International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2017

The sociological link between risk and responsibility: a critical review and a theoretical proposal

(Abstract)

Barbara Sena

In the sociological literature, the connection between social responsibility and risk has not yet been analysed with due attention and specificity. The principal sociological theories of risk use the term “responsibility” to refer to the individual and his / her moral behaviour or to the behaviour of institutions and government (collective responsibility), but they do not consider the relational process in which different actors are involved in the production of responsibility. On this basis, this article will analyse some limits of the current link between risk and responsibility in the principal sociological literature, presenting a definition of responsibility, defined as “relational responsibility”, mainly based on the relational sociology of Pierpaolo Donati. This definition of responsibility will be connected to the concept of social risk, and some theoretical aspects from which this proposal could be developed will be outlined.