Bio: (1944-2015) German sociologist. Ulrich Beck taught at the universities of Münster and Bamberg and from 1992 until his death, he was a professor of sociology and director of the Institute for Sociology at the University of Munich.

                                           Risk Society

Beck is best known for promoting the idea of ​​a "risk society", which he began to develop in the mid-1980s in his book Risk Society (1986). He is a proponent of the thesis that there is a key social change, the old patterns of industrial society are dying out, and a new, risky society is rising. Compared to earlier times, when people were unaware of the environmental dangers caused by industrial development, there is a change in attitudes and patterns of behavior in a risky society. People are paying more and more attention to environmental hazards, especially chemical and nuclear pollution, as well as to genetic engineering. The changed social situation requires the rejection of earlier sociological concepts, such as: social classes, households, gender roles, and national state. Instead of these old concepts, it is necessary to introduce new sociological concepts to better explain the changed social reality. The new age of risk brought with it new forms of work, as well as new family patterns; it is a world in which individuals must constantly question their own identity, cultural meanings, and social affiliation. This new "risk awareness" is conditioned by the processes of individuation and reflective modernization. In the book, Beck advocates a radical form of modernity shaped by environmental enlightenment.

                                      Reflexive Modernization

Beck later developed his approach to modernization, which he called "Reflexive Modernization," which he developed in the book Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (1994) and "Reflective Modernization Theory: Problems, Hypotheses, and Research Plan" (2003). Reflexive modernization contains three complexes: 1) the risk society theorem; 2) the theorem of forced individualization; and 3) the theorem of multidimensional globalization (cosmopolitanization). Reflective modernity theory encompasses all three theoretical complexes - risk society, individualization, and cosmopolitanization - as interconnected and mutually reinforcing processes that create radicalized forms of modernization dynamics, and that replace the logic of development in early modernity. The logic of unambiguity, from the first modernity, is replaced by the logic of ambiguity, nonlinearity, and uncertainty, in the age of reflective modernity.

The transformation of early modernity into reflective modernity (Beck also calls it a “target of change”) is the product of a radical application of key principles of industrial society, but more as a critical mass of unintended and unexpected consequences of those principles than as an expected and planned consequence of industrialization and the logic of early modernity. Changes are taking place in many fields: the nature of capitalism is changing, new forms of work are emerging (labor flexibility), a new global order, a new nature of the state (declining power of the nation-state and welfare state), a new society, the declining importance of traditional institutions; as well as the transformation of gender roles (alternative sexual and gender identities, the disintegration of the gender division of labor), new forms of family life, new forms of individualization and everyday life. Institutional individualization requires making individual decisions and taking responsibility for those decisions, where traditions and habits were previously dominant. Instead of a single identity, reflective modernization promotes the multiplicity of identities. On a broader level, there is a loss of differences between nature and culture, knowledge and superstition, between experts and lay people.

                                      World Risk Society

In his book World Risk Society (1998), Beck applies the idea of ​​the risk society to the analysis of the globalized world at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Beck believes that insecurity and endangerment have always been a part of human existence, but with the progress of civilization, which led to industrialization and modernization, a completely new "semantics of risk" emerged. This semantics of risk concerns new forms of uncertainty that must be addressed by deliberation and calculation of the probability of different outcomes; therefore, from the current thematization of future threats.

The emergence of new forms of risk - environmental, financial, etc. - is not the product of the defeat of modernity, but its victories. Industrialization was so successful that it destroyed the climate; the rise of global financial flows has shattered national and supranational control over those flows. New forms of risk are not only global, they affect all structures of society, both rich and poor. Since global risks do not manifest themselves, nor can they be resolved, at the level of any individual state, these risks cease to be an internal matter of states, but a "global risk society" emerges. In the new age, science can no longer minimize risks, but can only clarify awareness of them. Nowadays, the value of security replaces the values ​​of freedom and equality, as the most important value. This is best reflected in the measures introduced by the states, because, under the guise of seemingly rational defenses against danger, they monitor, scan, interrogate and control all citizens, thus creating an "economy of fear".

Beck singles out three most important types of global risks, each of which has its own "logic": 1) environmental crises; 2) global financial risks; and 3) planetary terrorism. Reflexive uncertainties and cosmopolitanization have led to several meta-changes: 1) transformation of the basis of social life and work in all areas and at all levels (local, national, global) due to staging, experiences, and conflicts of world risk; 2) new forms of dealing with global risk, primarily in the form of new institutions, new organizational patterns and new forms of risk internalization; 3) general cultural change in various fields - understanding the relationship between nature and society, social rationality, freedom, democracy, legitimacy, individualism, etc. .; 4) the emergence of a new "planetary ethics of responsibility". Individuals and groups that society defines as “at risk” are viewed as impersonal, their human rights are compromised, and they are excluded and stigmatized.

New forms of perception and communication of risk in the public sphere shape the social production and construction of reality, so that risk, at the same time, becomes the cause and medium of social transformation. The construction of reality, in the age of world risk, requires the creation of new forms of classification, interpretation, staging, and organization of everyday life. Risk cannot be seen from the perspective of Weberian rationality. The impossibility of rationalizing the uncertainty of risk opens the space for the ambiguity and interconnectedness of the world risk society because all states, groups, and individuals are at the same time the cause and the result of the position of all humanity.

                                     View on Globalization

The most important book for Beck's understanding of globalization is Power in the Global Age (2005, in German 2002). The basic assumption of Beck's view of globalization is that at the end of the twentieth century there was a key political transformation because the distinction between national and international in world domestic politics was abolished. Such a transformation creates a new world domestic policy in which the "open ended meta game of power" has become dominant. While in earlier times the best approach to the analysis of national and global politics was political realism, in the new age, that approach should be replaced by a completely new analytical approach - cosmopolitan realism. Cosmopolitan realism represents the "new economy of world politics" and combines the study of strategic power within the transnational economy, with the study of how the state and its institutions can respond to the challenges and problems posed by the development of the global economy and modernization.

Globalization leads to the demise of the importance of the nation state and its policies, as well as the national economy because key political and economic events take place at the transnational level. Under global capitalism, the consumer has also become global because his behavior, which includes protests, is global. In the meta-game, there is an asymmetry in the power of the strategic ability of capital in relation to states and global civil society. The strategic power of capital does not arise from its unified performance but is the product of uncoordinated actions of a large number of individual companies, financial institutions, and international organizations (IMF, World Bank, WTO). Although these entities do not act in a coordinated manner, they all exert pressure on individual states and thus weaken the power of the nation-state.

In addition to the cosmopolitanism of states, Beck singles out false cosmopolitanism, which is evident when individual states act internationally to implement their national-hegemonic plans. The goal of strategies of global capital is the merging of the capital with the state, which is necessary in order to turn the state into a neoliberal state. The ultimate goal is the instrumentalization of the neoliberal state to maximize and legitimize the interests of capital on the level of the entire planet. In contrast, the global civil society aims to unite civil society and the state in a cosmopolitan state, to achieve a post-national and post-global order, in which radical and democratic globalization would be carried out under the legitimacy of global morality. One of the ways in which global capital reduces the power of states is the global flow of capital, investment, goods, and services between international corporations themselves. In this way, state control is avoided, because these factors of production cross borders without official evidence, customs clearance, and taxation; thus the revenues that the state could collect are reduced. About half of the world's trade is just such "non-trade" between corporations. 

                                             Meta-Power

The greatest bargaining power that transnational companies have in relations with individual countries is the threat of not investing money or withdrawing capital from the country, that is, the so-called "relocation option". Global capital thus changes the structure of power relations and leaves voters in democratic elections, parliament, courts, and the executive without real power. This meta-power is outside the categories of legal and illegal but already exists as "translegal" at the national and international levels. The translegality of the world's meta-power gives legitimacy to anti-globalization movements around the world, thus creating strange coalitions of different ideological movements and the growth of ethnic and religious fundamentalism.

All political parties, around the world and in all countries, increasingly resemble each other and their names serve only as facades for a single program shaped by neoliberal ideology. Global capital and neoliberalism lead to many negative consequences, locally but also globally: financial instability and crises; unemployment and automation; inequality and poverty; environmental disasters and risks; declining tax revenues; as well as the decline of democracy. Globalization has led to new planetary social inequalities. Poor countries, most often, become even poorer, while the rich get richer. Globalization and the inequalities it creates are linked to declining incomes, overexploitation of natural resources, and the weakening of democracy.

In the age of the meta-power of global capital, the state has not yet lost its function, it must be strong enough to implement liberalization, privatization, and deregulation; it must have a stable legal order to secure investments and privileges given to capital; it must have strong boundaries to prevent immigration. The power of the state to control (supervise and punish) the exploited and subjugated masses must be maximized, and, on the other hand, the power of the state to control the work and finances of corporations must be minimized. The more, on a global level, the national approach to global phenomena grows, that is, the more rivalries and enmities between states grow, the stronger the meta-power of capital and the weak potential for interstate cooperation and counter-power creation. Meta-power is guided by the slogan "divide and conquer".

                                       Cosmopolitan Realism

The rise of meta-power and the translegitimity of global capital and the decline of legitimacy and the transformation of state power and priorities have enabled a wide range of civil society movements and organizations to prove themselves as legitimate forces of change and pressure both locally and globally. These movements can be aimed at achieving various goals: environmental protection, gender equality, protection of human rights, protection of consumer rights, etc. What all these movements have in common is that they have neither political nor economic power, and the very basis of legitimacy for action derives from the independent proclamation of oneself as a fighter for certain goals. These movements and organizations employ three types of public strategies: 1) risk dramaturgy strategies; 2) democratization strategies; 3) cosmopolitanization strategies and the establishment of a global public.

The basis of Beck's sociological approach to globalization is cosmopolitan realism, which is based on the principle that political action and political science need cosmopolitan concepts and views. Cosmopolitan realism is based on several basic principles: 1) transnational frame of reference; 2) global interdependencies and causality; 3) interference of national and global crises and inequalities; 4) critique of the national approach; 5) cosmopolitan theory of meta-power. The main goal of cosmopolitan realism is to explore the principles, prospects, dangers, and problems of legitimation of the cosmopolitan order.

Main works

Risikogesellschaft (1986);

Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (1988);

The Normal Chaos of Love (1990);

Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society (1991);

Die Erfindung des Politischen: Zu einer Theorie reflexiver Modernisierung (1993);

Reflexive Modernization (1994);

Democracy Without Enemies (1997);

World Risk Society (1997);

The Brave New World of Work (2000);

Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter: Neue weltpolitische Ökonomie (2002); 

Das kosmopolitische Europa (2004);

Cosmopolitan Vision (2006);

World at Risk (2009);

Das Deutsche Europa (2012);

An Introduction to the Theory of Second Modernity and the Risk Society (2012);

Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences (2014);

What Is Globalization? (2015);

The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World (2017).

Works translated into English:

Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1992, in German 1986);

Power in the Global Age (2005, in German 2002);

Cosmopolitan Europe (2007, in German 2004).