This book presents exciting new perspectives on the perception of risk and the strategies that people adopt to cope with it, using the framework of recent social and cultural theory. The contributors, all leading scholars in the social sciences, combine empirical analyses with metatheoretical critiques to tackle an unusually diverse range of topics. These include drug use, risk in the workplace, fear of crime and the media, risk and pregnant embodiment, the social construction of danger in childhood, and the relationship between risk phenomena and social order.