World Risk Society

Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

"Full of ideas and insights and thus extremely stimulating reading ... essential reading for those seeking to bridge the gap between theory about societies and theories about world politics - a bridge that is urgently needed."-- Millennium: Journal of International Studies "A critical and dispassionate account of ecological threats that are wealth-driven, poverty-driven, or are owed to nuclear, biological and chemical means of mass destruction; a powerful discourse on risk calculation and insurability that permeates the book in an almost metaphorical sense; and, as a bonus for the disappointed student of socialist political economy, a poignant if implicit refutation of liberal economics and rational choice theory as meaningful explanatory tools of reality." -- Canadian Journal of Political Science 'This challenging collection of essays by one of the major social theorists of our time is essential reading for anyone interested to get to know the breadth of Ulrich Beck's work on the 'Risk Society'. Addressing academics and policy makers, Beck analyses the impact of the 'World Risk Society' on the environment and considers the implications of this globalization of 'organized irresponsibility' for socio-political and economic action. World Risk Society is social theory at its contemporary best: powerful, engaged and socially relevant.' -- Barbara Adam, Cardiff University

• Acknowledgements vii1 Introduction: The Cosmopolitan Manifesto 12 World Risk Society as Cosmopolitan Society? Ecological Questions in a Framework of Manufactured Uncertainties 193 From Industrial Society to Risk Society: Questions of Survival, Social Structure and Ecological Enlightenment 484 Risk Society and the Welfare State 725 Subpolitics: Ecology and the Disintegration of Institutional Power 916 Knowledge or Unawareness? Two Perspectives on ‘Reflexive Modernization’ 1097 Risk Society Revisited: Theory, Politics, Critiques and Research Programmes 133Noted 153References 161Index 168