SPRINGER BRIEFS ON PIONEERS IN SCIENCE AND PRACTICE 18 Ulrich Beck Ulrich Beck Pioneer in Cosmopolitan Sociology and Risk Society 123 SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice Volume 18 Series editor Hans Günter Brauch For furthervolumes: http://www.springer.com/series/10970 http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_PSP.htm Ulrich Beck Ulrich Beck Pioneer in Cosmopolitan Sociology and Risk Society 123 Ulrich Beck Instituteof Sociology LudwigMaximilian University Munich Germany ISSN 2194-3125 ISSN 2194-3133 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-319-04989-2 ISBN 978-3-319-04990-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-04990-8 Springer ChamHeidelberg New YorkDordrecht London LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014931862 (cid:2)TheAuthor(s)2014 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionor informationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication,neithertheauthorsnortheeditorsnorthepublishercanacceptanylegalresponsibilityfor anyerrorsoromissionsthatmaybemade.Thepublishermakesnowarranty,expressorimplied,with respecttothematerialcontainedherein. Acknowledgment:Thisphotographisfromthepersonalphotocollectionoftheauthor Copyediting:PDDr.HansGünterBrauch,AFES-PRESSe.V.,Mosbach,Germany Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) Preface Every now and then a new way of thinking about the social world appears.1 And oncethathappensitisdifficulttoimaginehowsociologyhadmanagedwithoutthat newwayofthinking.Itsimplyseemssoobvious.Further,itisoftendifficulttosee whyithadtakensolongtogettothatnovelwayofthinking;oncediscovereditis hardtoimaginewhatallthefusswasabout.Thenewtheoryorconceptormethod rapidlybecomespartoftheacademicfurniture,onepropthatsupportsorholdsup sociologicalthinking.Thedistinctivenessoftheinnovationmaythusbehardtosee evenjustafewyearslater.Itisnormalized,makingpossiblesomeunderstandingof theextraordinarilyopaqueandhardtofathomsocialworld. Teachingstudentscanbedifficultsincesomeofthetimeoneistryingtoexplain just why a particular theory or concept or method was such an innovation, although it has now become part of the furniture. The teacher has to recreate the disciplinary world before that new way of thinking and this is something that contemporary,coolstudentsmayfindhardtoseethepointof.Iwasstruckbythis issue while reading obituaries of Robert K. Merton, who recently died, aged 92, and who was responsible for probably more enduring innovations than any other sociologist during the second half of the twentieth century. But explaining the nature of Merton’s contribution to those young people, who at least as teenagers will soon only know the twenty-first century, will not be easy. It is also not easy to convey the sheer difficulties involved in generating really productive new ways of thinking. They are not simple to achieve. Indeed most innovations have a very short shelf life; they never survive more than a few outings within various books, articles, and papers. Like new start-up companies, newwaysofthinkingdieratherrapidlyandtheauthor’sinnovationremainsatbest a small footnote in the history of the discipline. Not that small footnotes are unimportant since building on the small footnotes of others is how all disciplines make even faltering progress. Merton incidentally emphasized the importance of developing intellectual work that builds on the shoulders of giants. 1 This text was first published as: John Urry: ‘‘Thinking Society Anew’’, in: Ulrich Beck and JohannesWillms:ConversationswithUlrichBeck(Cambridge,UK:PolityPress,2004):1–10. Permission to republish this text was granted by Prof. Urry and on 26 September 2013 by Ms.SarahDobsonforPolityPress. v vi Preface Intermittently, however, something more than a small footnote does occur and the new way of thinking becomes part of the furniture. Indeed, to become part of the furniture is the best measure of success and scholarly achievement. Within sociologytherearerelativelyfewsuchbitsoffurniture.Thisisinpartbecausethe social world is so opaque, social systems are incredibly open, and there are extraordinarily diverse processes affecting human practices moving through time and across space. Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk society is one such innovation that has become partofthefurnitureofmodemsociology,aninnovationnicelysimpletograspbut whichconveysaprofoundlyilluminatingargumentthatdealswithhowtheresults of social activities powerfully and unpredictably move through time and space. Beck argues that there is an epochal shift from industrial to risk societies. The former were based upon industry and social class, upon welfare states, and upon the distribution of various goods organized and distributed through the state, especially of good health, extensive education, and equitable forms of social welfare. There were organized societies, there was a national community offate, and there were large-scale political movements especially based upon industrial classdivisionsthatfoughtoverthedistributionofthesevariousgoods.Inthepost- war period in Western Europe there was a welfare state settlement in such industrial societies based upon achieving a fairer distribution of such goods. Bycontrasttheconceptofrisksocietyisbasedontheimportanceofbads.Risk societies involve the distribution of bads that flow within and across various territories and are not confined within the borders of a single society. Nuclear radiation is the key example of this, something few sociologists had ever exam- ined. The risks of nuclear radiation are deterritorialized. They cannot be confined into any specific space nor into any current sector of time. Such risks thus cannot be insured against.They are uncontrolled and the consequencesincalculable. The unpredictable consequences of radiation stemming from nuclear energy will last into the unimaginable future. These risks have largely resulted fromthe actions ofpeople—of stateofficials, scientists,technologists,andcorporations—treatingtheworldasalaboratory.These risks are thus not simply physical effects although they have profound physical consequences.Suchrisksaredifficulttoseeorevenmorebroadlytosense,andyet theycanenterandtransformthebodyfromwithin;theyarenotexternaltohumans. ThisconceptoftherisksocietyofBeckwasakindofrevelation.Itprovidedfor sociologyawayofspeakingofthephysicalworldandofitsrisksthatbroughtina striking array of new topics. In effect it enabled people to speak of things, indeed in a way to see things that they had been trying to speak of and to see, but where the concepts had been chronically lacking. First,then,thenotionofrisksocietyputsontothesociologicalagendathevery natureofthephysicalworldandoftheneedtocreateasociologyof-and-withthe environment. No longer is it possible to believe that there is a pure sociology confined and limited to exploring the social in-and-of itself. The distinction of society and nature dissolves. The thesis of risk society brings out that the most important phenomena within the world are social-and-physical, such as global warming, extreme weather events, global health risks such as AIDS, biological Preface vii warfare, BSE, nuclear terrorism, worldwide automobility, nuclear accidents, and so on. None of these are purely social but nor are they simply physical either. Risk society brings out how important aspects of people’s lives are structured, and not through social processes alone such as the distribution of goods in a welfare state society. Rather, major aspects of human welfare stem from the movementand potential impact ofthese person-made risks. So people’s lives, we have come to understand, are affected by the global spread of AIDS, by global warming, by the ubiquitous spreading of the motorcar, by acid rain, and so on. Welfare is a matter of bads as well as of goods. Second, the risk society brings out the importance of human bodies within sociological analysis. In going about their lives, humans sensuously encounter other people and physical realities. There are different senses—and indeed sensescapes—that organize how social arrangements are structured and persist. Moreover, some such realities can in effect get inside the body. In the case of nuclearradiationgeneratedbythe1985explosionattheChernobylnuclearpower plant (in what isnow the Ukraine), peoplerightacrossNorthern Europehadtheir livestransformedbysomethingthatcouldnotbedirectlysensed(intheUKsheep farmers in Wales and Cumbria, for example). Only experts with specialized recording equipment could monitor such direct exposure, while some effects of Chernobyl are still being generated decades later as children are being born with multiple deformities resulting from the explosion nearly20 yearsago.Thenakedsensesareinsufficient—sohumanshavetodepend uponexpertsandsystemsofexpertisetomonitorwhethertheyaresubjecttorisks thatmaygetinsidetheirbodies.Sobodiesaresubjecttoexpertintrusions,aswith themonitoringofHIV/AIDS,asriskspassinandthroughhumans.Andthisinturn generates complex relationships between expert knowledge and lay forms of knowledge, and especially with how the latter in a risk-expert society are often treated as inferior, subordinate, and replaceable by expertise. Third, these risks know no boundaries. Rich and poor people, rich and poor countries were all subject to the nuclear radiation that emanated from Chernobyl. Such radiation does not stop at national borders nor at the homes of the rich, althoughtherearebiginequalitiesinthedistributionofexpertresourcestoremedy the unintended consequences of such risks. Thisrisksocietyresultsfromthechangingnatureofscience.Onceuponatime sciencewasconfinedtothelaboratory—aspatiallyandtemporallyconfinedsiteof science. Although there are examples of science escaping—most famously in MaryShelley’sstoryofthemonstercreatedbyFrankenstein—generally thisdoes not happen. But nuclear energy and weapons change this equation. Suddenly the whole Earth is the laboratory—the monster has escaped and risks now flow in, through, over, and under national and indeed other borders. The mobility of genetically modified (GM) crops is a more recent example that shows the diffi- culties of trying to limit the location and impact of testing GM crops within a confined area (in so-called field trials). Modern science according to Beck increasingly treats the whole world as its laboratory and this spreads risks across theglobe.Inrecentformulations,Beckemphasizestheglobalnatureofrisks;that there is not so much a risk society as a global risk culture. viii Preface Thisargumentabouttheborderlessnessoftherisksocietyhas,togetherwiththe writings of many others, developed the analysis of globalization and of the implications of this for sociology. Beck has especially shown the nature and limitationsofwhathecallsmethodologicalnationalism.Whatdoesthismeanand what is wrong with it? He means that sociology has been historically concerned with the analysis of societies, with each society being based upon a distinct national state (or nation- state). So there is a system of nation-states and sociologists study their particular society defined in national state terms. The nation-state provides the container of society and hence, the boundary of sociology. Moreover, sociologists tended to generalize from their particular society to describe how society in general is organized. Especially American sociology developed in this way, presuming that all societies were more or less like that of theUSA,justpoorer!Itwasperfectlypossibletostudythatparticularsocietyand thentogeneralizeasthoughall,oratleastmost,othersocieties(atleastthosethat mattered!)weremuchthesame.Thisledtodebateastothegeneralnatureoforder orofconflictwithinsocietybasedupontheparticularlydistinctUSpattern.Order and conflict theories were to be tested within the USA and it was presumed that these conclusions could then be generalized to all societies or at least to all rich industrial societies. It is not hard now to see many problems in this although it took Beck and various others to expose its limitations. For decades it was simply how sociology worked; it was a taken-for-granted way of doing sociology. First, though, we now know that societies do differ a lot. The US and Scandinavian societies both have high levels of economic wealth. But the former has never had a welfare state while the latter countries have continued with a substantialwelfarestate(manygoods).Sogeneralizingfromanyparticularsociety as though that tells one about all societies (or even all rich societies) is wrong. Second,itisalsoclearlywrongtopresumethatallsocietiesareonsomekindof evolutionaryschemeandthateachwilldeveloptowardstheWesternmodel(even ifthereweresuchasingleWesternmodel).Beckandothershavehelpedtosubvert any sense of a single evolutionary scale of the development of society from the less to the more developed. Third, global transformations represent a meta-change that makes us develop new concepts to displace what Beck rather provocatively calls zombie concepts. Zombie concepts are those that were appropriate to the period of methodological nationalism. They are not appropriate to the contemporary period. Onezombieconceptisthatofthehouseholdthatoperatedwithinthetimeofthe firstmodernity.Butnowtherearesomanydifferentkindsofhouseholds.Because ofthenormalchaosoflovethereareverymanylovingandlivingrelationships,so nosinglenotionofthehouseholdcanremain.Beckusesthenotionofwhowashes their clothes together as an illustrative indicator of the huge variety of now who counts as a household member and who does not. Overall, Beck seeks to capture the sense that late twentieth-century societies underwent an epochal shift. But he rejects the idea that this is a move from the moderntothepostmodern,aswascharacteristicallyarguedbyanalystsadecadeor Preface ix soago.ForBeckthese areall modern societies; there isnotamovingbeyond the moderntoitsopposite.Soratherhelpfullyhesuggeststhereisasecondmodernity. The first modernity was nation-state centered, the second is non-nation-state centered. In the second, the indissoluble link of society and nation-state is fundamentally broken with the emergence of a logic offlows including of course the flows of risks discussed above. In such a situation modernity is radicalized, subjecting itself to reflexive processes. Second or reflexive modernization disen- chants and dissolves its own taken-for-granted foundations. The normal family, career, and life history have all to be reassessed and renegotiated. The notion in, for example, Talcott Parsons’ writings that each society is a closed and self- equilibrating system dissolves, albeit at uneven speed and impact. Thissecondmodernitycanbeseeninmanydifferentaspects.Particularly,what is emerging is a banal cosmopolitanism comparable with the banal nationalism characteristic of the first modernity (that is mostshown in waving nationalflags). Banal cosmopolitanism is seen in the huge array of foodstuffs and cuisines rou- tinely available in many towns and cities across the world. It is possible with enough money to eat the world. What others have viewed as a postmodern eclecticism is seen by Beck as not against the modern, but as rather a new reflexivityaboutthatmodernity,ascuisines(andmostotherculturalpractices)are assembled, compared, juxtaposed, and reassembled out of diverse components from multiple countries around the world. There is thus coming into being a new system in which everyday practices involveexceptionallevelsofcosmopolitaninterdependence.Thistransformspeople andplacesfromwithin,especiallywiththeproliferationofmanynewandextensive transnational forms of life. Probably the most extensive of these is that of the overseasChinese,atransnationalsocietywithtensofmillionsofmembersaround theworld.Inmanywaysthisisapowerfulsociety.Itissimplythatitsmembersdo not live within a single territory. We thus need ways of understanding the devel- opmentsoftransnationalsocietiesthathavenothingtodowithasinglenation-state thatactedasitscontainer.ThisisthesecondmodernityaccordingtoBeck. And in this analysis Beck strongly emphasizes the distinction between glob- alism and globalization. These words may sound the same but there is a distinct difference in meaning. Globalism involves the idea of the world market, of the virtues of neoliberal capitalist growth, and of the need to move capital, products, and people across a relativelyborderlessworld.Andthisiswhatmanybusinessandotherwritersmean by globalization. They argue that globalism generated much economic growth over the past two decades, especially since Reagan and Thatcher inspired the general deregulation of markets in the 1980s. Many, of course, object to this neoliberal globalism but Beck emphasizes how opposition will not be able to resurrect the power of the nation-state, since that institution and its powers stem from the first not the second modernity. Globalization for Beck and indeed others is a much more multidimensional processofchangethathasirreversiblychangedtheverynatureofthesocialworld and of the place of states within that world. Globalization thus includes the pro- liferationofmultiplecultures(aswithcuisinesfromaroundtheworld),thegrowth x Preface of many transnational forms of life, the emergence of various non-state political actors (from Amnesty International to the World Trade Organization), the paradoxical generation of global protest movements (such as the WTO), the hesitant formation of international states (like the EU), and the general processes of cosmopolitan interdependence (earlier referred to as banal cosmopolitanism). Roughly speaking, Beck argues that globalism is bad (or at least very prob- lematicinitsneoliberalface),globalizationisgood,andisinfacttheonlyvaguely progressive show in town. There is simply no way of turning the clock back to a worldofsovereignnation-states.Thatworldhasbeenlostinthesecondmodernity. We have to go with the grain of contemporary globalization. Intermsofcontemporarypoliticsonemightposethisasaconflictbetweenthe USA and the UN: the USA represents globalism, the UN a hesitant and flawed globalization/cosmopolitanism. These two visions of the second modernity haunt contemporary life, each vying to control and regulate an increasingly turbulent new world. And onereason forthisturbulence isthatbothglobalismandglobalizationare associatedwithincreasedindividualization.Inthefirstmodernitytherewasaclear sense of social structure, with many overlapping and intersecting institutions that formedorstructuredpeople’slives.People’sexperienceswerecontained,ordered, and regulated. Family life, work life, school life, and so on took place within the boundariesofeachsocietythatpossessedaclearandconstrainingsocialstructure. Suchasocialstructurewasbasedondistinctandregulatedsocialroles.Sociology, for most of the last century, sought to describe and analyze such social structures thatmostlyheldpeopleinplace.Sociologyinvestigatedsocialrolesandhowthey fitted together to form social structures. But, say Beck and other analysts, in the second modernity (at least in the rich countriesoftheNorth)thesestructureshavepartiallydissolved,especiallybecause of the very development of global processes. This forces or coerces everyone to liveinmoreindividualizedways.Livesaredisembeddedfromfamily,households, careers,andsoon.Socialrolesarelessclear-cutanddeterminedbyanoverarching social structure. There is a radicalization of individuals who are forced by social andculturalchangetolivemorevaried,flexible,andfluidlives.Beckshowshow globalization coerces people to live less role-centered lives, lives that involve extensive negotiation and dialogue, and where people have themselves to accept responsibility for their actions as they try to work them out with others in their network. This shift might be characterized as the shift from social role in the first modernitytosocialnetworkinthesecond.Italsomeansthatthekeyconceptsfor sociologychange.Soalthoughwestillstudysocialinequality—andindeedacross the globe inequalities seem to have increased—it is less clear that social class is the principal unit of analysis and investigation. Beck rather provocatively has helpedtodeveloptheargumentthatindividualizationisthesocialstructureofthe second modernity and this produces non-linear, open-ended, and ambivalent consequences. This is again a very different vision from most sociology focused around the zombie concepts of the first modernity, especially the idea that social