adventurism

Noun

adventurism (countable and uncountable, plural adventurisms)

1. The behavior of an adventurer; risk-taking.
   • […] she really hadn’t wanted me to think of her as given over wholly to sexual excess and adventurism […]1969, Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint, New York: Vintage, published 1994, page 161
   • In pornographic literature, films, and gadgetry throughout the world […] the SS has become a referent of sexual adventurism.1980, Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism”, in Under the Sign of Saturn, New York: Vintage, published 1981, pages 101–102
2. The taking of excessive risks (by a government, etc) in political, economic or foreign affairs, often in disregard for established rules or norms.
   • Even where they were aware of the devastating effects of imperialism on the subject peoples, as in Conrad’s description of the dying victims of colonial adventurism in Heart of Darkness, they could not free themselves from the Eurocentric basis of their vision.1993, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, Nairobi: EAEP, Part I, Chapter 2, p. 22
   • The rejection of foreign adventurism derived partly from an awareness of the dynastic vulnerability of the Bourbon line, partly from the country's economic as well as its military fragility – and partly too from the increasingly evident limitations of France's traditional international allies.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 133