How is the presence of future catastrophes ‘manufactured’? Along what routes does risk acquire the predicate ‘real’ — in other words, how does it come to reign as ‘believed’ anticipation in people’s minds and in institutions and indeed often across the boundaries between nations, regions, religions, and political parties and between rich and poor? The distinction between risk as anticipated catastrophe and the actual catastrophe forces us instead to take the role of staging seriously. For only by imagining and staging world risk does the future catastrophe become present…
Ulrich Beck, World at Risk (2009)
