Ulrich Beck

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Ulrich Beck (disambiguation) .

Ulrich Beck (2012)

Ulrich Beck (born May 15, 1944 in Stolp ; † January 1, 2015 in Munich ) was a German sociologist. Beck became known far beyond the boundaries of the discipline with his book Risk Society , published in 1986 and translated into 35 languages . On the way to a different modern age . In it, he described, among other things, the “de-traditionalization of industrial-society lifestyles”, the “de-standardization of gainful employment” and the individualization of life situations and biographical patterns. Beck criticized sociological approaches that persisted in nation-state aspects and terminology. He saw the technical and economic advances in the industrial society - for example in the use of nuclear power - superimposed and called into question by unplanned side effects of supranational and sometimes global proportions. The points of reference in his theories were increasingly the manifestations and consequences of cross-border environmental problems and globalization .

Beck was Professor of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the FMSH ( Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme ) in Paris. In 2012, the European Research Council approved a project on “Methodological cosmopolitanism using the example of climate change ” for a period of five years. Ulrich Beck's research and theory formation was associated with a wide range of active political engagement. In connection with the consequences of the financial crisis from 2007 , which led to a sovereign debt crisis in the euro area , in 2012 he and the Green politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit drafted the manifesto “ We are Europe! ”, Which propagated a European Voluntary Year for all age groups with the aim of re-establishing Europe“ from below ”through active cooperation among its citizens.

Life

Beck (2011) on the blue sofa

Ulrich Beck grew up in Hanover . After graduating from high school, he began studying law in Freiburg im Breisgau . He later received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation and studied sociology, philosophy , psychology and political science at the University of Munich. There he received his doctorate in 1972 and completed his habilitation in sociology seven years later . Ulrich Beck was married to the family sociologist Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim .

Beck held professorships from 1979 to 1981 at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster and from 1981 to 1992 in Bamberg . For years he was a member of the convent and board member of the German Society for Sociology . From 1999 to 2009 Ulrich Beck was the spokesman for the Collaborative Research Center 536: "Reflexive Modernization", an interdisciplinary cooperation between four universities in the Munich area, which was funded and assessed by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Here Beck's theory of reflexive modernization was empirically tested in an interdisciplinary manner on the basis of a wide range of topics in corresponding research projects.

Beck was a member of the board of trustees at the Jewish Center in Munich and the German PEN . In March 2011 he became a member of the ethics committee for secure energy supply .

Ulrich Beck died on January 1, 2015 at the age of 70 as a result of a heart attack . He is buried in the Munich North Cemetery.

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Autograph

Following the successful publication “Risk Society” from 1986, Ulrich Beck published a large number of other articles over the next 25 years on the question that determines his research: How can social and political thinking and acting in the face of radical global change (environmental destruction, financial crisis , global warming , Crisis of democracy and the nation-state institutions ) to be opened up for a historically-novel interwoven modernity ?

Mainly transnational and global sociological contexts became the subject of Beck's research, publications and political initiatives. He paid particular attention to the opportunities and problems of European integration , to globalization tendencies and challenges, and to the prospects for world domestic politics .

Unlimited risk society

In the year of publication of Ulrich Beck's study Risk Society . On the way to a different modernity , the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred on April 26th , to which Beck referred right at the beginning: "Much that was still argued for in writing - the imperceptibility of the dangers, their dependence on knowledge, their supranationality, the" ecological expropriation ", the transition from normality to absurdity, etc. - reads like a flat description of the present after Chernobyl." At the end of the 20th century, nature, which was brought into the industrial system in the course of the technical-industrial transformation and worldwide marketing, turned out to be a used and contaminated one. “You are driven to stowaways with normal consumption. They travel with the wind and with the water, are stuck in everything and in everyone and pass through with the most essential things - breathing air, food, clothing, home furnishings - all otherwise strictly controlled protection zones of modernity. ”This is the end of the classic Industrial society, as it was brought about in the 19th century, as well as the conventional ideas of, among other things, national sovereignty, automatic progress, classes or the performance principle.

A striking distinguishing feature of the risk society compared to the uncertainties, threats and catastrophes of earlier epochs - which were attributed to the forces of nature, gods or demons - is the condition of ecological, chemical or genetic dangers due to decisions made by humans: “During the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 the World groaned. But the scouts did not, as after the nuclear reactor catastrophe in Chernobyl, cite industrialists, engineers and politicians, but God before the human judgment. "Beck states that technologists nowadays have the green light to turn the world upside down, even" constitutional changes to the Life ”, which found its way unauthorized with human genetics. “You just wonder at some point later that the family, like the dinosaurs and cockchafer, is no longer there.” The “ brave new world ” could become a reality “if and because the cultural horizon in which it was still broken was broken and stripped away appears as a 'brave new world' and can be criticized. "

Beck clearly differentiates between risk and disaster . According to this, risk includes the anticipation of future disasters in the present. This results in the goal and possibilities of disaster avoidance, for example with the help of probability calculations , insurance regulations and prevention . Long before the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, Beck predicted: The new risks that set the global anticipation of global catastrophes in motion will shake the institutional and political foundations of modern societies (see most recently the global controversy over the risks of nuclear energy after the Fukushima reactor disaster) . The new type of global risks is characterized by four features: delimitation, uncontrollability, non-compensability and (more or less unacknowledged) ignorance . But because global risks are partly based on ignorance, the lines of conflict in the world risk society are culturally determined. According to Beck, we are dealing with a clash of risk cultures .

Ulrich Beck's “Risk Society” was recognized as one of the 20 most important sociological works of the century by the International Sociological Association (ISA).

Reflexive modernization

The theory of reflexive modernization (see also the distinction between first and second modernity ) elaborates the basic idea that the triumphant advance of industrial modernity over the globe produces side effects that call into question the institutional foundations and coordinates of national modernity, change it, and open it up to political action . For Beck, it is essentially about the self-confrontation of the consequences of modernization with the principles of modernization:

“The constellations of the risk society are created because the thinking and acting of people and institutions are dominated by the self-evident of industrial society (the consensus on progress, the abstraction of ecological consequences and dangers, the control optimism). The risk society is not an option that can be chosen or rejected in the course of political disputes. It arises in the course of independent, consequential blind, danger-free modernization processes. In sum and latency, these create self-endangerments that question, cancel and change the foundations of industrial society. "

According to Beck, reflexive modernization goes hand in hand with forms of individualization of social inequality. The cultural prerequisites of social classes are dwindling, resulting in an aggravation of social inequality, "which no longer runs in major locations that can be identified throughout life, but is (lifelong), spatially and socially fragmented." Wolfgang Bonß and Christoph Lau see reflexive modernization as a process of fundamental change in which the old conditions and solution approaches continue to exist alongside new others. Various new forms have been added to the old form of the nuclear family; In addition to the classic form of the Fordist company, the new forms of network organization established themselves; New, more flexible forms of work would be added to the classic “normal employment relationship”; and in addition to the conventional forms of basic disciplinary research, there would now be various forms of transdisciplinary research. "It is precisely this simultaneity of old and new that makes it so difficult to clearly diagnose change or even to describe it as a clear break."

Beck's theory of reflexive modernization aims at overarching interactions and relationships, also in terms of epistemology. So it says in risk society :

“Rationality and irrationality are never just a question of the present and the past, but also of the possible future . We can learn from our mistakes - that also means: another science is always possible. Not just a different theory, but a different epistemology , a different relationship between theory and practice of this relationship. "

Beyond sociology, Beck advocated not sticking to conventional research approaches and theories. In historical studies, for example, he criticized a lack of concern about “a theoretically comprehensive examination of the basic questions of historiography” and advocated researching historical change in the light of suitable sociological theoretical aspects. The reason for this gave him the investigation of Benjamin Steiner's side effects in the story. A historical sociology of reflexive modernization , for which Beck wrote the preface. Steiner himself, after having exemplified his topic of historical side effects on four objects of investigation, from Attic democracy to the crisis of historicism , comes to the conclusion: “The role that unintended side effects play in history should also be recognized more for this reason that our time more than ever needs an understanding of the deeper structures that underlie historical events. "

Subpolitics

Reflexive modernization , which meets the conditions of “highly developed democracy and established scientific approach”, said Ulrich Beck in 1986 in a risk society , “leads to the characteristic delimitation of science and politics. Monopolies of knowledge and change are differentiated, migrate from the intended locations and become generally available in a certain, changeable sense. ”In the Second Modern Age, the sciences no longer only come into consideration for problem solving, but also as problem causes; for scientific solutions and promises of liberation have meanwhile revealed their questionable sides in the course of their practical implementation. This and the incalculable flood of dubious, incoherent detailed results resulting from the differentiation of science also created uncertainty in external relations; addressees and users of scientific results in politics, business and the general public would become “active co-producers in the social process of knowledge definition” - a development of “extreme ambivalence”:

“It contains the chance of the emancipation of social practice from science through science; on the other hand, it immunizes socially valid ideologies and standpoints of interests against scientific claims to enlightenment and opens the door to a feudalization of scientific knowledge practice through economic-political interests and "new powers of faith". "

In the sense of a reflexive scientification and sub-political control, Beck et al. a. on institutionally secured counter-expertise and alternative professional practice.

“Only where medicine stands against medicine, atomic physics against atomic physics, human genetics against human genetics, information technology against information technology, can it be externally overlooked and assessed what future is here in the test tube. Enabling self-criticism in all forms is not a threat, but probably the only way in which the error that would otherwise make the world fly around our ears earlier or even earlier could be discovered in advance. "

For the future of democracy, however, the alternative is whether citizens depend “in all details of survival issues” on the judgment of the experts and counter-experts, or whether the culturally established perceptibility of the dangers can regain individual judgment.

According to Beck, important political issues have been raised by citizens' initiatives since the 1980s - against the resistance of the established parties in the West, against the informers and surveillance apparatus of the state power through the forms of resistance and street demonstrations in Eastern Europe at the time. He describes such approaches and forms of shaping society from below as subpolitics . One of its characteristics is the direct, selective participation of citizens in political decisions, bypassing parties and parliaments as the institutions of representative decision-making. Economy, science, work and private everyday life got caught in the storms of political disputes. Beck counts massive, also transnational boycott movements among the particularly striking and effective means of subpolitics.

Customization

Individualization in the sense of Ulrich Beck does not mean individualism , nor emancipation , autonomy , individuation (becoming a person). Rather, it is about processes, firstly, the dissolution, secondly, the replacement of industrial societal forms of life (class, class , gender relations , normal family, lifelong occupation), among other things brought about by institutional change in the form of social and political basic rights addressed to the individual , in the form of changed training courses and extensive labor market mobility. There are circumstances in which individuals have to create, stage, cobble together their own biography. According to Beck, the “normal biography” becomes the “elective biography”, the “handicraft biography”, the “fractional biography”. According to Sartre , people are condemned to individualization. This development is not only going on in the classic industrialized countries, but also affects time-shifted and in other forms z. B. China , Japan and South Korea .

Cosmopolitanization

The second modern , so says one of Beck's core theses, cancels out its own foundations. Basic institutions such as the nation state and the traditional family are being globalized from within. For him, a serious deficit in orientation in research and practice is the methodological nationalism of political thought, sociology and other social sciences .

Methodological nationalism should mean: The thinking and research of the social sciences are prisoners of the nation state . They define society and politics in national terms, they choose the nation state as the unit of their research, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. According to Beck, all of their key concepts (democracy, class , family, culture , rule , politics, etc.) are based on basic assumptions about the nation state. That may have been historically appropriate in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it becomes increasingly wrong in the era of globalization and world risk society, because transnational dependencies and interdependencies, i.e. global risks, permeate almost all problems and phenomena from within and change them profoundly. Methodological nationalism, however, makes one blind to this global change that is taking place in national societies.

That is why Beck has been designing a cosmopolitan sociology since 2000 in order to establish sociology as a science of reality in the 21st century. This is the only way for the social sciences to observe global change, which is not taking place “out there” but “in here” - in families, households, romantic relationships, organizations, professions, schools, social classes, communities, religious communities, nation states.

Cosmopolitanization means the change from a form of society that is essentially shaped by the nation state in terms of politics , culture , economy , family and labor market , to a form of society in which the nation states globalize themselves from within ( Internet and social networks ; export of jobs; migration ; global problems that can no longer be solved nationally). According to Beck, this does not mean cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitanism in the classical sense, or a normative call for a “world without borders”. Rather, in his opinion, major risks create a new, cross-national coercive community, because everyone's survival depends on whether they come together to act together.

Cosmopolitanism is about norms , cosmopolitanization about facts. Cosmopolitanism in the philosophical sense, with Immanuel Kant as with Jürgen Habermas , includes a global political task that is assigned to the elite and enforced from above, or from below through civil society movements . Cosmopolitanization, on the other hand, takes place from below and from within, in everyday events, often unintentionally, unnoticed, even if national flags are still waved, the national dominant culture is proclaimed and the death of multiculturalism is proclaimed. Cosmopolitanization means the erosion of clear borders that once separated markets, states, civilizations , cultures, worlds and people; means the existential, global entanglements and confrontations that arise as a result, but also encounters with others in one's own life.

Beck's sociological cosmopolitanism aims at three components: an empirical research perspective, a social reality and a normative theory. Taken together, these three aspects make social-scientific cosmopolitanism the critical theory of our time by questioning the traditional truths that determine thinking and acting today: national truths. Beck has - often in co-authorship with others - tested, checked and further developed the empirical content of his theory of sociological cosmopolitanism on the following topics or phenomena: power and rule , Europe, religion, social inequality as well as love and family.

Europe in theory and practice

In 2004, the year the European Union expanded to the east , Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande published the book Das kosmopolitische Europa . In it, models and scenarios of a European future under the sign of reflexive modernization are developed. The cosmopolitan and the national do not form mutually exclusive opposites.

“Rather, the cosmopolitan must be understood, developed and empirically examined as an integral of the national. In other words: the cosmopolitan changes and preserves, it opens up the history, present and future of individual national societies and the relationship between national societies. "

The formula of cosmopolitan Europe should be understood as a theoretical construct and political vision in one. In this context, nationality , transnationality and supranationality complement each other positively to form a both-and-also. In the sense of a new critical theory of European integration, it is important to get away from an internally fixed design of European integration, which was based on playing up scenarios of threats or challenges outside of Europe in order to neutralize resistance at national level to European integration progress. Starting from a cosmopolitan Europe, multiple cosmopolitanisms could also be favored. Ultimately, it is about the organization of contradictions and ambivalences ; "These have to be endured and politically carried out, they cannot be dissolved."

For Beck and Grande, internal dynamics and side effects as constitutive features of reflexive modernity are also evident in the further development of Europe, which can only be controlled to a limited extent, and which is based on a “Doing Europe”. The spirit of contemporary European action arises from the remembered look into the depths of European civilization. Doing Europe is never done again.

"Cosmopolitan Europe is the self-critical experimental Europe rooted in its history, breaking with its history and gaining the strength for it from its history ."

The authors can only imagine a European civil society and a cosmopolitan Europe in solidarity. It is important to change the self- image of all groups involved in the sense of a cosmopolitan common sense in the direction of a European social consciousness that favors a positive attitude towards the otherness of others.

Beck and Grande see the nationalization of European politics that has dominated European politics since the founding of the European Communities and incapacitated the European citizens as a serious undesirable development that needs to be dealt with. As an antidote, in addition to the existing institutions of parliamentary democracy, they recommend the introduction of independent articulation and intervention options for citizens, especially in the form of Europe-wide referendums on every topic , initiated by a qualified number of European citizens, with binding effect on the supranational institutions.

In terms of external relations, Europe should promote the principle of regional cosmopolitanization in line with its own model and promote regional alliances of states with the involvement of non-state global actors such as NGOs . A one-sided orientation should be avoided and alternative development paths of modernity should be accepted. Also, development policy handouts should no longer remain; rather, the European markets should be opened up for products and initiatives of others in partnership.

With a view to the prevailing finding of growing social inequality in the early phase of the 21st century, which results in the global as well as in many cases also in the national framework from increasing wealth on the one hand and increased poverty on the other hand, Ulrich Beck and Angelika Poferl in 2010 looked at the relevant conditions in the EU dealt with. To apply this is Max Weber's distinction between a true probably very dramatic but as legitimate executed undertaken social inequality and that is one to a political problem. National inequality is legitimized by the performance principle, global inequality by the nation state principle (in the form of “institutionalized looking the other way”). But the more barriers and borders within the EU internal area are dismantled and equality norms enforced, the more persistent or newly emerging inequalities will become a political issue, as is clearly evident in the euro crisis:

“Just think of the contrasts between deficit and surplus countries, the risk of national bankruptcy, which on the one hand affects certain countries, on the other hand endangers the euro zone as a whole; But also of the efforts to find European political answers, which not only incite the governments of the "empty coffers" against each other, but also arouse nationalistic atavisms in the population. In this way new relationships of inequality and domination arise between countries and states within the EU. [...] The unrest that ignites is exemplarily clear: In the experience horizon of the European inequality dynamics, a huge anger has built up, which could lead to the destabilization of individual countries or even the EU. "

In September 2010 Ulrich Beck was involved in the founding of the Spinelli Group , which advocates European federalism . In We are Europe! Written together with Daniel-Cohn Bendit . Manifesto for the re-establishment of the EU from below , he campaigned in 2012, among other things, for the creation of a Voluntary European Year. The background to the initiative, which was not only addressed to the Brussels EU institutions, but also to the national parliaments and the citizens of the Union , was specifically the rampant youth unemployment in the southern European countries and the widening gap between poverty and wealth.

Political position determinations

Beck pleaded for economic policy to set new priorities. Full employment is no longer achievable in view of the automation and flexibilization of gainful employment, national solutions are unrealistic, " neoliberal medicine" does not work. Instead, the state would have to guarantee an unconditional basic income and thereby enable more civil work. Such a solution would only be feasible if uniform economic and social standards would apply at the European level or - in the best case - at various transnational levels. This is the only way to control the transnationally operating companies. In order to curb the power of transnational corporations (TNCs), he therefore advocates the establishment of transnational states as an antipole. This would also enable the implementation of a financial transaction tax , which opens up room for maneuver for a social and ecological Europe.

On the legal level, Beck was of the opinion that without the establishment and expansion of international law and corresponding judicial bodies, the settlement of transnational conflicts by peaceful means would be impossible. For this he coined the term right-wing pacifism .

Beck continuously published articles in major European newspapers: Der Spiegel , Die Zeit , Süddeutsche Zeitung , Frankfurter Rundschau , La Repubblica , El País , Le Monde , The Guardian and others. am As a member of the ethics committee of the German federal government for a secure energy supply , Beck warned in 2011 that disasters like the one in Fukushima could lead to an erosion of the understanding of democracy: “By approving nuclear energy, politics has tied itself to the fate of this technology. With the occurrence of the unimaginable, the citizens' trust in the politicians is lost. "

Means of representation

Driven by "his encyclopedic education and an almost inexhaustible wealth of interests", Beck's sociological and political publications have often taken the form of a grand essay . In them, Beck repeatedly succeeded in developing catchy short formulas for social issues and developments. He coined numerous terms, including: risk society , reflexive modernization , elevator effect , methodological nationalism , socio-scientific cosmopolitanism , individualization , deinstitutionalization , de-traditionalization and, with regard to globalization, the terms second modernity , globalism , globality , Brazilianization as well as transnational state and cosmopolitan Europe . Dealing with language was a special topic for Beck. “Sociology, which is located in the container of the nation-state, and its self-image, its forms of perception, and its concepts has developed within this horizon, methodologically comes under suspicion of working with zombie categories. Zombie categories are living-dead categories that haunt our heads and adjust our vision to realities that are disappearing more and more. ”Beck, on the other hand, started the search for a new observation language in the social sciences for a globalized world.

Feedback and criticism

Ulrich Beck in his apartment in Munich 1999

Ulrich Beck was one of the best-known German sociologists of the present, whose terms and theses aim and meet with resonance far beyond the specialist audience. He is one of the most cited and recognized social scientists in the world. His works have been and are being translated into more than 35 languages. Eva Illouz sees Beck not only as an internationally successful scientist, but also as the embodiment of European citizenship, for which he has stood up with his political commitment and his sociological work. For him, however, this was only an intermediate step towards a world domestic policy with blurring national borders.

"Beck would have been an original sociologist in any country in the world," says Illouz, "but in the context of German sociology he was particularly original and unique." From Rainer Erd's point of view, Beck occupies an "outstanding position" within German sociology a. In a situation of petrified theory relationships (concerning, for example, the development of sociology in post-war Germany, the dispute over value judgments in sociology, Marxist theory, role theory or Luhmann's system theory) Beck 1986 with his book Risk Society. emerged. “What others wanted, Beck succeeded. He made the situation dance, of course only the scientific situation. Hardly any other book in German post-war sociology has been so bitterly disputed, hardly any other author has heard so much praise, but also suffered so much abuse. Beck violently shook the well-established conditions of the social sciences. Since he could not be assigned to any major theoretical tradition of system-theoretical or Marxist provenance, amazement and anger were all the greater. "

In contrast to the social theories of Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas , Beck's diagnostic social theory has empirical consequences that challenge the mainstream in the special sociologies of social inequality, family, love, gainful employment, industry, politics, the state, etc., and to this extent persistently international and trigger lively interdisciplinary controversies. In this sense, one can speak of an international / interdisciplinary individualization debate, a risk society debate and a cosmopolitan debate.

"There was a lot of dialectics in this sociologist," says the obituary for Ulrich Beck in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , "some of Hegel's 'List of Reason' and a portion of Ernst Bloch's 'Principle of Hope'." Beck had confidently perceived that that the anticipation of disasters could mobilize opposing forces: "Citizens' movements arise, and politicians who subscribe to muddling along start to worry."

Several types of critical objections are raised against Beck, including those based on superficial knowledge and blanket judgments. For example, it is repeatedly claimed that Beck's writings are more about political philosophy than solid, empirically substantive sociology. Neither the thematically broad, ten-year, interdisciplinary, empirical work of the Collaborative Research Center 536 "Reflexive Modernization" (1999–2009) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), nor the numerous empirical studies that are now available nationally and internationally are not taken into account. In fact, there is also extensive international criticism that arises from the intensive discussion with Beck.

On Beck's leitmotifs as a researcher and publicist

In an effort to determine leitmotifs and continuities in Ulrich Beck's publications, which have been spread over several decades, Elmar J. Koenen states that for Beck - starting in 1971 in the study written with Elisabeth Gernsheim , "On a theory of student unrest in advanced industrial societies" - I did not give a “correct” standpoint of the (sociological) observation in view of contrary positions in political disputes. Theoretical and political pluralism force a constant reaction to changes, so that the required statement does not involve a commitment to a political or theoretical position. "At most, it is about the project," says Koenen, "to make yourself a political and / or theoretical position, and to adhere to it with the utmost consistency."

For Beck, on the other hand, the use of social science knowledge in current political practice cannot be fixed by the researchers. What is offered is more likely to be used as a “quarry”, “where you can help yourself when needed and when the opportunity arises. Regardless of its intention or its form, it finds its uncontrolled practical use. It can neither be anticipated nor controlled by the social scientist. [...] Such a de-institutionalized use of knowledge must hope that its 'social usefulness' - in the best liberal tradition - will, as it were, be established behind their backs. "

Under the impression of the global ecological risks, which he found very unsettling, Ulrich Beck considerably restricted the frequent changes in observation positions in this regard. With the publication on the risk society, he decided "for a practice of theory" that was aimed at a broad audience. The drafting of texts just for professional colleagues was no longer enough for him; and the media, which are geared towards the spread of news effects, would have promoted its effect and the merit of having "brought the keywords of Beck's text production (individualization, second modernity, industrial modernity, risk, reflexive modernity, etc.) to the educated people in the form of semantic change."

To the risk society

With his sensational and widespread publication of Risk Society , Ulrich Beck found the intellectual center for a productive theory formation that is still compatible to this day. A “brilliant book” is a risk society for Eva Illouz, “because it neither accused nor defended capitalism, but took stock of its consequences and examined how it restructured institutions - how it forced them to look at the destruction they themselves had caused take, manage and map them in a new cost accounting that included the risks associated with the exploitation of natural resources and with technical innovations. "

Much criticism has sparked off Beck's assertion in the “risk society” that social classes lose importance with the social production of risks - “need is hierarchical, smog is democratic”. In contrast, it has been and is sometimes asserted that class inequalities in contemporary societies are of continuous, and often even growing, relevance. The relativization of the class category for the globalized world at the beginning of the 21st century - this becomes clear in this debate - can, however, mean exactly the opposite: on the one hand, the decrease, on the other hand, the increase, even radicalization, of social inequalities. Beck has the second case in mind when he argues that the concept of class provides too “an idyllic description” (“too soft a category”) for the radicalized inequalities at the beginning of the 21st century. " Zygmunt Bauman pointed out", Beck says in an interview with Johannes Willms , "what distinguishes this monstrous, new poverty from the old poverty: These people are simply no longer needed. Marx's talk of the proletariat or the lumpenproletariat still implies current or potential exploitation in the labor process . Wherever civilization turns into its opposite, into inhabited garbage dumps, even the term ' exploitation ' is a euphemism ... Neither within nor between nation-state societies does the class concept reflect the complexity of radically unequal living conditions. Rather, he pretends to be a false simplicity. "

Elsewhere it was criticized that Beck's supposedly undifferentiated, catastrophic understanding of risk, which underlies his critique of the class category, misses large parts of reality. On the other hand, it is proposed to incorporate the social distribution of risks into the class categories in order to develop a new critical theory of classes in the risk society: There is a fatal magnetism between poverty, social vulnerability and risk accumulation.

For individualization

The individualization thesis (one of three theses in Beck's theory of reflexive modernization, see above) has increasingly gained influence in the English-speaking world, which can be seen on the one hand in its broad application in empirical research and on the other in the relevant theoretical debates about its core distinctions and methodology, for example in youth sociology . In order to avoid misunderstandings, Beck suggested making a clear distinction between individualization and individualism, i.e. between institutional change at the macro level of society (family, divorce, labor and social law) and biographical change at the micro level of individuals:

“In other words: individualization must be clearly distinguished from individualism or egoism. While individualism is usually understood as a personal attitude or preference, individualization means a macro-sociological phenomenon that may - but maybe not - be reflected in changes in attitudes of individuals. That is the crux of contingency : It remains open how the individuals deal with it. "

- Ulrich Beck

Some reviews are based on the misunderstanding that individualization realizes the orientations and values ​​of individualism. A particularly interesting example of this is Paul de Beer's empirical examination of the individualization theory. He examines the question of how individualized the Dutch are by exploring the extent of detraditionalization, emancipation and heterogenization. In doing so, de Beer overlooks the fact that individualization actually leads to a growing dependence of the individual on institutions and to a paradoxical process of conformity through voting decisions. This empirical examination of the individualization theory also falls into the trap of equating individualization with individualism and finally comes to the conclusion that Dutch individuals (according to two of the three indicators) have not become more “individualistic”.

The anthropologist Yunxiang Yan, who teaches at UCLA ( University of California, Los Angeles ), criticizes that the distinction between the “macro-objective” and the “micro-subjective” dimensions of individualization raises the question of the role of the individual in The process of individualization. His objection is that Beck, paradoxically, asserts "individualization without individuals".

To cosmopolitanization

Beck's criticism of the methodological nationalism of the social sciences is the subject of heated controversy. His critics object that the classics of sociology, for example both Émile Durkheim and the founder of sociology Auguste Comte , explicitly dealt with cosmopolitanism as a possible future of modern societies. Others contradict this by referring to central authors such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Niklas Luhmann, who introduced the terms “world system” and world society back in the 1970s .

In contrast, Beck insists on the distinction between cosmopolitanism as a norm and cosmopolitanization as a fact (see above work ). In this sense, many social theorists in the 19th century dealt with normative cosmopolitanism, but not with the empirical processes of cosmopolitanization, which are the growing together of the world (in view of the Internet and Facebook , global risks and the internal globalization of families, classes, etc. ) focuses.

Authors, on the other hand, who take cosmopolitanization seriously in this empirical sense, criticize that cosmopolitanization ultimately amounts to an uncritical understanding of globalization, since structural cosmopolitanization is not tied to the reflection and interaction of individuals across borders. If cosmopolitanization also includes processes of renationalization and re-ethnicization, then the term threatens to become empty. It is also objected that Beck, while claiming that cosmopolitanization is irreversible, does not give reasons why this should be the case all over the world in the face of the renaissance of nation and nationalism .

Yishai Blank, who teaches International Law in Tel Aviv, criticizes the lack of empirical references to the actors who drive cosmopolitanization, a deficiency that is astonishing for a sociological study. Finally, Beck's idea of ​​cosmopolitanization presupposes the idea of ​​nationalism; so to a certain extent he differentiates between good and bad nationalism, but leaves the reader alone to make this distinction in reality. At best, Beck's theory of cosmopolitanization is underdeveloped, at worst, contradicting itself.

To the modernization theory

According to Eva Illouz, Beck's sociological view of modernity was twofold: On the one hand, it took away any feeling of security, certainty and stability; on the other hand, it made our lives more colorful, more inventive, more improvised, less fixed. "Against the alternative hit of Foucault's modernism, which boiled down to order and discipline, Beck took the surprising view that modernity was open and tentative and opened up much larger circles of belonging and identification to the individual."

The objection to the theory of reflexive modernization is often that it is unsuitable for defining a new epoch, since modernity is always reflexive as a concept. For Beck, however, reflective modernization means something more specific, namely “modernization of modernity”: Western modernity becomes a topic and problem for itself, its basic institutions - nation state, family, democracy, gainful employment, etc. - dissolve from within in the course of radicalized modernization; the modern project becomes open to political alternatives - the ecological turn of capitalism, nuclear energy versus renewable energies, global regulation of the financial markets. The changed options would have to be renegotiated in the dispute between the old center and the emerging periphery, between the USA, China, EU, Africa, etc.

One objection states that Beck's distinction between the first and second moderns is arbitrary and speaks of contemporary western societies as the “third modern”. Another reading holds against it: “We have never been modern”.

On employment policy and basic income

In a 1996/1997 report by Kurt Biedenkopf and Meinhard Miegel's Bavarian-Saxon Future Commission , Beck presented a concept of civic work and entrepreneurship for the common good for everyone, for the unemployed and employed. In this concept he assumed that there would probably no longer be work for everyone in the future. Unemployed people should do community work with so-called "public welfare entrepreneurs". Beck therefore adhered to the work ethic in citizen work - gainful employment as normal - although he considered full employment to be unlikely in the future. Critics have accused Beck of promoting a gigantic bureaucratization and commercialization of the voluntary sector with his civil work, which is to be recognized by state agencies as related to the common good and should be accompanied by a wage payment. Criticism was even made in such a way that civil work was the technocratic horror scenario of a modern workhouse; because the unemployed are officially placed under the curate of work ethics by being offered state-controlled citizen work, which they may be forced to accept as additional income.

Beck was heavily criticized by macroeconomists who refer to the New Keynesian approaches widely recognized in the Anglo-Saxon region for his thesis that an effective state employment policy is no longer possible today. Was noted critically Becks intellectuals alliance with Anthony Giddens , the red-green policy of Agenda 2010 by Gerhard Schröder and the labor market reforms of Tony Blair accompanied in the UK with benevolence. The common basis for this was the model of “ workfare ” and the “activating welfare state”. It was perceived as contradicting this approach that Beck later spoke up as a proponent of the basic income proposal, even though he had previously advocated opposing things.

On Ulrich Beck's new critical theory

As part of the 2003 book Power and Society in the Global Age. New World Political Economy Beck was also interested in a new critical theory with a cosmopolitan intent. From the point of view of Regina Becker-Schmidt , however, this approach admittedly lacks an examination of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School , so that the question arises as to which old critical theory Beck wanted to go beyond. With regard to this legacy, it is not enough just to tackle new topics, as Beck had done most productively in favor of German sociology. Basically, Beck's characterization of the released individual as a “planning office in relation to one's own life course, its skills, orientations, partnerships” does not differ significantly from the sentence of the dialectic of the Enlightenment that the individual would become “the transport hubs of general tendencies”. While Horkheimer and Adorno came up with a profound socio-critical analysis, Beck's need to become more flexible only resulted in the request to pretend that one could “lead one's own life”.

Beck does not address the fact that the experience of discontinuities does not affect men and women to the same extent. The double burden of housework and professional work "including all the consequences for CV models" only affects women. In addition, Beck does not mention the stigmatization that is exposed to those who are unable to raise the funds for their own living. In the author's view, his concept of citizen work , which is intended to compensate for a lack of employment in the formal labor market sector and through which those otherwise in need of support would be drawn to charitable activities for low wages, would primarily affect women. “Is it compatible with the demands of a self-reflective social science”, asks Becker-Schmidt in this context, “to create second-class citizens on behalf of political advice?” For Beck, the erosion of traditional gender orders is one of the central changes that the reflexive Made modern. Only feminist gender research has shown in many ways that equal conditions for women are not achieved either on the labor market or in the domestic division of labor towards men.

Becker-Schmidt sees Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan goals on the economic level overlaid by Eurocentric terms and ideas with which it is difficult to adequately grasp the concerns of those countries which, due to their dependence on the "global players", have no part in the global power game. If negative dialectics were taken seriously in the sense of Critical Theory, according to Becker-Schmidt, “then in the age of globalization historical awareness would have to mean not jumping into a utopia - the positive - with the help of formal counter-designs, but rather analyzing those relationships in all sharpness that are such that, understandably, there are forces who have no interest in shaping the world more justly. "

A sociology that can be connected

Armin Nassehi speaks of an impressive potential for stimulation in Ulrich Beck's work with a view to the connectivity of the terms and problems developed by Beck in the political arena. He shows an "unsurpassed ability to provide the experiences of a public confronted with the diversity of their sensory impressions with categories" in order to make them nameable. Since the risk society at the latest, Beck's texts “the sympathetic nerve” hit both the mass media reflection and that of the sociological intelligence.

Like Jürgen Habermas, Beck relies on a renewal of the tradition of critical theory with the intention of revising the "gesture of total self-denial that still clung to the dialectic of the Enlightenment and the negative dialectic " and to convert it into a form that is suitable for both the political-practical as well as for the scientific-theoretical speech. Both represent a public intellectual who succeeds in combining "the we semantics of political communication with the attribution of the scientific observer to the ego". The aesthetics of conveying the two works, however, are very different. While Habermas is working on tradition and is counting on a learned, educated bourgeois audience, for Beck the republic remains instead of the learned republic - with clearly different association and orientation patterns. “Habermas trusts the world, but not himself, and is therefore forced to use a form of criticism that since Kant has primarily been a criticism of the presuppositions of one's own sentences. Beck, on the other hand, does not trust the world because it is out of joint. Instead, he trusts his own sentences and his own criticism all the more and can thus do without the strict criticism of his own condition of possibility and thus the strict work of the term. "

Gerhard Schulze pays tribute to Ulrich Beck's work against the background of the precarious importance that current sociological research is generally still accorded: “Sociology, almost a leading discipline in the sixties and seventies, only looks from standing room at the beginning of the twenty-first century out of the public competition for attention, muttering comments that nobody pays attention to, while politicians, scientists, corporate bosses and journalists cheerfully sociologize in the front of the arena, merely equipped with common sense, quick-wittedness and carefree. ”Dying subjects - as apparently sociology - would bring usually no stars emerge.

With regard to the concepts and representational contexts favored by Beck, Schulze deals with the appropriation of culture, which is necessary analogous to the appropriation of nature, in the sense of double reflexivity . While simple reflexivity is about thinking how to do something better, my double reflexivity is thinking about that thinking. For the continuation of modernity, according to Schulze, it is important to extend that thought and action pattern of double reflexivity, "which has now become part of our flesh and blood in dealing with nature and artefacts", to include culture.

As far as the reception of books such as Risk Society is concerned, the punch line lies in a “fundamental a priori discrepancy” between the author and - determined by the scientific approach - readers: “One would have to start with Adam and Eve, with preliminary questions, and first of all with the difference between the essentialist ones and the constructivist theory of meaning, in order to even reach the level on which approval and criticism are not based merely on the illusion of mutual understanding. ”Gerhard Schulze writes in the studbook of a sociology that should have a future:

“Münchhausen, pull yourself out of the swamp by your own tuft! Sociology, make yourself understood by making yourself understandable! After all, what is physically impossible does not necessarily have to be communicatively impossible. Nobody has proven this better than Ulrich Beck in the past decades. "

Awards

Beck has received many awards:

• 1996 Cultural Prize of Honor from the City of Munich
• 1999 CICERO speaker award
• 1999 German-British Forum Award for special services to German-British relations (together with Anthony Giddens)
• 2004 DGS prize for outstanding achievements in the field of public effectiveness in sociology
• 2005 Schader Prize , the most valuable award for social scientists in Germany
• 2013 Schwarzkopf Europe Prize from the Schwarzkopf Foundation Young Europe
• 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to Futures Research from the International Sociological Association
• 2014 Otto von der Gablentz Prize

Beck was awarded eight honorary doctorates: University of Jyväskylä / Finland (1996), University of Macerata / Italy (2006), University of Madrid (UNED) / Spain (2007), Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (2010), University of Lausanne / Switzerland (2011), Free University of Varna / Bulgaria (2011), University of Buenos Aires / Argentina (2013), St. Kliment-Ohridski University of Sofia / Bulgaria (2013).

Fonts

Ulrich Beck's typewriter in his apartment in Munich

Monographs

• Objectivity and Normativity. The theory-practice debate in modern German and American sociology . Reinbek, Rowohlt 1974.
• with Michael Brater and Hansjürgen Daheim: Sociology of Work and Professions. Basics, problem areas, research results. Rowohlt Taschenbuchverlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1980.
• Risk society . Towards a New Modernity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986
• Antidotes. Organized irresponsibility. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988.
• with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim : The normal chaos of love. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38225-X .
• Politics in the risk society. Essays and analyzes. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991.
• The invention of the political. To a theory of reflexive modernization. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993.
• with Wilhelm Vossenkuhl and Ulf Erdmann Ziegler : Eigenes Leben. Excursions into the unknown society in which we live. Beck, Munich 1995 (exhibition catalog with photographs by Timm Rautert ).
• with Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash : Reflexive Modernization. A controversy. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996
• What is globalization Fallacies of Globalism - Answers to Globalization. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-518-40944-1 .
• Brave new world of work. Vision: global civil society. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-593-36036-5 .
• World Risk Society , Polity Press / Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, UK / Malden, MA 1999.
• with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim : Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences. London u. a., Sage Publications 2002
• Power and counter-power in the global age. Neue Weltpolitische Ökonomie , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-41362-7 .
• with Natan Sznaider and Rainer Winter: Global America: The Cultural Consequences of Globalization . The Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, England 2003.
  • German: Global America? The cultural consequences of globalization . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2003, ISBN 3-89942-172-8 .
• The cosmopolitan view or: War is Peace , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004.
• with Edgar Grande : Cosmopolitan Europe. Society and Politics in the Second Modern Age. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-41647-2 .
• What to choose. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-41734-7 , review in the taz from [16. July 2005]
• World risk society. In search of the lost security. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-41425-5 .
• Your own god. About the peace ability and the violence potential of religions. World Religions Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main a. Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-458-71003-5
• The Re-Measurement of Inequality Among Humans: Sociological Enlightenment in the 21st Century. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008.
• News from world domestic politics. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010.
• with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim : Fernliebe. Life forms in the global age. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011
• German Europe. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012.
• The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World .
  • dt .: The metamorphosis of the world. Translated from the English by Frank Jakubzik . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2016 (posthumous). ISBN 978-3-518-42563-3 .

Essays

• Citizens of the world of all countries, unite! Democracy beyond the nation state: Europe must go first. Theses for a cosmopolitan manifesto . (World Citizens Manifesto) In: Die Zeit , No. 30/1998.
• The society of less. The shattered dream of Germany as a rising country. ZDF , January 17, 2005.
• Gentle world power Europe. Vision of a cosmopolitan empire that is no longer based on national ideas. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . July 5, 2005.
• Blind to reality. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. September 3, 2005.
• with Anthony Giddens : Europe cannot be built on the ruins of nations. In: The world. October 1, 2005.
• Farewell to the utopia of full employment. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. November 4, 2006.
• Tragic individualization. In: Sheets for German and international politics . 2007, issue 5, pp. 577-584.
• God is dangerous . In: Die Zeit , No. 52/2007.
• The error of the caterpillar. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. June 14, 2011.
• Powerless, but legitimate. In: the daily newspaper. (taz), October 28, 2011.
• Merkiavelli's power . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 2012 ( online ).
• For a European spring! In: the daily newspaper. (taz), November 23, 2012.

Interviews

• Freedom or capitalism. Ulrich Beck in conversation with Johannes Willms . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000
• Interview , Telepolis , November 28, 1997
• “Election will not save the country” ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), interview in the Netzeitung
• An encounter ( memento from July 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) with Beck at Lake Starnberg In: Tagesspiegel . September 23, 2005.
• Unemployment is a victory. : Conversation with Konstantin Sakkas, In: Der Tagesspiegel . November 30, 2006.
• Everyone can create their own god. In: Der Tagesspiegel. July 20, 2008.
• Questions of faith. A new enthusiasm. Conversation with Arno Widmann, In: Frankfurter Rundschau. August 15, 2008.
• Acting in a state of ignorance. Ulrich Beck, theorist of the risk society, on the turning necks of the financial crisis and the importance of Europe. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. November 5, 2008.
• Merkel reaches into the costume box. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 12, 2010
• A strategically staged mistake. Conversation with Andreas Zielcke, In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. March 14, 2011.
• In bed with the others. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim in conversation with Ulrich Gutmair, In: die tageszeitung. (taz), October 12, 2011.
• The common identity has to be found first. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim in conversation with Jeanette Villachica, In: Tages-Anzeiger. November 9, 2011.
• Love across national borders. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, In: Zeit Campus . November 22, 2011.
• About Merkiavellism. Conversation with Nils Minkmar , In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. January 16, 2013.
• Dare more Willy Brandt. Ulrich Beck and Martin Schulz on the future of Europe, In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 24, 2013.

editor

• Ulrich Beck, Angelika Poferl (ed.): Great poverty, great wealth: On the transnationalization of social inequality. 1st edition. edition suhrkamp paperback, 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-12614-1 .

literature

• Richard Albrecht , Differentiation - Pluralization - Individualization: Processes of Change in the Federal Republican Society. In: Union monthly journal . Vol. 41 (1990), No. 8, pp. 503-512. fes.de (PDF; 137 kB)
• Klaus Dörre : Reflexive Modernization - A Transition Theory. On the analytical potential of a popular sociological diagnosis of the time. Ruhr-Uni-Bochum ( Memento from July 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger : Mediocrity and madness. A suggestion to goodness. In: Ders .: Mediocrity and delusion. Collected distractions. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, pp. 250-276.
• Monika E. Fischer: Space and Time. The forms of adult learning from the perspective of modernization theory. Verlag Schneider Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2007, ISBN 978-3-8340-0266-2 .
• Ronald Hitzler : Ulrich Beck. In: Dirk Kaesler (ed.): Current theories of sociology. From Shmuel N. Eisenstadt to postmodernism. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52822-8 , pp. 267-285.
• Karl Otto Hondrich : The dialectic of collectivization and individualization - using the example of couple relationships. In: From Politics and Contemporary History . H. 53, 1998, pp. 3-8.
• Thomas Kron (ed.): Individualization and sociological theory. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2000, ISBN 3-8100-2505-4 .
• Angelika Poferl: Ulrich Beck. In: Stephan Moebius , Dirk Quadflieg (Ed.): Culture. Present theories. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14519-3 .
• Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.): Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project. On the way to a different sociology. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2004.
• Armin Pongs : Ulrich Beck - The Risk Society. In: Ders .: In which society do we actually live? 2nd Edition. Dilemma Verlag, Munich 2007, pp. 47–66.
• Gisela Riescher : Ulrich Beck. In this. (Ed.): Political theory of the present in individual presentations. From Adorno to Young (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 343). Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-34301-0 , pp. 43-46.
• Volker Stork: The "Second Modern Age" - a branded article? On the antiquity and negativity of social utopia by Ulrich Beck. UVK-Verlag, Konstanz 2001, ISBN 3-89669-802-8 .

Meetings

• “Dialectic of Globalization” : Collective review of the globalization series published by Beck (Suhrkamp 2007) by Konstantin Sakkas, Tagesspiegel , July 23, 2007 .

Web links

Commons : Ulrich Beck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikibooks: Ulrich Beck  - learning and teaching materials

• Literature by and about Ulrich Beck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Ulrich Beck  in the German Digital Library
• Ulrich Beck web archive in the university archive of the LMU Munich
• Armin Nassehi : What sociology owes Ulrich Beck to , Süddeutsche.de , January 3, 2015
• Jürgen Kaube : The theory's freehand sailor , FAZ.NET , January 3, 2015

References and comments

1. ↑ 90 years, 90 heads. In: A series of portraits for the 90th anniversary of the German National Academic Foundation. December 1, 2018, accessed April 22, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Reflexive modernization
3. ^ Professor of Sociology - Ulrich Beck is dead. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 3, 2015.
4. ↑ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007.
5. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, p. 10 f.
6. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, p. 9 f.
7. ↑ Beck, Die Invention des Politischen 1993, p. 40.
8. ↑ Beck, Gegengifte 1986, pp. 288 and 292.
9. ^ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Cambridge / UK, Polity Press 1999.
10. ↑ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 103 ff.
11. ↑ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 140.
12. ↑ ISA - Books of the Century ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Wolfgang Bonß (eds.): The modernization of modernity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001; Ulrich Beck, Christoph Lau (Hrsg.): Delimitation and decision. Frankfurt am Main 2004; Special issue of the journal Social World : Theory and Empirical Reflexive Modernization, 2005.
14. ↑ Beck: The Invention of the Political. 1993, p. 36.
15. ↑ Beck, Die Invention des Politischen , 1993, p. 36.
16. ↑ Wolfgang Bonß, Christoph Lau: Reflexive Modernization - Theory and Research Program. In: Angelika Poferl / Natan Sznaider (eds.): Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project. 2004, p. 37.
17. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, p. 297.
18. ↑ Benjamin Steiner: Side Effects in History. A historical sociology of reflexive modernization. Berlin / Munich / Boston 2015, pp. 7–9.
19. ↑ Benjamin Steiner: Side Effects in History. A historical sociology of reflexive modernization. Berlin / Munich / Boston 2015, p. 127.
20. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, p. 253.
21. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, pp. 255-257.
22. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, p. 257.
23. ↑ Beck, Risk Society 1986, p. 372.
24. ↑ Beck, Gegengifte 1986, p. 293.
25. ↑ Beck, The Invention of the Political 1993, p. 157 f.
26. ↑ Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society , World Public Sphere and Global Subpolitics . Vienna Lectures in the City Hall Volume 52, lecture in the Old City Hall on May 23, 1996. Vienna 1997, p. 48 f.
27. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Jenseits von Stand und Klasse ?, in: R. Kreckel (Ed.): Social Inequality (Social World: Special Volume 2). Verlag Otto Schwartz, Göttingen 1983; Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Not autonomy, but handicraft biography, in: Zeitschrift für Soziologie 1993; Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Individualization in modern societies, in: dies. (Ed.): Risky Freedoms. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 1994.
28. ↑ Yunxiang Yan: The Chinese Path to Individualization, in: British Journal of Sociology 2010; Munenori Suzuki et al. a .: Individualizing Japan, in: British Journal of Sociology 2010; Chang Kyung-Sup and Song Min-Young: The Stranded Individualizer under Compressed Modernity, in: British Journal of Sociology 2010; Mitsunori Ishida et al. a .: The Individualization of Relationships in Japan, in: Soziale Welt 2010; Young-Hee Shim and Sang-Jin Han: 'Family-Oriented Individualization' and Second Modernity, in: Soziale Welt 2010.
29. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande: Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Non-European and European Variations of the Second Modern Age, in: Social World 2010.
30. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande (eds.): British Journal of Sociology, Special Issue 2010; Ulrich Beck (Ed.): Social World, Special Issue 2010.
31. ↑ Ulrich Beck: The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity, in: British Journal of Sociology 2000; Ulrich Beck: The cosmopolitan view. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004; Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider: Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences, in: British Journal of Sociology 2006.
32. ^ Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Fernliebe. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011.
33. ↑ Ulrich Beck: The new measurement of inequality among people. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008.
34. ↑ Ulrich Beck: The own God. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008.
35. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Power and counterpower. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002.
36. ↑ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 2007; Ulrich Beck: Cosmopolitanism as Imagined Communities of Global Risk, in: American Behavioral Scientist 2011; Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Fernliebe. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011.
37. ↑ Ulrich Beck: The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity, in: British Journal of Sociology 2000; Ulrich Beck: Cosmopolitan Sociology: Outline of a Paradigm Shift, in: M. Rovisco / M. Nowicka (Ed.): The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Ashgate, Farnham 2011; Ulrich Beck: We Do Not Live in an Age of Cosmopolitanism but in an Age of Cosmopolitization: The 'Global Other' Is in Our Midst, in: Irish Journal of Sociology 2011.
38. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Power and counterpower in the global age. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002.
39. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande: The cosmopolitan Europe. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004.
40. ↑ Ulrich Beck: The own God. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008.
41. ↑ Ulrich Beck: The new measurement of inequality among people. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008.
42. ^ Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Fernliebe. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011.
43. ↑ Beck, Grande: Das cosmopolitan Europe 2004, p. 32.
44. ↑ Beck / Grande: Das cosmopolitan Europe 2004, p. 35.
45. ↑ Beck / Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa 2004, pp. 45–47.
46. ↑ Beck / Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa 2004, p. 146.
47. ↑ Beck, Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa 2004, p. 76 ff., P. 161.
48. ↑ Beck, Grande: Das cosmopolitan Europe 2004, p. 206.
49. ^ Beck / Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa 2004, p. 283; 285.
50. ↑ Beck / Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa 2004, p. 239, p. 352 f.
51. ↑ Beck / Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa 2004, pp. 382–384.
52. ↑ Ulrich Beck, Angelika Poferl: Introduction. In: Beck, Poferl (ed.): Große Armut , große Reichtum 2010, p. 11 f.
53. ↑ Ulrich Beck, Angelika Poferl: Introduction. In: Beck, Poferl (ed.): Große Armut , große Reichtum 2010, p. 14 f.
54. ↑ Peter von Becker: The democratic existentialist. In: Der Tagesspiegel, January 4, 2015, p. 23.
55. ^ Ulrich Beck: Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, chap. VI.
56. ^ Ulrich Beck: Brave new world of work. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007.
57. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Power and counterpower. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002.
58. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Outraged, Europeans . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 2011 ( online ).
59. ↑ Ulrich Beck: What is globalization? Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 224 f.
60. ↑ Ulrich Beck: We have become a laboratory. In: the daily newspaper . April 1, 2011.
61. ↑ Peter von Becker : The democratic existentialist. In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 4, 2015, p. 23.
62. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Johannes Willms: Freedom or Capitalism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000, p. 16.
63. ↑ manuelcastells.info ( Memento from April 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
64. ↑ Eva Illouz : The Optimist. On the death of the great sociologist Ulrich Beck. In: The time . January 8, 2015, p. 49.
65. ↑ Eva Illouz: The Optimist. On the death of the great sociologist Ulrich Beck. In: The time. January 8, 2015, p. 49.
66. ↑ Quoted from Peter Weingart et al. a. (Ed.): Working report on the teaching research project: 'The importance of media for the reputation of scientists'. ( Memento from November 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Bielefeld University, 1998, p. 60.
67. ^ Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Fernliebe. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011, p. 15 f.
68. ^ Will Atkinson: Beck, Individualization and the Death of Class. In: British Journal of Sociology. 2007; Cosmo Howard (Ed.): Contested Individualization. Palgrave Macmillian, New York 2007; Peter A. Berger, Ronald Hitzler (Ed.): Individualizations. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2010.
69. ↑ Gabe Mythen: Ulrich Beck: A Critical Introduction to the Risk Society. Pluto Press, London 2004; Iain Wilkinson: Risk, Vulnerability and Everday Life. Routledge, London 2010.
70. ↑ Craig Calhoun: Beck, Asia and Second Modernity. In: British Journal of Sociology. 2010; Paul Gilroy: Planetarity and Cosmopolitics. In: British Journal of Sociology. 2010; Sarat Maharaj: Small Change of the Universal. In: British Journal of Sociology. 2010; Ulrich Beck: Kiss the Frog: The Cosmopolitan Turn in Sociology and Raewyn Connell: How Can We Weave a World Sociology? In: Global Dialogue - Newsletter for the International Sociological Association. 2010; Gerard Delanty (Ed.): The Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies. Routledge, London 2012.
71. ^ Joachim Güntner: Obituary for Ulrich Beck. Think about the disaster in order to avoid it. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 4th January 2015.
72. ↑ Collaborative Research Center 536 "Reflexive Modernization" ( Memento from April 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
73. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Wolfgang Bonß (eds.): The modernization of modernity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001; Ulrich Beck and Christoph Lau (eds.): Delimitation and decision. Frankfurt am Main 2004; Special issue of the specialist journal Social World: Theory and Empiricism of Reflexive Modernization, 2005; Wolfgang Bonß and Christoph Lau (eds.): Power and rule in reflexive modernity. Velbrück, Weilerswist 2011.
74. ↑ z. B. Stephan Leibfried, Lutz Leisering u. a .: time of poverty. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995; Peter A. Berger: Individualization. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1996; Renate Höfer, Heiner Keupp and Florian Straus: Processes of social localization in scenes and organizations, in: Betina Hollstein and Florian Straus (Eds.): Qualitative network analysis. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006; Werner Schneider, Andreas Hirseland, Jutta Allmendinger and Christine Wimbauer: Beyond the male breadwinner model? Money arrangements in everyday relationships between double-earner couples, in: Sabine Berghahn (Ed.): Maintenance and livelihood security. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2007.
75. ↑ z. B. Antony Giddens: Consequences of Modernity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996; Bruno Latour: Is Re-modernization Occurring - And If So, How to Prove It ?, in: Theory, Culture & Society 2003; MJ Williams: (In) Security Studies, Reflexive Modernization and the Risk Society, in: Cooperation and Conflict 2008.
76. ↑ Elmar J. Koenen: Leitmotive. Thematic continuities in Ulrich Beck's work. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.): Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project. On the way to another sociology , 2004, p. 24 f.
77. ↑ Elmar J. Koenen: Leitmotive. Thematic continuities in Ulrich Beck's work. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.): Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project. On the way to a different sociology. 2004, p. 28.
78. ↑ Elmar J. Koenen: Leitmotive. Thematic continuities in Ulrich Beck's work. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.): Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project. On the way to a different sociology. 2004, p. 30 f.
79. ^ Joachim Güntner: Obituary for Ulrich Beck. Think about the disaster in order to avoid it. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, January 4, 2015
80. ↑ Eva Illouz : The Optimist. On the death of the great sociologist Ulrich Beck. In: Die Zeit , January 8, 2015, p. 49.
81. ^ Ulrich Beck: Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 48.
82. ^ Will Atkinson: Beck, Individualization and the Death of Class, in: British Journal of Sociology 2007; Ulrich Beck and Angelika Poferl (eds.): Great poverty, great wealth. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010; Göran Therborn: The Return of Class, in: Global Dialogue - Newsletter for the International Sociological Association 2011.
83. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Johannes Willms: Freedom or Capitalism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 136-144; Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, Chapter X: Global inequality, local vulnerability; Ulrich Beck: The remeasurement of inequality. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008; Ulrich Beck: Beyond Class and Nation, in: Social World 2008.
84. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Johannes Willms: Freedom or Capitalism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 137, 140. When asked: does that exclude global poverty movements? Beck replies: No, on the contrary. However, this would have to be conveyed through the new communication media. Then there could be "a global anti-globalization movement against global poverty that reacts to the radicalization of inequalities and awakens the world conscience". (Ibid., P. 141)
85. ↑ Gabe Mythen: Ulrich Beck: A Critical Introduction to the Risk Society. Pluto Press, London 2004.
86. ^ Cosmo Howard (Ed.): Contested Individualization. Palgrave Macmillian, New York 2007; Yunxiang Yan: The Individualization of Chinese Society. Berg, Oxford 2009; Mette Halskov Hansen and Rune Svarverud 2010: iChina: The Rise of the Individual in Chinese Society. NIAS Press, Copenhagen 2010.
87. ^ Will Atkinson: Beck, Individualization and the Death of Class, in: British Journal of Sociology 2007; Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Individualization. Sage Publications, London 2002; Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Global Generations and the Trap of Methodological Nationalism: For a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Youth and Generation, in: European Sociological Review 2009; Dan Woodman: The Mysterious Case of the Pervasive Choice Biography, in: Journal of Youth Studies 2009; Steven Roberts: Misrepresenting 'Choice Biographies', in: Journal of Youth Studies 2010; Fritz Böhle and Margit Weihrich (eds.): Acting under uncertainty. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009; Peter A. Berger and Ronald Hitzler (eds.): Individualizations. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2010.
88. ↑ Steven Threadgold: Should I Pitch My Tent in the Middle Ground? On 'Middling Tendency', Beck and Inequality in Youth Sociology, in: Journal of Youth Studies 2011.
89. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Jenseits von Klasse und Nation, in: Soziale Welt 2008, p. 303.
90. ^ Paul de Beer: How Individualized are the Dutch ?, in: Current Sociology 2007.
91. ^ Ulrich Beck: Risk Society. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 210.
92. ↑ Zygmunt Bauman: Foreword, in: Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim: Individualization. Sage Publications, London 2002.
93. ^ Paul de Beer: How Individualized are the Dutch ?, in: Current Sociology 2007, pp. 404-406.
94. ↑ Yunxiang Yan: The Chinese Path to Individualization. In: British Journal of Sociology 2010.
95. ↑ see also Angelika Poferl: Orientation on the subject ?, in: Fritz Böhle and Margit Weihrich (eds.): Acting under uncertainty. VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009.
96. ^ Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider: Memory in the Global Age: The Holocaust. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001; Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller: Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences, in: Global Networks 2002; Daniel Chernilo: A Social Theory of the Nation State: The Political Forms of Modernity beyond Methodological Nationalism. Routledge, London 2007; Gerard Delanty: The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009; Maria Rovisco and Magdalena Nowicka (Eds.): The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Ashgate, Farnham 2011.
97. ^ Bryan S. Turner: Classical Sociology and Cosmopolitanism, in, British Journal of Sociology 2006; Wolf Lepenies: Auguste Comte. Hanser Verlag, Munich 2010.
98. ↑ Immanuel Wallerstein: The Modern World System. Academic Press, New York 1974; Niklas Luhmann: Die Weltgesellschaft, in: ders .: Sociological Enlightenment Volume 2. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1975.
99. ^ Gerard Delanty: The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009.
100. ^ Yishai Blank: Introduction - The Reality of Cosmopolitanism, in: Ulrich Beck: Cosmopolitanism: A Critical Theory for the 21st Century. Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv 2011 (Hebrew edition, Israel)
101. ↑ Eva Illouz : The Optimist. On the death of the great sociologist Ulrich Beck. In: Die Zeit , January 8, 2015, p. 49.
102. ↑ Ulrich Schwarz: Reflexive Modernity - not for the first time, in: Arch + 2002.
103. ↑ Ulrich Beck and Wolfgang Bonß (eds.): The modernization of modernity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001.
104. ↑ Richard Münch 1997: Global Dynamics, Local Living Worlds: The Difficult Path into World Society; Richard Münch 2002: The "Second Modern Age": Reality or Fiction? Critical questions to the theory of “reflexive” modernization, in KZFSS; Peter Wagner 2009: Modernism as Experience and Interpretation. A new sociology to modernity.
105. ↑ Bruno Latour: We have never been modern. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995.
106. ↑ Ulrich Beck: Capitalism without work . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1996, pp. 140 ff., 144, 146 ( online ). Quote: “This model of an active society is not about replacing paid work with unpaid work, as is repeatedly suggested. Such models ultimately remain under the spell of the working society. That is too short: Instead of work, there is work (housework, family work, etc.). "
107. ↑ Regina Becker-Schmidt: Self-reflection as scientific judgment, reflexivity as social potential. Notes on approaches to critical theory. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 53.
108. ↑ Regina Becker-Schmidt: Self-reflection as scientific judgment, reflexivity as social potential. Notes on approaches to critical theory. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 60 f.
109. ↑ Regina Becker-Schmidt: Self-reflection as scientific judgment, reflexivity as social potential. Notes on approaches to critical theory. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 62 f.
110. ↑ Regina Becker-Schmidt: Self-reflection as scientific judgment, reflexivity as social potential. Notes on approaches to critical theory. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 67 f.
111. ↑ Armin Nassehi: The aesthetics of accessibility and namability. An unobjective criticism. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (Eds.) Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 242 f.
112. ↑ Armin Nassehi: The aesthetics of accessibility and namability. An unobjective criticism. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 245.
113. ↑ Armin Nassehi: The aesthetics of accessibility and namability. An unobjective criticism. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan project 2004, pp. 250–252.
114. ↑ Armin Nassehi: The aesthetics of accessibility and namability. An unobjective criticism. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 253.
115. ^ Gerhard Schulze: Rescue attempts on the edge of epistemological desperation. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 228.
116. ↑ “In science, this second meta-level is primarily constituted by methodology, in technology, among other things, through the latest scientific findings, in production through the latest achievements in technology and through management consulting, in private consumption through the latest products Advertising, consumer information and advisory literature. Only with the help of the second meta-level could the respective basic reflection (research, invent, rationalize, select and consume) gain its modern dynamic. ”(Gerhard Schulze: Rescue attempts on the edge of epistemological desperation. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (Ed.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 233.)
117. ↑ Ibid.
118. ^ Gerhard Schulze: Rescue attempts on the edge of epistemological desperation. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 235 f.
119. ^ Gerhard Schulze: Rescue attempts on the edge of epistemological desperation. In: Angelika Poferl, Natan Sznaider (eds.) Ulrich Becks cosmopolitan project 2004, p. 240.
120. ^ German-British Forum Awards ( Memento of November 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
121. ↑ schwarzkopf-stiftung.de ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
122. ↑ Program XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) 
123. ↑ Sociologist Prof. Dr. Ulrich Beck becomes the new honorary doctor of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Communication from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt dated November 8, 2010; Retrieved January 3, 2015. 
124. ↑ God is dangerous . In: Die Zeit , No. 52/2007; Ulrich Beck with five theses on religion.