Beck World at Risk

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7456-8162-7
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten, E-Book

Twenty years ago Ulrich Beck published Risk Society, a bookthat called our attention to the dangers of environmentalcatastrophes and changed the way we think about contemporarysocieties. During the last two decades, the dangers highlighted byBeck have taken on new forms and assumed ever greater significance.Terrorism has shifted to a global arena, financial crises haveproduced worldwide consequences that are difficult to control andpoliticians have been forced to accept that climate change is notidle speculation. In short, we have come to see that today we livein a world at risk.
A new feature of our world risk society is that risk is producedfor political gain. This political use of risk means that fearcreeps into modern life. A need for security encroaches on ourliberty and our view of equality.
However, Beck is anything but an alarmist and believes that theanticipation of catastrophe can fundamentally change globalpolitics. We have the opportunity today to reconfigure power interms of what Beck calls a 'cosmopolitan materialpolitics'.
World at Risk is a timely and far-reaching analysis ofthe structural dynamics of the modern world, the global nature ofrisk and the future of global politics by one of the most originaland exciting social thinkers writing today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Beck, Ulrich

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction: Staging Global Risk 1
2 Relations of Defi nition as Relations of Domination: Who Decides What is and is Not a Risk? 24
3 The 'Cosmopolitan Moment' of World Risk Society or: Enforced Enlightenment 47
4 Clash of Risk Cultures or: The Overlapping of the State of Normalcy and the State of Exception 67
5 Global Public Sphere and Global Subpolitics or: How Real is Catastrophic Climate Change? 81
6 The Provident State or: On the Antiquatedness of Linear Pessimism Concerning Progress 109
7 Knowledge or Non-Knowing? Two Perspectives of 'Reflexive Modernization' 115
8 The Insurance Principle: Criticism and Counter-Criticism 129
9 Felt War, Felt Peace: Staging Violence 140
10 Global Inequality, Local Vulnerability: The Conflict Dynamics of Environmental Hazards Must be Studied within the Framework of Methodological Cosmopolitanism 160
11 Critical Theory of World Risk Society 187
12 Dialectics of Modernity: How the Crises of Modernity Follow from the Triumphs of Modernity 212
Notes 235
References and Bibliography 243
Index 261

Über Autor(innen)

Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich.