Cosmopolitan Vision

by Ulrich Beck, Ciaran Cronin

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological analysis of the cosmopolitan implications of globalization. Beck draws extensively on empirical and theoretical analyses of such phenomena as migration, war and terror, as well as a range of literary and historical works, to weave a rich discursive web in which analytical, critical and methodological themes intertwine effortlessly.
Contrasting a ‘cosmopolitan vision’ or ‘outlook’ sharpened by awareness of the transformative and transgressive impacts of globalization with the ‘national outlook’ neurotically fixated on the familiar reference points of a world of nations-states-borders, sovereignty, exclusive identities-Beck shows how even opponents of globalization and cosmopolitanism are trapped by the logic of reflexive modernization into promoting the very processes they are opposing.
A persistent theme running through the book is the attempt to recover an authentically European tradition of cosmopolitan openness to otherness and tolerance of difference. What Europe needs, Beck argues, is the courage to unite forms of life which have grown out of language, skin colour, nationality or religion with awareness that, in a radically insecure world, all are equal and everyone is different.

Genres: Sociology, Philosophy, Social Science

216 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2005

About the author

Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist. He coined the term risk society and was a professor of Sociology at Munich University and the London School of Economics.

Reviews

[kiran Banerjee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good god this book is terribly written; though not without a modicum of insight or conceptual usefulness. While much of it seems to be a pack of disjointed reflections mixed with bald assertion, Beck's notion of methodological nationalism is of some analytic use, and looks like it can travel. Alas, I cannot say much for the rest of the book, which is rather a disappointment coming from the theorist of risk society.

[Ivan Dmitriev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Основное впечатление от этой книги: цепочка сомнительных переходов от одного спорного утверждения к другому. Сначала отнёс это на несовершенство перевода, но прочитав оставленный здесь единственный отзыв, понял, что дело всё же в источнике. При том что идеи, высказанные автором, я в целом разделяю, и ряд ценных замечаний и важных поставленных вопросов взял себе на заметку.