Jens O. Zinn - Understanding Risk-Taking

Palgraves Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty series publishes monographs, edited volumes and Palgrave Pivots that capture and analyse how societies, organisations, groups and individuals experience and confront uncertain futures. An array of approaches for mitigating vulnerability to undesired futures has emerged within social contexts around the world and across history, with risk being seen as an especially salient technique to have emerged within, while also characterising, processes of modernisation. These approaches have attracted the critical attention of scholars across a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines including sociology, anthropology, geography, history, psychology, economics, linguistics, philosophy and political science. This series will provide a multidisciplinary home to consolidate this dynamic and growing academic field, bringing together and representing the state of the art on various topics within the broader domain of critical studies of risk and uncertainty. It aims to provide cutting edge theoretical and empirical, as well as established and emerging methodological contributions. The series welcomes projects on risk, trust, hope, intuition, emotions and faith. Moreover, the series is sensitive to the broader political, structural and socio-cultural conditions in which particular approaches to complexity and uncertainty become legitimated ahead of others. Explorations of the institutionalisation of approaches to uncertainty within regulatory and other governmental regimes is also of interest.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15840

Cover image: John M Lund Photography Inc

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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This publication is based on a manuscript I started during a research visit at the Chair of Ortwin Renn at the University of Stuttgart as part of a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award I received from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2015. I am grateful for the funding which came with this award and allowed me to pursue a number of innovative research activities which finally resulted in new research projects and book publications.

I would also like to thank Patrick Brown, Andy Alaszewski, Isabel Jackson and Anna Anderson for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript to further improve the book in content and style. It is always a pleasure to work with such inspiring colleagues. Indeed, finishing the manuscript in time would not have been possible with the patience and support of my partner Dr. Katrin Steinack, who helped me in critical situations and helped me to keep coherence and readability of the manuscript.