World Risk Society Research Articles

From ‘the Bads of Goods’ to ‘the Goods of Bads’: The Most Recent Developments in Ulrich Beck’s Cosmopolitan Sociology

The article critically assesses Ulrich Beck’s body of work and its importance for contemporary sociology. It demonstrates that Beck’s elaboration of his original theory of the ‘risk society’ into a theory of the ‘world risk society’, ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘metamorphosis’ involved several key theoretical innovations. Firstly, Beck adjusted his notion of risk to include the threat of international terrorism in his diagnosis of the (world) risk society. Secondly, he introduced a distinction between (normative) ‘cosmopolitanism’ and (real existing) ‘cosmopolitization’ in order to capture the specificity of contemporary social change. Thirdly and most recently, Beck outlined a theory of ‘the metamorphosis of the world’ which marks an important shift of emphasis from ‘the negative side effects of goods’ to ‘the positive side effects of bads’. In conclusion, the article identifies a number of theoretical ambiguities and unresolved questions in Beck’s theory.

O INSTITUTO DA LEGÍTIMA DEFESA INTERNACIONAL

The White House legal approach to the War on Terror has been one of the most discussed and least understood topics of international law according to legal counselors of the American government themselves. Despite several speeches and official notes on the subject, the issue remains complex because it involves constitutional rights, human rights and national security. This paper analyzes the War on Terror focusing specifically on the self-defense institute in the world risk society. This means that in order to understand how terrorism is threatening the international order, it is necessary to verify the conceptual changes that determine the self-defense institute and the results of this mutation.

Risk management in the digital constellation – a constitutional perspective (part II)

The digital revolution is creating new risks, together with multiple opportunities for communication, commerce and political participation. What Ulrich Beck described as the world risk society and what – from another perspective – Jürgen Habermas calls the “postnational constellation” is a challenge to our concepts of society and democracy. Digitisation is pushing this development towards a new dimension that allows us to speak of the “digital constellation”. Social relations are denser across borders and continents; what happens there matters here, as if it were happening on our own doorstep. New kinds of risks are arising as a side-effect of the increasing use of information technologies, while the internet also offers – for the first time – an infrastructure that makes formerly unrealistic concepts of cosmopolitan democracy (David Held) a real option. This includes the establishment of a constitutional framework for normative processes aiming at managing effectively, among other global challenges, cyber-risks at national, supra-national and global levels in a coherent way. Multilevel Constitutionalism is proposed as a means of providing a normative theory for conceptualising the constitutional structure of a layered system of governance that ensures a maximum degree of self-determination for the individual and, thus, for the democratic legitimacy of decisions made at each level, from local to global. Thus, the constitution for democratically legitimate action at the global level does not question democracy at other levels, but should be complementary, based upon functioning states, and designed to deal with issues that are beyond their reach, including cybersecurity.

“World Risk Society” Governance: The Paradigm of Complexity and Chinese Participation

全球正在进入具有高度不确定性的”风险社会”时代，风险成为现代社会的重要 特征，并正在改变现代社会的运行逻辑与规则，人类社会的价值理念、行为方式正在 被系统化地重构，全球治理演变为”全球风险社会”治理。当前，全球风险治理的碎 片化、低效率现象严重，现有公共管理、国际治理方式还不能适应风险社会治理的要 求。现代社会是一个具有内生复杂性、测不准性、脆弱性等特征的复杂系统，复杂性 是全球风险社会形成的根本机理，全球风险社会治理离不开复杂性范式与中国参与。 系统研究全球风险社会形成的复杂性机制，构建面向全球风险社会治理的价值、文化 与机制，形成辨识、化解风险的协同治理及反脆弱能力，在理论和实践上具有重要的 价值。

Risk management in the digital constellation - a constitutional perspective (part I)

The digital revolution is creating new risks, together with multiple opportunities for communication, commerce and political participation. What Ulrich Beck described as the world risk society and – from another perspective – Jürgen Habermas calls the “postnational constellation” is a challenge to our concepts of society and democracy. Digitisation is pushing this development towards a new dimension that allows us to speak of the “digital constellation”. Social relations are denser across borders and continents; what happens there matters here, as if it were happening on our own doorstep. New kinds of risks are arising as a side-effect of the increasing use of information technologies, while the internet also offers – for the first time – an infrastructure that makes formerly unrealistic concepts of cosmopolitan democracy (David Held) a real option. This includes the establishment of a constitutional framework for normative processes aiming at, among other global challenges, effectively managing cyber-risks at national, supra-national and global levels in a coherent way. Multilevel Constitutionalism is proposed as a means of providing a normative theory for conceptualising the constitutional structure of a layered system of governance that ensures a maximum degree of self-determination for the individual and, thus, for the democratic legitimacy of decisions made at each level, from local to global. Thus, the constitution for democratically legitimate action at the global level does not question democracy at other levels, but should be complementary, based upon functioning states, and designed to deal with issues that are beyond their reach, including cyber-security.

World risk society. Environmental risks: a driving force for cosmopolitanism

Risk society today means world risk society. Its essential features are man-made risks, which have no social, space or time limits. World risk society identifies three main global risks: transnational terrorism, financial hazards and environmental risks. Environmental issues in this framework cannot be seen as problems in the environment of society, but they have to be considered as inner world problems of society itself. The interpretational framework of world risk society can be subdivided into three levels: first, global threats cause global commonalities; the contours of a world public are emerging. Secondly, the perception of global self-hazards releases a politically tailored impulse for the revitalisation of national policy as well as for the training and design of cooperative international institutions. Thirdly, the delimitation of the political has to be researched: the perceived needs of world risk society give way to a world civil society. Henceforth, in world risk society environmental hazards can be interpreted as a driving force for cosmopolitanism, global environmental risks and their practical and discursive treatment create transnational communities.

World risk society. Environmental risks: a driving force for cosmopolitanism

World risk society. Environmental risks: a driving force for cosmopolitanism

The politics of urban climate risks: theoretical and empirical lessons from Ulrich Beck’s methodological cosmopolitanism

In the face of global climate risks, world cities increasingly figure in academic and policy discourse as strategic spaces for harnessing the expertise and governance capacity needed to steer societies toward more sustainable and low-carbon futures. This article reviews existing approaches to the study of urban climate politics, by way of asking what contribution Ulrich Beck’s theory of world risk society – and principles of methodological cosmopolitanism – make to such epochal conversations? Three main analytical frameworks stand out: low-carbon transition literature highlight generic processes of socio-technical ‘greening’ of urban infrastructures; urban policy mobility work documents growing intercity networks around climate and sustainability; and actor–network theory-informed takes on urban controversies engage the localized politics of specific city-based ‘riskscapes’. While each framework makes valuable contributions, this article suggests that all of them remain under-theorized from the point of view of the specific dynamics of local–global interdependencies in urban climate risk politics. In response, the article draws on Beck in outlining the contours of new urban–cosmopolitan risk communities. To this effect, empirical studies into large-scale East Asian and European port cities is used to illustrate how a shared transnational risk imaginary (e.g. of future sea-level rises) may help spur collective action and new forms of trans-boundary solidarity. Reflecting on such research practices, the article ends by pointing to the need for reworking methods of (multi-sited) ethnography and comparison as central parts of realizing Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology in the domain of urban climate risks.

Australian museums in the ‘age of risk’: a case study

ABSTRACTBalancing the needs and demands of audiences, sponsors and shareholders and making wise curatorial decisions concerning the politics of display in an increasingly risk averse society, are dilemmas many contemporary museums are experiencing. This article utilizes a case study comparing curatorial approaches to ‘risk management’ at two Australian museums (Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney, and Museum of Old and New Art Tasmania), in regard to contentious and ‘difficult’ topics. Based on empirical data, analysis will consider the role museums play as agents of social change in respect to counteracting prejudices and promoting appreciation of cultural differences through exhbitionary displays. Against the backdrop of the ‘culture wars’ and impact of media reporting, the writings of Ulrich Beck inform discussions surrounding different perspectives of museum professionals and audiences and how displays in the art museum conform to or contradict Beck’s vision of ‘reflective’ modernity in an increasingly ‘world risk society.’

Postmodern warfare and the blurred boundaries between war and peace

ABSTRACTEach age has its own wars and its own forms of warfare. In today’s evolving world risk society warfare has entered a new development stage. The states of the “global North” adapt their forms of intervention. They increasingly practice postmodern warfare characterized especially by the role of influencing the information space, networked approaches, the incorporation of indirect and covert actions, and the special quality of new technologies. This practice furthers an increasing grey zone between limiting and de-bounding of warfare. The phenomenon of postmodern warfare raises some tough questions and offers a rich research agenda.

Geopolitan Democracy in the Anthropocene

The proposed new epoch of the Anthropocene, whereby humans have become the dominant geological force shaping Earth systems, has attracted considerable interest in the social sciences and humanities but only scant attention from democratic theorists. This inquiry draws out the democratic problems associated with the two opposing narratives on governing the Anthropocene – Earth systems governance and ecomodernism – and juxtaposes them with a more critical narrative that draws out the democratic potential of the Anthropocene as a new source of critique of liberal democracy and a new resource for democratic renewal. While Ulrich Beck welcomed reflexive cosmopolitan democracy (understood as a civil culture of responsibility across borders) as the appropriate response to the world risk society, this narrative develops an account of hyper-reflexive ‘geopolitan democracy’ based on a more radical extension of democratic horizons of space, time, community and agency as the appropriate response to navigating the Anthropocene.

A késő modernitás globalizációelmélete és a kockázattársadalmi identitás

Modernity is the sum of the fragmented cultural systems of meaning, that are mutually influentialon each other, plus of economic and political relations continually changing and transforming –a complexity that manifests itself in the structure of the (world) risk society even on the level ofthe individual. Following the late modern turn, the phenomenon of the means and opportunitiesdetermining the ability of choice is not being shared equally, but multiplied as regards globalactors, as well as choice of identity, perceptibility of risks and facing them. The study presentsthe new inequality factors and the asymmetric power relations of the late modernity along theworks by the recently died sociologists of the globalization theory (Ulrich Beck and ZygmuntBauman). In the world risk society, each community and individual bear the risks indifferently.Accordingly, the ascertainments of the study are that the globalised economy and the subjectsof the local poverty do not possess the same degree of the freedom of maneuvering. In orderto demonstrate this and also to identify each postmodern life-strategy, the study relies on theworks on identity by the discussed sociologists. According to the latter, the study concludes, thatthe reflexivity of the risk is the most profitable for those who are in the high position of the newinequality, thus, have the power to determine conflicts generated by them and inflict them onthose excluded from the struggle of definition of risk.

Travelling risks: How did nanotechnology become a risk in India and South Africa?

India and South Africa have invested in nanotechnology since the early 2000s and have identified risks to human health and the environment as an important issue for governance. This is exemplary for a wider trend in which ‘developing countries’ play an increasingly prominent role in the development, production and use of emerging technologies. This validates the claim of the world risk society thesis that countries around the world are now confronted with the risks of emerging technologies. Little is known, however, about the way developing countries deal with the potential risks of emerging technologies. Starting from the observation that the risk colonization of nanotechnology in developing countries cannot be taken for granted, this article draws upon the relational theory of risk in order to investigate how nanotechnology became understood as an object of risk in South Africa and India. The article shows that nanotechnology was constituted as an object of risk in rather different ways in India and South Africa, demonstrating that the spread of risk discourses – and the emergence of a world risk society – cannot be understood without attending to the local context. The article shows that way risk is understood and dealt with changes as risk discourses travel around the world, giving many different faces to the world risk society.

Scoping endangered futures: rethinking the political aesthetics of climate change in world risk society

In this article, I engage a key claim of Ulrich Beck’s theorizing of global risks, to the effect that socio-political collectivities are currently being re-imagined through the anticipation of endangered long-term futures. Such dynamics of temporal reordering are visible, the article shows, in the imaginative politics of climatic projections. To rethink the resultant political aesthetics of climate change, the article maps out the visual, experiential, and affective forms in which endangered climatic futures come to saturate public culture. Such encounters, the article suggests, constitute inter-media events, drawing on scientific, artistic, and mass media registers, and embodied in what Karin Knorr Cetina call scoping devices of information and visualization, involving particular ‘fateful’ time transactions. These conceptual suggestions are illustrated and elaborated by drawing on auto-ethnographic observations during a particular event of intense futurity, that of the international COP15 climate change conference held in Copenhagen during December of 2009.

Animal detectives and ‘Anthropocene noir’ in Chloe Hooper’s A Child’s Book of True Crime

ABSTRACTIn a recent lecture, Deborah Bird Rose posited the emergence of ‘Anthropocene noir’, a reality in which ‘we, human beings, are all criminals, all detectives, and all victims’. In the Anthropocene there is no single body, culprit, scene or event which definitively identifies the ‘crime’ of the current extinction crisis. Delocalised in its causes, incalculable and potentially irredeemable in its effects, this crisis is a compelling example of what Ulrich Beck calls global risks, anticipated catastrophes which cannot be delimited spatially, temporally or socially. Via a reading of Chloe Hooper’s novel A Child’s Book of True Crime as an instance of ironic crime fiction which characterises ecological crimes as at the same time incalculable and urgently in need of recognition, this article will what sort of crime fiction can account for the nature of ecological transgression and its detection in Beck’s world risk society, in which the time and scene of the crime cannot be limited to a particular moment or location.

Cosmopolitanizing Catastrophism: Remembering the Future

Ulrich Beck’s quest to unshackle the social sciences from their methodological nationalism has yielded numerous influential concepts. In his last work he theorized the transformation of a globally connected world through the notion of ‘metamorphosis’ understood as a form of radical (paradigmatic) change. This transfiguration is driven by different perceptions of catastrophism, carrying the potential to re-shape world risk society. In this essay I critically assess what Beck refers to as ‘emancipatory catastrophism’. I suggest substituting emancipatory with cosmopolitan catastrophism. Cosmopolitan catastrophism seeks to adjoin an event-centered approach with a relational understanding of world risk society. By emphasizing cosmopolitan trajectories we avoid the linear fallacies plaguing earlier theories of modernity. Beck’s iterative approach provides us with a heuristic tool, which addresses the ongoing interplay of universal scripts and local appropriations in the context of contingencies and uncertainties. Previously seen as residual, catastrophism becomes the center of our analytic efforts.

Science in the World Risk Society: Risk, the Novel, and Global Climate Change

Abstract Anthropogenic climate change constitutes one of the major global risks of our time. In spite of widespread scientific consensus, however, climate change discourse is still characterized by controversy. This controversy reflects both a variety of conflicting interests that frame the perception of climate change and a fundamental trend in our age of reflexive modernity: an increased awareness of scientific uncertainty and a loss of trust in scientific authority. It also defines our current cultural moment as paradoxical: societies worldwide are simultaneously characterized by such increased awareness of scientific uncertainty and by reliance on scientific knowledge to a historically unprecedented degree. According to Ulrich Beck, this paradox in part defines what he conceived of as a new manifestation of modern society, the ‘world risk society.’ This essay addresses the fictional contribution to the risk discourse of global climate change. After introducing the role of science in the world risk society and the climate change novel as a fictional risk narrative, it discusses how Susan M. Gaines’ Carbon Dreams (2001) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012) engage with this paradox, how they explore the complex socioeconomic, political, and cultural significance of climate science and the role and experience of climate scientists.

Dissonance and decision-making mistakes in the age of risk

ABSTRACTScholars of public and foreign policy have emphasized the role of decision processes in the creation of policy failures and fiascos and have demonstrated the importance that psychological factors play in policy mistakes. Using Ulrich Beck's notion of world risk society and drawing on advances in our understanding of a key psychological factor central to decision-making pathologies – cognitive dissonance – this contribution explores the ways in which features of the risk era could alter important decision dynamics and increase decision-making mistakes. In combination with the catastrophic potential of world risk society, this would suggest an increase in the frequency of policy-making fiascos. Bridging the gap between the ‘macro’ conditions of globalization and the ‘micro’ processes of decision-making also challenges our conception of both the nature and sources of policy-making mistakes and suggests that our scholarly understanding of ‘decision-making mistakes’ may need rethinking.

Apuntes sobre las reflexiones teóricas de Ulrich Beck

In this article the author presents a general overview of the main theoretical proposals that Ulrich Beck has developed throughout his work. In particular, it highlights the way in which the notion of the world risk society is the linchpin of the issues developed in his reflections on the present and the future of society.

World port cities as cosmopolitan risk community: Mapping urban climate policy experiments in Europe and East Asia

Extending Ulrich Beck's theory of world risk society, this article traces the emergence of a cosmopolitan risk community of world port cities in Europe and East Asia, constituted around shared imaginations of the global risks and opportunities of climate change. Such urban risk imaginations are shaped and circulated, we argue, within transnational assemblages of local government networks, international organizations, multinational insurance companies and transnational non-governmental organizations. Adopting the methodology of mapping urban climate experiments, we then document one policy indication of this cosmopolitan risk community, in terms of the timing, intensity, priorities and modes of government manifested in the climate policy engagements of 16 major world port cities across the regions of Europe and East Asia. The substantial similarities in such policy engagements, we conclude, amount to a new urban–cosmopolitan realism, reshaping urban politics in the face of climate change.