To live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an environment of chance and risk, the ineveitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination of nature and the reflexive making of history. Fate and destiny have no formal part to play in such a system, which operates (as a matter of principle) via what I shall call open human control of the natural and social worlds.

The body is in some sense perennially at risk. The possibility of bodily injury is ever-present, even in the most familiar of surroundings.

'Taking charge of one's life' involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities.

The risk climate of modernity is thus unsettling for everyone: no one escapes.

Abstract systems depend on trust, yet they provide none of the moral rewards which can be obtained from personalised trust, or were often available in traditional settings from the moral frameworks within which everyday life was undertaken. Moreover, the wholesale penetration of abstract systems into daily life creates risks which the individual is not well placed to confront; high-consequence risks fall into this category. Greater interdependence, up to and including globally independent systems, means greater vulnerability when untoward events occur that affect those systems as a whole.

The new mixed economy looks...for a synergy between public and private sectors.

The body is thus not simply an 'entity', but is experienced as a practical mode of coping with external situations and events.