Abstract
The first edition of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity was published in German in 1986. In it, he introduced the concept of the ‘risk society’, which would go on to assume huge importance not only in sociology, but also in public debate. The central thesis is that the highly developed industrial society of the post-war era has turned into a hyper-complex and uncertain ‘risk society’; one that Beck also sees as synonymous with the emergence of a new modernity (as per the title and subtitle). The concept of the ‘risk society’ takes the dark sides and many newfound uncertainties of the highly differentiated growth society and condenses them into a concise yet stark formula. Risk Society was Beck’s contribution to the sociological tradition of diagnosing the ‘X society’: the welfare society, service society, leisure society, experience society, network society, multi-option society, insurance society, high-speed society, performance society, recognition society and so on.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. https://webarchiv-ulrich-beck.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/biography/; accessed 10/08/21.
- 2.
This is another way in which this book differs from previous introductions to Beck, some of which shy away from a critical-discursive approach (Sørensen & Christiansen, 2013: xx).
- 3.
The biographical information is based on the following sources: Beck’s own website, which has now been replaced by the in memoriam website Ulrich Beck zum Gedenken (cf. https://www.ls2.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/ulrich_beck_zum_gedenken/index.html; accessed 10/08/21); Wikipedia (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Beck; accessed 10/08/21); (Sørensen & Christiansen, 2013: 1–6).
- 4.
Beck’s Habilitation thesis has never been published, but its themes are covered in Beck et al. (1980).
- 5.
The original English title of this five-year research project (2013–18), which was funded by the European Research Council Advanced Grant (ERC) and interrupted after approximately 18 months by Beck’s death, was ‘Methodological Cosmopolitanism: In the Laboratory of Climate Change’ (the Cosmo-Climate Research Project) (cf. https://webarchiv-ulrich-beck.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/en/ulrich-beck-erc-advanced-grant-methodological-cosmopolitanism-in-the-laboratory-of-climate-change/; accessed 10/08/21).
- 6.
Including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine, The Guardian, The Times Higher Education, Le Monde and The New York Times.
- 7.
- 8.
Giddens’ obituary appeared in Süddeutsche Zeitung 05-6/1/2015 (for an English version, see: https://www.scribd.com/document/372147109/Ulrich-Beck-Obituary-by-Anthony-Giddens; accessed 10/08/21).
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Rasborg, K. (2021). Introduction. In: Ulrich Beck. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89201-2_1
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