Introduction. Multidimensional Risks in the XXI Century

This focus addresses questions about «Multidimensional Risks in the XXI Century», which was the title of a conference organised by the ISA/ESA network on Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty in 2021. When we chose to devote the joint midterm conference to this subject, we had in mind to investigate this awkward, uncharted field with a special focus on the megacities, which were the typical environment of those who felt displaced and lost and seemed to be becoming a new kind of global actor in the foggy scenarios of the new era. The conference was supposed to be held in 2020. In a way, we showed some sign of clairvoyance as the first call had to be postponed and then cancelled as the COVID-19 pandemic raged throughout the world, making even less sense that whatever had happened before, which was however far from negligible. We succeeded in holding the conference online a year later, and the articles presented here are a selection of papers mostly from the keynote speeches that were given on the occasion. Before sketching a brief introduction to these papers, we would like to add some notes on the big question we started from. Risk and uncertainty are defining features of current political and media discourses and of a wider cultural Zeitgeist. Amid processes of reflexive modernisation where existing categories and beliefs are called into question, the need for new categories, analytical frameworks and ideas for studying how risk and uncertainty are interwoven within every aspect of everyday life becomes increasingly apparent. More so now than ever, one might say, after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine caught the whole world by surprise. Processes of globalization, and their economic, social and political dimensions, give rise to new forms of risk and contribute to changing strategies of intervention by the state and other actors.