Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ulrich Beck (Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich)
Publisher:   John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Imprint:   Polity Press
Edition:   2nd ed.
Dimensions:   Width: 15.80cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   0.553kg
ISBN:  

9780745642000

ISBN 10:   0745642004
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   14 November 2008
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

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

Reviews

A fascinating examination of the risk society of the twenty-first century. Ulrich Beck details the new world order where terrorism and global climate change haunt our lives and engender some powerful new risks and new modes of politics. This book importantly draws together many of Beck's themes for examining the main lineaments of the new World at Risk. John Urry, University of Lancaster Beck deploys the concept of risk as a sharply focused flashlight that allows him to see what is typically obscured by dominant notions and explanations. This becomes a process of discovery, rare in the social sciences today, concerned as they are with proof. He brilliantly conceptualizes these discoveries in terms of categories not usually used in risk analysis, such as cosmopolitanism. A must-read book. Saskia Sassen, Columbia University

Author Information

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

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