The inequality of security: Winners and losers in the risk society
通过对加州硅谷50个社会经济背景多样家庭的89名工人的质性研究，探讨社会阶层如何影响个体在风险社会中的风险暴露和应对能力，揭示安全不平等导致赢家与输家的分化。
Current analyses of the changing nature of risk provide a`top-down' perspective that fails to consider variation among the individuals that these changes act upon. Drawing on a qualitative study of 89 workers who are members of 50 socioeconomically diverse families in Silicon Valley, California, this article explores the variability among workers by examining how an individual's social class background influences both their level of exposure to risk and their ability to navigate through the `risk society'. By employing Bourdieu's framework, the study finds that the attributes now expected of the ideal risk society subject are in actuality reflective of economic, social and cultural capitals most commonly held by the highly educated, middle and upper-middle classes. Consequently, in the current political environment where individuals are viewed as enterprising consumers responsible for their own welfare, those who possess the `right' capitals are advantaged, while those who do not are disadvantaged. This article employs life history case studies of two workers in different structural locations to highlight the different `capitals' workers have at their disposal, and shows how structural positions and cultural dispositions interact over time influencing future levels of inequality. In doing so, the article illustrates how the removal of public safety nets exacerbates existing disparities and causes the disadvantaged to fall even further behind. These disparities among workers constitute an inequality of security that engenders winners and losers in the risk society.