Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action Book

	Foreword	7
	Preface	9
1	General Introduction
1.1	Risk, Ontological Security, and Uncertainty	13
1.2	What Is Risk?	16
1.3	The Rational Actor Paradigm (RAP)	20
2	Rap: The Monarch and His Shaky Kingdom	35
2.1	Philosophical Underpinnings of RAP	36
2.2	Economics: RAP as a General Theory	41
2.3	Inside the Atom: RAP and Psychology	52
2.4	Sociology and RAP: The Fundamental Tension	58
3	Risky Decisions of a Single Agent	67
3.1	The Monarch and Risk: A Love-Hate Relationship	67
3.2	Insurance and Portfollo Investment	68
3.3	Decision Analysis	73
3.4	Quantitative Risk Assessments	85
3.5	Natural Hazards	95
3.6	Cognitive Psychology	101
3.7	Problems of Policy Making	108
4	Risky Decisions of Interacting Agents	121
4.1	Risk in the Theory of Games	121
4.2	Risk Communication	127
4.3	Risk and Social Movements	136
4.4	Organizations and RAP	144
5	Challenges and Alternatives to Rap in the Study of Risk	159
5.1	Cooperative Discourse about a Risk Problem	159
5.2	Risk and Organizations	165
5.3	The Concept of Social Amplification of Risk	169
5.4	The Arena Metaphor	175
5.5	Cultural Theory of Risk	183
5.6	The Social Systems View of Risks	193
6	Modernity and Beyond	209
6.1	Risk and Modernization	209
6.2	Risk and Scientific Rationality	213
6.3	Post-Modernism	221
6.4	Fundamentalist Revivals	228
6.5	The Relevance of Critical Theory	231
7	From Monological to Dialogical Rationality	243
7.1	The Nature of the Challenge	243
7.2	Elements of a New Paradigm	258
7.3	The Practical Context	281
	References	297
	Index	313