Manufactured risk is created by the very progression of human development, especially science and technology. It is an unknown quantity because there are no historical parameters against which to judge it, and it makes managing risk difficult. No-one can rely on answers from science because of the conflicting definitions of risk produced by the experts. Modernity refers to the modes of social life or organisation which emerged in Western Europe from about the seventeenth century and which subsequently developed a world wide influence. The central drivers of modernity were the forces of Western Europe's industrial and political revolutions.
Modernity destroys tradition.
Collaboration between modernity and tradition was crucial in the earlier phases of modern social development, but this phase was ended by the emergence of reflexive modernisation or high modernity. We have not moved beyond modernity but are living precisely through a phase of its radicalisation. The term post-modernism is best kept for reference to styles or movements within literature, painting, the plastic arts, and architecture. Reflexive modernisation implies coming to terms with the limits and contradictions of the modern order. The existing social order or structure becomes the object of its own forces.