Abstract
This chapter takes a closer look at one of Beck’s most crucial reorientations—his ‘cosmopolitan turn’, which began in the mid-1990s and went on to be increasingly important in his work (cf. Beck, 1996, 2000c, 2002b, 2005a, 2006, 2009a, 2009c, 2011, 2012a, 2016a, 2016b; Beck & Grande, 2007, 2010; Beck & Sznaider, 2006a, Beck & Levy, 2013). Since Beck’s cosmopolitan perspective does not stand on its own and should be considered part of a broader cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences, I will start with a brief introduction to what makes his cosmopolitanism notable.
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Notes
- 1.
Previously it was put as: ‘The risk society is […] a catastrophic society. In it the state of emergency threatens to become the normal state’ (Beck, 1992 [1986]: 78–79; cf. 1989: 90).
- 2.
Today, however, we also see examples of the opposite, in particular the UK’s withdrawal (Brexit) from the EU on 31 January 2020 and the entry into force of an agreement on the future relationship between the UK and the EU on 1 January 2021.
- 3.
In purely terminological terms, Beck and Grande talk about both ‘empire’ and ‘imperium’. Both words/concepts are derived from the Latin imperium, which means ‘kingdom’, ‘empire’ or ‘dominion’. Beck and Grande specifically use the word ‘empire’ to describe the new cosmopolitan political structures that, in their view, are evolving in Europe today. On the other hand, they use ‘imperium’ to describe the great political and colonial forms of rule of the past, for example, the Roman Empire and the British Empire. I have attempted to maintain this terminological difference as far as possible and it is hopefully obvious from the context whether the term is used in the ‘traditional’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ sense.
- 4.
The UK’s withdrawal from the EU (cf. note 2) reduced the number of member states from 28 to 27. At first glance, Brexit seems to contradict Beck and Grande’s ideas of a ‘cosmopolitanisation of Europe’. Nevertheless, it does confirm their emphasis that the process is by no means a linear ‘automatic development’, but is conflict-riven, discontinuous and has no predetermined outcomes.
- 5.
In the short German Europe (Beck, 2013), Beck sharply criticises Germany’s dominant role in the EU. For example, he looks at the conditions attached to the loans to Greece’s crisis-stricken economy and sees them as a form of interference with a member state’s democratic right to determine its own economic policies. Referring to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s central role in this (neoliberal) austerity policy, Beck speaks—with an ironic allusion to Machiavelli—about the ‘Merkiavelli model’ (das Model Merkiavelli). In other words, he accuses Germany of a strategic, power-oriented approach to politics, which ultimately puts its own national interests above all else (Beck, 2013: 45–65). In doing so, Beck picks up from the author Thomas Mann, who as early as 1953, in the shadow of World War II, argued for the need to replace a ‘German Europe’ with a ‘European Germany’ (Beck, 2013: vii–viii). In other words, Germany must be ‘contained’ within European cooperation, in which the EU is a crucial element.
- 6.
- 7.
However, this leads to a paradox, that is, that regardless of whether trends can be empirically identified as forms of cosmopolitanisation, or vice versa (nationalism, religious fundamentalism, etc.), Beck sees them as confirming his cosmopolitan perspective.
- 8.
The concept and (a seed of) the idea of ‘metamorphosis’ show up at points in Beck’s original theory of the risk society (Beck 1992 [1986]: 14, 81), but only in his later work does it become a key concept or theory (cf. above).
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Rasborg, K. (2021). The World Risk Society as a Cosmopolitan Society?. In: Ulrich Beck. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89201-2_7
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