Focus groups in integrated assessment: A micro‐cosmos for reflexive modernization

Like every society, today's global society has a body of knowledge which is taken for granted in everyday life. This knowledge, which is organized around the prospect of modernization, is currently challenged in several ways. One of these challenges concerns the risks of global environmental change. We investigate the hypothesis that the conceptual machinery of modernization is experiencing a far‐reaching transformation whose outcome may be labelled as reflexive modernization. For this purpose, we propose a new methodology based on focus groups embedded in a process of integrated environmental assessment. The methodology yields promising results which are consistent with the hypothesis. They point to further implications of the hypothesis of reflexive modernization which are both interesting for theoretically oriented research and relevant for policy‐making.