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Risk as a resource: on the interplay between risks, vaccinations and welfare states in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany
Zum Zusammenspiel von Risiken, Impfungen und Staatlichkeit im Deutschland des 19. und 20. Jahrhundert
[journal article]
Abstract Vaccinations protect from infections, reduce infant mortality, and increase the standard of living. They enable a modern risk management. However, vaccinations require a risk management also in a very different sense: the danger of side effects and fatal incidents questions the benefits of vaccinati... view more
Vaccinations protect from infections, reduce infant mortality, and increase the standard of living. They enable a modern risk management. However, vaccinations require a risk management also in a very different sense: the danger of side effects and fatal incidents questions the benefits of vaccination up to the present day. Therefore, vaccination programs pose fundamental questions. What weighs more: a risk for the common good - or a risk to the individual? The article pursues the history of this risk management in Germany, and analyzes the interaction of risk ideas and concepts of social order. I focus on communication strategies for vaccination that came into use in the twentieth century that could not any longer rely on coercive measures. They also needed to appeal to the public and resort to "risk" as a public argument. The article therefore examines risk discourses with which the population should be convinced of the necessity of precautionary measures. The main thrust of the article will be that this kind of risk management was a prerequisite for a "social engineering", with which the idea of the "preventive self" was raised to the leading figure of modernity since the 1940s. (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
vaccination; health care delivery system; obligation; prophylaxis; social welfare state; common good; Federal Republic of Germany; the public; historical development; risk management; welfare state; health care; social order; twentieth century; nineteenth century
Classification
Medical Sociology
Social History, Historical Social Research
Health Policy
Document language
English
Publication Year
2016
Page/Pages
p. 70-90
Journal
Historical Social Research, 41 (2016) 1
Issue topic
Risk as an analytical category: selected studies in the social history of the twentieth century
DOI
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.41.2016.1.70-90
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed