Abstract
Ulrich Beck fundamentally transformed our way of thinking about human interdependence through his three core theses on risk, individualisation and cosmopolitanisation. However, two commonly observed deficiencies in Beck’s grand theory were its Eurocentric orientation and a lack of empirical grounding. Based on 5 focus groups and 14 interviews with participants of the emerging Clean Food Movement in China, this paper extends the Beckian discussion outside Europe. Through examining how individuals understand both ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ risks associated with contemporary food consumption, this paper demonstrates that in the face of unpredictable and incalculable harms, risks are not seen as a ‘thing’, but are translated into ‘causal relations’. Subsequently, for Chinese stakeholders, the best way to safeguard food risks is to enact more visible and functioning interdependent relations in the food system. This in turn has given rise to new forms of communities which cut across conventional geographic, socio-economic and political boundaries. The paper deepens a Beckian theorisation in two ways. First, it demonstrates that the ‘enabling’ effect of risk towards a cosmopolitan society is not limited to obvious global crises, such as climate catastrophes and financial meltdown. In fact, the mundane yet intimate concern of putting ‘good’ food in one’s dinner bowl already presses actors to form new social solidarities that are cosmopolitan in nature. Second, it goes beyond Beck’s assertion that the risk society has culminated in a cosmopolitan moment, and explores how a performative cosmopolitan community reshapes the ‘relations of definition’ to mitigate risks on the ground.
Highlights
The idea for this paper came at a lunch hour during my ieldwork on China’s ‘Good Food Movement’
I was studying a network of civic initiatives in major Chinese cities to combat food risks embedded in the modern food system
For activists and the general public involved in the Good Food Movement, their objective in engaging with various transnational food movements, seeking diverse agricultural experts and communicating with local and regional producers is a simple one: to put safe ingredients in one’s dining bowls
Summary
Beck was arguably one of the most proliic social theorists in recent times In his ambition to develop a grand theory for the Second Modernity, he published widely on the side efects of a globalised industrial society, drawing on examples from a wide range of contemporary concerns such as work, marriage, religion, global inancial crisis and climate change. Instead of examining cosmopolitan risk society as it is, theorisation becomes an exercise of logical patch works of the‘both/and’, which acknowledges rather than explains the conlicting nature of reality This efectively traps Beck’s ambition of developing a new sociology for the Second Modernity ‘in a ‘laminated’ world of the ‘multi-layered’’, which captures the inal aggregated efect layered by a myriad of social milieus but fails to unfold the dynamic within new social space (Zhang 2015). As the following sections demonstrate, these amount to what I call the Good Food Movement which has efectively cultivated the becoming of a cosmopolitan risk community
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
