World at RiskTwenty 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. |
Contents
Introduction Staging Global Risk | 1 |
Relations of Definition as Relations of Domination Who Decides What is and is Not a Risk? | 24 |
The Cosmopolitan Moment of World Risk Society or Enforced Enlightenment | 47 |
Clash of Risk Cultures or The Overlapping of the State of Normalcy and the State of Exception | 67 |
Global Public Sphere and Global Subpolitics or How Real is Catastrophic Climate Change? | 81 |
The Provident State or On the Antiquatedness of Linear Pessimism Concerning Progress | 109 |
Knowledge or NonKnowing? Two Perspectives of Reflexive Modernization | 115 |
The Insurance Principle Criticism and CounterCriticism | 129 |
Felt War Felt Peace Staging Violence | 140 |
Global Inequality Local Vulnerability The Conflict Dynamics of Environmental Hazards Must be Studied within the Framework of Methodological C... | 160 |
Critical Theory of World Risk Society | 187 |
Dialectics of Modernity How the Crises of Modernity Follow from the Triumphs of Modernity | 212 |
Notes | 235 |
| 243 | |
| 261 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action actors al-Qaeda anticipation avian flu basic institutions basic principles Beck become catastrophe chapter climate change concept concerning consequences context contradictions cosmopolitan countries crises critical critical theory cultural dangers decision-makers decisions destruction distinction dynamic ecological economic environmental example existence experience forms future genetic global public global risks global threats global warming governments Greenpeace Hannah Arendt hazards hence historical human Hurricane Katrina individual industrial society inequalities Iraq War knowledge logic Luhmann markets mass media Max Weber means methodological nationalism military modern society nation-state nature neoliberal non-knowing non-knowledge norms nuclear organized perspective political possible potential present presupposes problems production question radical realism reality reflexive modernization regions relations of definition responsibility result risk conflicts scientific self-endangerment sense side effects social movements sociology staging subpolitics symbolic terrorism terrorist attacks terrorist risk theory of world tion transformed transnational violence vulnerability world risk society