"The Risk Society, the first of many books on this topic by Beck, explores how the language of 'risk' animates contemporary economic and social spheres. Beck underscores how this language celebrates the capacity of private individuals to 'flexibly' create their own lives at the same time that it masks the 'precarity' they often encounter when those lives take an unforeseen turn."

Recommended by Shannon Jackson, Professor of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies and Rhetoric and author of Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics.