Home / Vol.17, n°1 / Épistémologie du risque : la troisième voie d'Ulrich Beck et son influence sur la doctrine environnementaliste

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In 1986, the first edition of Risk Society, by German sociologist and philosopher Ulrich Beck, was published. Twenty-five years after this seminal edition and ten years after it was published in French, it seems relevant to analyze how this work, among the most important in the social sciences studies of the last twenty years, affected the law, especially the one dedicated to the environment. Ulrich Beck, whose thinking align with contemporary environmental questioning, used the ecological preoccupations as the base for his theory. Within the limits of this introduction, we will focus on the epistemological tensions in the works about risk management. Ulrich Beck developed an original thought on the subject, neither realist nor constructivist, which are the two options usually found in the social sciences literature about risk management. Then, this contribution will record how limited the influence of Ulrich Beck’s theories have been on the teaching of the environmental laws and propose several hypotheses as for why it is the case. Above all, we’ll analyze how little the environmental judicial work focus on epistemology and eventually discuss the potential of an environmentalist reflection based on a constructivist approach.