Ulrich Beck

Brian Wynne

Scott Lash

7. Science Beyond Truth and Enlightenment? / 8. Opening up the Political / Index

Towards a New Modernity

Risk Society

This important new book offers an engaging and challenging introduction to the thorny paths of the globalization debate.

What Is Globalization

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Generación global

The euro crisis is tearing Europe apart. But the heart of the matter is that, as the crisis unfolds, the basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin’s strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating. How did this happen? The anticipation of the European catastrophe has already fundamentally changed the European landscape of power. It is giving birth to a political monster: a German Europe. Germany did not seek this leadership position - rather, it is a perfect illustration of the law of unintended consequences. The invention and implementation of the euro was the price demanded by France in order to pin Germany down to a European Monetary Union in the context of German unification. It was a quid pro quo for binding a united Germany into a more integrated Europe in which France would continue to play the leading role. But the precise opposite has happened. Economically the euro turned out to be very good for Germany, and with the euro crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel became the informal Queen of Europe. The new grammar of power reflects the difference between creditor and debtor countries; it is not a military but an economic logic. Its ideological foundation is ‘German euro nationalism’ - that is, an extended European version of the Deutschmark nationalism that underpinned German identity after the Second World War. In this way the German model of stability is being surreptitiously elevated into the guiding idea for Europe. The Europe we have now will not be able to survive in the risk-laden storms of the globalized world. The EU has to be more than a grim marriage sustained by the fear of the chaos that would be caused by its breakdown. It has to be built on something more positive: a vision of rebuilding Europe bottom-up, creating a Europe of the citizen. There is no better way to reinvigorate Europe than through the coming together of ordinary Europeans acting on their own behalf.

German Europe

This book presents Ulrich Beck, one of the world’s leading sociologists and social thinkers, as a Pioneer in Cosmopolitan Sociology and Risk Society. His world risk society theory has been confirmed by recent disasters – events that have shaken modern society to the core, signaling the end of an era in which comprehensive insurance could keep us safe. Due to its own successes, modern society now faces failure: while in the past experiments were conducted in a lab, now the whole world is a test bed. Whether nuclear plants, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology – if any of these experiments went wrong, the consequences would have a global impact and would be irreversible. Beck recommends ignoring the mathematical morality of expert opinions, which seek to identify the level of a given risk by calculating the probability of its occurrence. Instead, man’s fear of collapse should offer an opportunity for international cooperation and a cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences.

Pioneer in Cosmopolitan Sociology and Risk Society

Twenty years ago Ulrich Beck published Risk Society, a book that called our attention to the dangers of environmental catastrophes and changed the way we think about contemporary societies. During the last two decades, the dangers highlighted by Beck have taken on new forms and assumed ever greater significance. Terrorism has shifted to a global arena, financial crises have produced worldwide consequences that are difficult to control and politicians have been forced to accept that climate change is not idle speculation. In short, we have come to see that today we live in a world at risk. A new feature of our world risk society is that risk is produced for political gain. This political use of risk means that fear creeps into modern life. A need for security encroaches on our liberty and our view of equality. However, Beck is anything but an alarmist and believes that the anticipation of catastrophe can fundamentally change global politics. We have the opportunity today to reconfigure power in terms of what Beck calls a 'cosmopolitan material politics’. World at Risk is a timely and far-reaching analysis of the structural dynamics of the modern world, the global nature of risk and the future of global politics by one of the most original and exciting social thinkers writing today.

World at Risk

This major new book draws together key essays by one of Europe's leading social and political theorists.

World Risk Society

»Arm an geschichtlichen Katastrophen war dieses Jahrhundert wahrlich nicht: zwei Weltkriege, Auschwitz, Nagasaki, dann Harrisburg und Bhopal, nun Tschernobyl. Das zwingt zur Behutsamkeit der Wortwahl und schärft den Blick für die historischen Besonderheiten. Alles Leid, alle Not, alle Gewalt, die Menschen Menschen zugefügt haben, kannt bisher nur die Kategorien der ›anderen‹ - Juden, Schwarze, Frauen, Asylanten, Dissidenten, Kommunisten usw.«

Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne

Risikogesellschaft

This is a brilliant study of the nature of love in modern society. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim argue that the nature of love is changing fundamentally, creating opportunities for democracy or chaos in personal life.

The Normal Chaos of Love

In this important book, Ulrich Beck - one of the leading social thinkers in Europe today - examines how work has become unstable in the modern world and presents a new vision for the future. Beck begins by describing how the traditional work society, with its life-long job paths, is giving way to a much less stable world in which skills can be suddenly devalued, jobs obliterated, welfare cover reduced or eliminated. The West would appear to be heading towards a social structure of ambiguity and multiple activity that has hitherto been more characteristic of the developing world. But what appears to be the end of traditional working practices can also be seen as an opportunity to develop new ideas and models for work in the twenty-first century. Beck's alternative vision is centred on the concept of active citizens democratically organized in local, and increasingly also regional or transnational, networks. Against the threat of social exclusion, everyone can and must have a right to be included in a new definition and distribution of work. This will involve constant movement between formal employment (with a major reduction in working hours) and forms of self-organized artistic, cultural and political 'civil labour', providing equal access to comprehensive social protection. The aim must be to turn insecurity around, so that it becomes a positive and enriching discontinuity of life. Drawing on his earlier work on risk and reflexive modernization, The Brave New World of Work is also closely linked to his studies on globalization and individualization. These processes are part of the same challenge upon which a politics of modernity must now base itself. Not only the future of work, but also the very survival of democracy and the welfare state will depend on the development of a newly committed and 'multi-active' transnational citizenship. This book will be of great interest to second- and third-year students in sociology, politics, geography and the social sciences generally. It will also appeal to a broader audience interested in the issues and debates surrounding the changing nature of work.

Brave New World of Work

Modernização reflexiva

Nesta obra que se viria a tornar um clássico da sociologia contemporânea, Ulrich Beck chama a nossa atenção para uma série de perigos, tanto naturais como da lavra do Homem, que gradualmente foram moldando a nossa perceção das sociedades contemporâneas. Nos 20 anos que passaram desde a primeira edição da obra, o terrorismo tornou-se global, as crises financeiras, e em especial a de 2008, geraram consequências que escapam ao controlo dos políticos e as alterações climáticas tornaram-se um assunto na ordem do dia. Em suma, passámos a perceber que vivemos numa sociedade de risco. Todavia, há uma outra dimensão desta sociedade, a do risco que é gerado com intuitos políticos, que se insinua no quotidiano da vida moderna e que tem a sua manifestação mais visível da necessidade de segurança, necessidade essa que por vezes colide com a nossa liberdade. No entanto, a perspetiva do autor não é alarmista: Ulrich Beck acredita que a previsão da catástrofe pode mudar a política global e que temos, hoje, a oportunidade de reconfigurar o poder daquilo a que o autor chama «política material cosmopolita». A Sociedade do Risco é uma análise oportuna e abrangente da dinâmica estrutural do mundo moderno, da natureza global do risco e do futuro da política global.

Sociedade de Risco Mundial - Em Busca da Segurança Perdida

A ideia central do livro é a de que vivemos num momento de ruptura no interior da própria modernidade - ruptura semelhante àquela que a modernização acarretou para as práticas feudais, provocando o surgimento da civilização industrial. Já a presente ruptura não implica o fim, mas antes uma reconfiguração da sociedade moderna, que assume novos contornos e se transforma no que o autor denomina 'sociedade (industrial) de risco'. O advento dessa nova modernidade opera mudanças radicais na política, na economia e no comportamento, na medida em que a produção social de riquezas se faz acompanhar, cada vez mais, de uma produção social de riscos - da instabilidade dos mercados às catástrofes ambientais e ao terrorismo.

rumo a uma outra modernidade

Sociedade de risco

Rainer Winter

Natan Sznaider

Many contemporary issues cannot be readily or fully understood at the level of the nation state and the concept of globalization is used to develop understanding through the analysis of global (transnational) processes. This volume explores the phenomenon of Americanization, and its worldwide impact, and the cultural consequences of globalization.

The Cultural Consequences of Globalization

Global America?

Este libro aborda con detenimiento y claridad el arduo y problemático tema de la globalización: su polivalencia, su ambigüedad y sus dimensiones (raras veces diferenciadas). Así, pretende descubrir trampas mentales y enseñar a eludirlas, pero sobre todo abrir el horizonte a respuestas políticas respecto al tema en cuestión. En el fondo de todo, sin embargo, late esta doble pregunta, a la vez sencillísima y de una gran complejidad: ¿qué es la globalización? y ¿cómo configurarla políticamente? Así, a la sombra de este ensayo han surgido dos tendencias críticas en las que se documentan y presentan diversos hilos temáticos, experiencias y controversias sobre la globalización, con la ayuda de textos clásicos y recientes: por un lado, la política de la globalización; por otro, las perspectivas de la sociedad mundial: sus controversias, conflictos y paradojas. Pero los motivos de fondo, en fin, continúan siendo los mismos: la pérdida de la soberanía del Estado nacional entre la economía mundial y la individualización, el shock de la globalización como debate eternamente aplazado, la apertura del horizonte mundial hacia la sociología de la globalización, el surgimiento de una visión cosmopolita en la sociedad civil transnacional, los interrogantes sobre nuevas perspectivas conjuntas en torno a la sociedad mundial... Toda una serie de cuestiones que la obra de Beck ayuda a aclarar y dilucidar con un estilo ameno y sencillo que en ningún momento excluye la seriedad y el rigor.

falacias del globalismo, respuestas a la globalización

¿Qué es la globalización?

Religion posits one characteristic as an absolute: faith. Compared to faith, all other social distinctions and sources of conflict are insignificant. The New Testament says: ‘We are all equal in the sight of God'. To be sure, this equality applies only to those who acknowledge God's existence. What this means is that alongside the abolition of class and nation within the community of believers, religion introduces a new fundamental distinction into the world the distinction between the right kind of believers and the wrong kind. Thus overtly or tacitly, religion brings with it the demonization of believers in other faiths. The central question that will decide the continued existence of humanity is this: How can we conceive of a type of inter-religious tolerance in which loving one's neighbor does not imply war to the death, a type of tolerance whose goal is not truth but peace? Is what we are experiencing at present a regression of monotheistic religion to a polytheism of the religious spirit under the heading of ‘a God of one's own'? In Western societies, where the autonomy of the individual has been internalized, individual human beings tend to feel increasingly at liberty to tell themselves little faith stories that fit their own lives to appoint ‘Gods of their own'. However, this God of their own is no longer the one and only God who presides over salvation by seizing control of history and empowering his followers to be intolerant and use naked force.

Religion's Capacity for Peace and Potential for Violence

A God of One's Own

Ada Cinato

Il normale caos dell'amore

Individualization argues that we are in the midst of a fundamental change in the nature of society and politics. This change hinges around two processes: globalization and individualization. The book demonstrates that individualization is a structural characteristic of highly differentiated societies, and does not imperil social cohesion, but actually makes it possible. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim argue that it is vital to distinguish between the neo-liberal idea of the free-market individual and the concept of individualization. The result is the most complete discussion of individualization currently available, showing how individualization relates to basic social rights and also paid employment; and concluding that in

Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences

Individualization

Risk Toplumu / Başka Bir Modernliğe Doğru

Se le persone sono uguali per natura, allora la disuguaglianza sociale è soggetta al cambiamento e i privilegiati di oggi possono essere gli emarginati di domani. «La percezione della disuguaglianza sociale nella vita quotidiana, nella politica e nella ricerca si basa su una visione generale che pone confini al contempo territoriali, politici, economici, sociali e culturali. In realtà, però, il mondo è sempre più interconnesso. I confini territoriali, statali, economici, sociali e culturali continuano a sussistere, ma non coesistono più. Questo aumento di intrecci e interazioni al di là delle frontiere nazionali, impone la rimisurazione della disuguaglianza sociale».

Ulrich Beck

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