Risksamhälle och trygghetskultur

Föreställningar om politikens möjligheter och uppgift

Abstract

Risk society and culture of safety. Understandings of the task and possibilities of politics

This paper analyses three different periods with the Swedish Social Democratic Party in office (1960-1965, 1970, 1975 and 1995-2000). The paper analyses how questioning of modernity and the role of science and technology is dealt with in policy documents, such as speeches from the throne, governmental declarations and party programmes. In this discussion the environmental issue is of special interest, since it in a special way challenge the modernistic ideas of progress and possibility to control the future. The analysis shows an increasing emphasis of the modern in the late 1990s. This could be defined as a modernistic answer to the challenges modern society and its institutions have met during the latest decades. Furthermore, environmental protection work - by aid of science and new technology - is defined as a springboard to economic prosperity, which in turn is seen as the basis for the safety of the citizens. In this line the politics of the 1990s is a reminiscens of the 1960s optimistic belief in progress.