Sustaining Animal Agriculture and Environmental Quality in the South: What Happened and Why? Discussion

German social theorist Ulrich Beck has suggested that the political economy of post-industrial society has shifted away from the competition among relatively well-defined social groups for control of benefit streams resulting from technological and organizational innovations that characterized the roughly 200-year period of industrialization. In its place, we find constantly changing aggregates of individuals engaged in temporary or limited alliances competing to affect the distribution of social, environmental, and economic risks. Beck argues that a complex set of forces has brought about this shift. He mentions many oft noted changes in gender and family roles, in employment patterns, and global interdependencies, but two points are especially relevant to the collection of issues that have been discussed in these four papers. First is Beck’s claim that a public educated from childhood in the sciences has developed a much more sophisticated (and much more skeptical) understanding of the certainty with which the future can be anticipated. People no longer believe that science, government, or patriarchy can either assure future benefits or anticipate the source and magnitude of potential threats. Second is a general recognition of the fact that technological change is not inherently progressive. Not only are there winners and losers from technical change, but most of us both win and lose in the wake of technical