s consent so easily. She had a
superstitious feeling, in spite of her reputed strength of mind, that
anything worth having ought to be rather difficult to get. In spite of all
her loyalty to her heroine, too, she thought more often than she
wished about Rudolph’s ridiculous fancy that Mrs. Dale was
watched. And although she always dismissed the thought by saying
to herself that Rudolph was in love with the lovely widow, and
therefore “fancied things,” she was anxious to meet him again and to
learn whether he still thought that the fair tenant of “The Towers” was
being watched.
In the mean time great confusion reigned at “Stone House.”
Everybody was immersed in the horrors of “packing up,” and it
was impossible to go upstairs without encountering people
staggering under the burden of a heap of things which would have
been better left behind. Even the authority of Mr. Rose, who disliked
the daily routine to be disturbed, failed to get any meal eaten at the
proper time, or without unnecessary hurry.
Even the fact that Mr. Rose’s old friend Mrs. Haybrow was
expected on a short visit before the migration, failed to check the fury
of the packers. It was unfortunate that she should come at such a
time, certainly. But Mrs. Rose reckoned on inflaming her friend’s
mind with her own zeal, and inwardly proposed orgies of competitive
trunk-filling to while away the visitor’s time.
Mrs. Rose secretly hoped, too, that Mrs. Haybrow, through her
connections at Todcaster, would be able to furnish her husband with
proofs that Mrs. Dale was not a person to be encouraged. It was not
yet too late to put off Mrs. Dale, although Mr. Rose had called upon
that person to thank her for the invitation to his daughter and to
accept it.
It was the day of Mrs. Haybrow’s expected arrival, and Mr. and
Mrs. Rose had driven to the station to meet her. Mabin, wondering
whether the visitor, whom she had not seen since she was a child,
would be “nice,” was hobbling along the garden path, rather painfully
indeed, but at last without a crutch, when she heard a great rustling
of the branches of the lilac bushes which grew close under the wall.
And then, above the wall, she saw the face of Rudolph.
“Oh!” cried Mabin, with a little fluttering of the heart. “I—I thought
you had gone back to your ship!”
“Why, so I had,” replied Rudolph, raising himself so that she had a
view of his shoulders as well as of his head. “But I’ve come back
again, you see.”
“I can guess what brought you!” said Mabin, wishing the next
moment that she had not uttered the words.
Rudolph took her up quickly.
“Can you? Well then, what was it?”
Mabin blushed scarlet. Of course the thought that was in her mind
that the charms of the fascinating widow had drawn him to Stone.
And just the least little twinge of nascent jealousy had given a sting
of pique to her tone. But she would not for the world have owned to
this; and the mere thought that he might have guessed it was misery.
As she did not answer, Rudolph shook his head.
“I don’t think you are quite as clever as you suppose,” he said.
“And I don’t choose to tell you what brought me back. But I may just
warn you that you are likely to get tired of the sight of me before I do
go away altogether, as I can get as much leave as I like while my
ship is at Portsmouth. Rather alarming prospect, isn’t it?”
“You will get tired of being on shore, won’t you?” asked Mabin, not
feeling equal to answering him in his own tone, which was what her
parents and the Vicarage people would have called “flippant.”
“That depends,” said Rudolph, looking down with interest at the
dried-up blossoms of the lilac trees.
Mabin glanced at him, and began to hope nervously that she might
not see too much of him. She had never seen a man whom she
considered so handsome as this brown-faced young lieutenant with
the merry black eyes, who made her feel so ridiculously shy and stiff.
And the very attraction he had for her seemed to the simple young
girl alarming, since she raised him in her maiden fancy to a pinnacle
from which such a peerless creature could never descend to her.
In spite of herself her tone sounded cold and constrained,
therefore, as she cut short the pause in the conversation by asking if
they were all well at the Vicarage.
“Quite well, thank you,” answered Rudolph demurely. “I suppose
that kind inquiry is meant for a snub, isn’t it? And intended to imply
that I ought not to have addressed you in this informal manner over
the wall, but that I ought to have called in the proper manner at the
other side of the house?”
“It wasn’t meant to imply that,” replied Mabin with solemn
straightforwardness. “Only I wanted to say something, and I had
nothing better to say. I must tell you that everybody says that I have
no conversation.”
“People allow you very few good points, according to your
account.”
“Quite as many as I have, though!”
“Well, at least, then you have one merit of unusual modesty.”
Mabin looked up at him steadily and frankly.
“It’s rather difficult for me to talk to you, because I can never tell
whether you are serious or only laughing at me. Don’t you rather—
rather puzzle Mrs. Bonnington?”
“Well, I am afraid I rather—rather shock her too.”
“We must all seem, down here, very antediluvian to you. There is
only one person about here you can speak to in your own way.”
“Mrs. Dale?”
To Mabin’s fanciful and rather jealous eyes it seemed that
Rudolph’s color grew a little deeper as he uttered the name.
“Yes.”
“Ah! You will have an opportunity of learning the art, if you are
going to stay with her.”
“But it is an art which will be entirely useless when I get back here
again. Papa and mamma would think it rather shocking. Do you
know, if they knew how lively Mrs. Dale is in her ordinary talk they
wouldn’t let me go to her?”
“Then I shouldn’t tell them, if I were you. You will find a use for the
art of conversation some day, you know, when you come across
other frivolous and good-for-nothing young persons, like Mrs. Dale
and me.”
Mabin would rather he had not coupled his name with that of the
lovely widow.
“Were Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington interested to hear you had been to
see her?” asked Mabin, feeling as she spoke that this was another
indiscretion.
But Rudolph began to laugh mischievously.
“They would have been extremely ‘interested,’ I am sure, if they
had heard of it,” said he. “But I have too much consideration for my
parents to impart to them any information which would ‘interest’ them
too deeply to be good for their digestions. I suppose you think that
shocking, don’t you?”
But Mabin was cautious. There was more than one gulf, she felt,
between her and the merry young sailor, and she was not going to
make them any wider.
“I’m sure you do what is best,” she said modestly.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” said he. “But it’s rather a
confidential communication, and these lilac bushes extend a long
way. Will you come nearer to the wall? Or may I get over it?”
“You may get over if you like,” said Mabin, coming as she spoke a
little nearer to the bushes.
Rudolph availed himself of the permission in the twinkling of an
eye, and stood beside her on the grass path under the limes, looking
down at the pretty nape of the girlish neck, which showed between
the soft brown hair and the plain, wide turn-down collar of pale blue
linen which she wore with her fresh Holland frock.
“The man—I told you about the man I saw watching ‘The Towers,’
well, he has disappeared,” said Rudolph, not sorry to have an
excuse for whispering into such a pretty little pink ear.
“Oh! I am glad!”
“So I hope we shall see no more of him.”
“And do you still think—surely you can’t still think—that he was
watching Mrs. Dale?”
“Oh, well, don’t know, of course. And at any rate the slight
objection I had to your going to ‘The Towers’ has disappeared.”
Mabin felt a strange pleasure at the interest implied in this concern
for her. There was a pause, broken by Mabin, who suddenly started,
as if waking from a dream.
“The carriage!” cried she. “They have come back. I must go in.
Good-by.”
She held out her hand. He took it, and detained it a moment.
“I may come and see you sometimes, when you are at ‘The
Towers,’ mayn’t I? For old acquaintance’ sake?”
“Or—for Mrs. Dale’s!” said Mabin quickly, as she snatched away
her hand and ran into the house.
She was not so silly as not to know where the attraction of ‘The
Towers’ lay!
Mrs. Rose’s lumbering old landau, which made such a contrast to
Mrs. Dale’s smart victoria, had returned from the station, and as it
drove slowly along the road past ‘The Towers,’ Mrs. Rose was just
finishing to Mrs. Haybrow a long recital of her difficulties in
connection with the doubtful new resident.
Mr. Rose had chosen to come back on foot, so his wife could pour
out her tale without interruption or contradiction.
“There,” she cried below her breath, as they came close to the
gates of ‘The Towers,’ “you will be able to see her. She is standing
just inside the garden, calling to her little dog. Don’t you think that a
little dog always looks rather—rather odd?”
Mrs. Haybrow thought that this was somewhat severe judgment,
but she did not say so. She got a good view of the mysterious lady in
black; for Mrs. Dale raised her golden head as the carriage passed,
and she and Mrs. Rose exchanged a rather cool bow.
To the great surprise of her companion, Mrs. Haybrow fell
suddenly into a state of intense excitement.
“Why, it’s Dolly Leatham, little Dolly Leatham!” she cried with
evident delight. “The idea of my meeting her down here! I haven’t
seen the child for years.”
“You know her then?” asked Mrs. Rose, in a tone which in relief
was mingled with disappointment at the collapse of her own
suspicions.
“I used to know her very well. She was the belle of that part of
Yorkshire. The last I heard of her was that she was engaged to be
married to some man who had a lot of money; and they said she was
being hurried into it by her people rather against her will.”
“Well, she has managed to get rid of him,” said Mrs. Rose coldly.
“You see she is in widow’s dress now.”
“Yes, so I see. Poor Dolly! It seems rather strange to find her here,
so far from all her friends! And the things you have told me.”
After a pause Mrs. Haybrow said decidedly: “I must call upon her
to-morrow—No, I’ll go and see her at once. There will be plenty of
time before dinner, won’t there? There’s something mysterious about
this, and I must find out what it is.”
So, when she had had a cup of tea, Mrs. Haybrow went straight to
“The Towers.”

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Understanding Risk-Taking 1st ed.

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5 Key Characteristics of Risk-Taking 89

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8 Reasonable Risk-Taking in Everyday Life 253

8.4 A Combining Risk-Taking Rationales 288

9 Conclusions and Perspectives 307

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such socio-structural experiences. At the same time, organisational as

argued that risk-taking is a valuable resource necessary to help patients

Arnoldi, J. (2009). Risk. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity.

Honneth, A. (2007). Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory.

The meaning of risk is anything but self-evident (Garland 2003). In the

© The Author(s) 2020 15

These examples define ‘risk’ as an expression of danger or threat that

Box 2.1 Defining ‘risk’

There is good evidence that today’s understanding of risk is shaped

2.1 The Modern Dream: Rationality

is little doubt that complex societal processes, which involved religion,

Box 2.2 Rationalisation (Max Weber)

The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not … indicate

Historical research such as Against the Gods—The Remarkable Story of

2.2 A Historically New Experience

theory) in principle. Even in a highly rationalised modern world, the

Box 2.3 The Spirit of Adventure (Fridtjof Nansen)

The spirit of adventure… urges mankind forward on the way towards

Although Nansen distinguishes the routines of ordinary life from adven-

required a new expression since it was not well described by available

In this way, the modern dream is characterised by the problem that

… human decisions… whether personal or political or economic, can-

2.1 The Modern Dream: Rationality

2.2 A Historically New Experience

2.3 Limits to the Modern Dream

2.4 Tensions Within the Notion of Risk

2.5 Beyond the Calculative Orthodoxy