Ulrich Beck 
World at Risk 

Twenty years ago Ulrich Beck published Risk Society, a book
that called our attention to the dangers of environmental
catastrophes and changed the way we think about contemporary
societies. During the last two decades, the dangers highlighted by
Beck have taken on new forms and assumed ever greater significance.
Terrorism has shifted to a global arena, financial crises have
produced worldwide consequences that are difficult to control and
politicians have been forced to accept that climate change is not
idle speculation. In short, we have come to see that today we live
in a world at risk.

A new feature of our world risk society is that risk is produced
for political gain. This political use of risk means that fear
creeps into modern life. A need for security encroaches on our
liberty and our view of equality.

However, Beck is anything but an alarmist and believes that the
anticipation of catastrophe can fundamentally change global
politics. We have the opportunity today to reconfigure power in
terms of what Beck calls a ‘cosmopolitan material
politics’.

World at Risk is a timely and far-reaching analysis of
the structural dynamics of the modern world, the global nature of
risk and the future of global politics by one of the most original
and exciting social thinkers writing today.

表中的内容

Acknowledgements vii

1 Introduction: Staging Global Risk 1

2 Relations of Defi nition as Relations of Domination: Who Decides What is and is Not a Risk? 24

3 The ‘Cosmopolitan Moment’ of World Risk Society or: Enforced Enlightenment 47

4 Clash of Risk Cultures or: The Overlapping of the State of Normalcy and the State of Exception 67

5 Global Public Sphere and Global Subpolitics or: How Real is Catastrophic Climate Change? 81

6 The Provident State or: On the Antiquatedness of Linear Pessimism Concerning Progress 109

7 Knowledge or Non-Knowing? Two Perspectives of ‘Reflexive Modernization’ 115

8 The Insurance Principle: Criticism and Counter-Criticism 129

9 Felt War, Felt Peace: Staging Violence 140

10 Global Inequality, Local Vulnerability: The Conflict Dynamics of Environmental Hazards Must be Studied within the Framework of Methodological Cosmopolitanism 160

11 Critical Theory of World Risk Society 187

12 Dialectics of Modernity: How the Crises of Modernity Follow from the Triumphs of Modernity 212

Notes 235

References and Bibliography 243

Index 261

关于作者

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