Beck&Grande 2ndModernity&Cosmopolitanism 10

Varieties of second modernity: the cosmopolitanturn in social and political theory and research1

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Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande

Abstract

The theme of this special issue is the necessity of a cosmopolitan turn in social andpolitical theory. The question at the heart of this introductory chapter takes thechallenge of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’, already addressed in a SpecialIssue on Cosmopolitan Sociology in this journal (Beck and Sznaider 2006), animportant step further: How can social and political theory be opened up, theo-retically as well as methodologically and normatively, to a historically new,entangled Modernity which threatens its own foundations? How can it account forthe fundamental fragility, the mutability of societal dynamics (of unintended side-effects, domination and power), shaped by the globalization of capital and risks atthe beginning of the twenty-first century? What theoretical and methodologicalproblems arise and how can they be addressed in empirical research? In thefollowing, we will develop this ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in four steps: firstly, we presentthe major conceptual tools for a theory of cosmopolitan modernities; secondly, wede-construct Western modernity by using examples taken from research on indi-vidualization and risk; thirdly, we address the key problem of methodologicalcosmopolitanism, namely the problem of defining the appropriate unit of analysis;and finally, we discuss normative questions, perspectives, and dilemmas of a theoryof cosmopolitan modernities, in particular problems of political agency and pros-pects of political realization.

Keywords: Second Modernity; methodological cosmopolitanism; world risksociety; individualization; cosmopolitization; political agency

I. Introduction

When a world order collapses, that’s the moment when reflection should begin.Surprisingly, this has not been the case with the type of social theory dominant

Beck (Department of Sociology, Ludwig-Maximilian University and London School of Economics and Politial Science) andGrande (Geschwister-Scholl-Institut fur Politische Wissenschaft, Ludwig-Maxililians-Universitat Munchen) (Correspondingauthor email: [email protected])© London School of Economics and Political Science 2010 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online.Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01320.x

The British Journal of Sociology 2010 Volume 61 Issue 3

today. The mainstream of social theory still floats loftily above the lowlands ofepochal transformations (climate change, financial crisis, nation-states) in acondition of universalistic superiority and instinctive uncertainty. This univer-salistic social theory, whether structuralist, interactionist, Marxist or systems-theoretical, is now both out of date and provincial. Out of date because itexcludes a priori what can be observed empirically: a fundamental transfor-mation of society and politics within Modernity (from First to Second Moder-nity); provincial because it mistakenly absolutizes the trajectory, the historicalexperience and future expectation of Western, i.e. predominantly European orNorth American, modernization and thereby also fails to see its particularity.

Consequently the main theme of this special issue is the necessity of acosmopolitan turn in social and political theory. The question at the heart ofthis introductory chapter takes the challenge of ‘methodological cosmopoli-tanism’, already addressed in a Special Issue on Cosmopolitan Sociology in thisJournal (Beck and Sznaider 2006a), an important step further: How can socialand political theory be opened up, theoretically as well as methodologicallyand normatively, to a historically new, entangled Modernity which threatens itsown foundations? How can it account for the fundamental fragility and, muta-bility of societal dynamics (of unintended side-effects, domination and power),shaped, as they are, by the globalization of capital and risks at the beginning ofthe twenty-first century? What theoretical and methodological problems ariseand how can they be addressed in empirical research?

It has become a commonplace that national institutions alone are unable tocope with the challenges of regulating global capitalism and responding to newglobal risks (Beck 2009). It is no less obvious that there is no global state orinternational organization capable of regulating global capital and risk in away comparable to the role played by the ‘Keynesian welfare national state’(Jessop 2002) in industrial society. Instead, we can observe a complex recon-stitution of political authority, with which to organize the mechanisms of globaleconomic regulation, risk management and control in ways characterized bynew forms of political interdependence (Grande and Pauly 2005). At present,the politics of the ‘world risk society’ (Beck 1999, 2009) is an extraordinarilyintricate terrain, composed, among other things, of co-ordinated nationalmechanisms, bilateral and multilateral agreements, inter-, trans- and suprana-tional institutions, transnational corporations, private charity foundations, andcivil society groups. Despite this rapidly growing number of global organiza-tions and transnational institutions, there is an increasing unease, nourishednot least by the hesitant responses to the global financial crisis, the Europeancurrency crisis, and the poor results of last global climate conference atCopenhagen that these institutions are proving unable to address the chal-lenges they were created to meet. Similar developments can be observed at thenational level, regarding, for example, democratic institutions, welfare systems,families, etc. Can the World Bank solve the global problem of poverty? Can the

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Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) solve aglobal food crisis? Can the World Trade Organisation effectively regulateglobal trade? It seems as if these institutions do not constitute a sufficient basisfor managing or controlling the global risks and crises created by the globalvictory of industrial capitalism. This is exactly what the transformative dynam-ics of the Second, Cosmopolitan Modernity is about! Isn’t there a gulf ofcenturies between the threats, opportunities and conflict dynamics of border-transcending, radicalized modernization in the twenty-first century and theideas, institutions and structures of industrial capitalism and national stateauthority rooted in the nineteenth century?

And further: What does all that mean for conflict dynamics, in and throughwhich questions of social justice, international law and the building of trans-national regimes and institutions are negotiated? Where and how do cosmo-political situations, forms of action and activities arise? At the centre or theperiphery? From above or below? Are they imposed or voluntary? Can weassume that the diversity of paths and (inter)dependent constellations of theSecond Modernity will resist the integrative pressure emanating from theglobalizing economy, from the global diffusion of human rights or the ‘cosmo-politan imperative’ of world risk society? Must we ‘co-operate or fail’? Howcan ‘imagined cosmopolitan risk communities’ be established across bordersand divisions, opening up, indeed demanding new possibilities of communica-tion and action?

This introductory chapter will present some of the theoretical and method-ological tools needed to answer such questions. It argues that it is impossible totalk meaningfully about methodological cosmopolitanism without pullingdown the walls of Euro-centrism. We need to open up perspectives onto theworld beyond Europe, onto the entanglements of histories of colonization anddomination as well as onto border-transcending dynamics, dependencies, inter-dependencies and intermingling. How? Through a new conceptual architec-ture distinguishing two types of social theory: the singular and the plural. Atheory of the society in the singular means: society neither national nor globalbut society absolutely understood in universal terms; whereas a theory ofsocieties in the plural, refers to the very different paths and contexts of mod-ernization processes. Sociological theory from its very beginning has beenconcerned to formulate a general theory of (modern) society in the singular(and to identify general concepts, principles, structures, systems, and modes ofsocial action and change).This is no longer sufficient, if it ever was. It inevitablyleads to the category error of implicitly applying conclusions drawn from onesociety to society (in general), which then becomes a universal frame ofreference. This is exactly the case with most of the dominant theories incontemporary sociology (Bourdieu, Coleman, Foucault, Giddens, Goffman,Habermas, Luhmann, Meyer, Parsons, and even Beck’s ‘Risk Society’). Con-fusing a theory of one society (of many) with the theory of society as such is

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what we call the self-provincialization of social theory.The form of abstractioncharacteristic of this type of theory is not a sign of professional sophisticationbut of a failure to reflect upon the transformative dynamics of modern soci-eties in the twenty-first century.

The historical and cultural specificity of contemporary social theory can bedemonstrated by examining two of its notable characteristics. First of all,methodological nationalism (Arnoldi 2010; Beck 1997, 2000, 2006; Weiß 2010;Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002): Until recently, social theory has taken thenation-state as its implicit unit of analysis; the terms ‘society’ and ‘culture’implicitly referred to what have been perceived as discrete, self-contained andrelatively homogenous entities bounded by national borders, institutions andlegal frameworks. Accordingly, theory has operated with an unquestionedassumption of a neat correspondence between nation, territory, society andculture. Secondly, as is more generally the case with the humanities, many ofthe foundations of social and political theory were laid during the age ofEuropean empires. Political rule over non-Western territories, resources andpopulations, and the acquisition of economic control, formed the backgroundagainst which Western authors came to grips with other societies (seeKurasawa 2007; Maharaj 2010). This frequently encouraged the denigration ofsuch colonized societies, which were widely perceived as inferior and back-ward compared to their European and American counterparts (‘traditional’).Many theories of modernity have consequently drawn on a very narrow rangeof national experiences (e.g. England/Britain in the economic realm, France inthe political domain and Prussia/Germany in the field of bureaucracy), whichare presumed to be universally valid or, at the very least, a model to bereplicated in other regions of the globe.

We do not argue that a universal theory of modern society as such isimpossible in principle. Rather, we criticize the hegemonic short-circuit fromone society to society (in general). In the Second Modernity, social and politi-cal theory-building must go all the way through the ‘plurality’ of moderniza-tion paths, of Western and non-Western experiences and projects, theirdependencies, interdependencies and interactions. In essence, this is what wecall ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ (Beck 2006; Beck and Grande 2007): anapproach which takes the varieties of modernity and their global interdepen-dencies as a starting point for theoretical reflection and empirical research. Inthe following, we will develop this ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in four steps: firstly,we present the major conceptual tools for a theory of cosmopolitan moderni-ties; secondly, we de-construct Western modernity by using examples fromresearch on individualization and risk; thirdly, we address the key problem ofmethodological cosmopolitanism, namely the problem of defining the appro-priate unit of analysis; and finally, we discuss normative questions of a theoryof cosmopolitan modernities, in particular problems of political agency andprospects of political realization.



II. Theory of cosmopolitan modernities: the theoretical tool box

One of the basic premises of classical modernization theory is the fascinatingidea of a kind of diffusion or a transfer of European theories to the periphery.All societies would in the long term surrender to modernity’s classic distinc-tion between tradition and modernity and produce Western modernity’stypical institutional patterns, which are available ‘as worldwide repertoire’(Stichweh 2000: 256).

The various countries and regions of the world are developed to differingdegrees, but once a country or a region follows the path of modernization, itis heading, more or less, for the same goal. . . . All non-modern cultures andsocial structures must ultimately give way to modern ones. This is theirunavoidable fate. (Berger 2006: 202–4)

There might be variations in modernity, but there is no plurality in the sense ofautonomous modernities based on different criteria of modernization. ‘Thesame play with a different cast’ is being performed everywhere (Berger 2006:203). As a consequence of this diffusion process, empirical research concludesthat we live in a world which is more and more growing together. There seemsto be agreement that society in the twenty-first century will be ‘world society’perceived as an ‘entity’ across which a kind of ‘meta-culture’ is stretched(Stichweh 2000: 22; Meyer 2005).Taken to its logical extreme, this would meanthat with the completion of the universal project of modernity, the ‘end ofhistory’ (Fukuyama 1992) has arrived. But the opposite is true: we are facingthe end of the end of history.

This expectation of convergence – of a homogeneous and universal model of(Western) modernity that will sooner or later be followed everywhere – is theexact opposite of our theory of cosmopolitan modernities. The point of a‘cosmopolitan turn’ in social theory is to open it up to the possibility of a varietyof different and autonomous interlinked modernities (‘plurality of moderni-ties’),on the one hand;and to new,global imperatives,pressures and constraints,on the other hand. These new ‘cosmopolitan imperatives’2 are not universalgiven, but accumulate (historically) at the beginning of the twenty-first centuryand create new conflict structures, conflict dynamics and new processes ofcommunity building. Both assumptions need to be justified, and in this sectionwe want to present the main building blocks of a theory of cosmopolitanmodernities.The crucial question from which we start is how different types ofmodern societies3 can be theoretically accounted for at all? How can we breakdown the assumptions of a false universality and homogeneity characteristic ofconventional social theory? What does ‘plurality of modern societies’ and‘modernization paths’ mean? Where does this diversity come from and whatconsequences does it have? In order to answer these questions we will presentthree theoretical figures of thought and combine them systematically.



1. Plurality of modernities and their entanglements

The first figure of thought can be introduced in a critical exchange with the ideaof multiple modernities, as it has been developed, in particular by Shmuel N.Eisenstadt (2000, 2006) and Göran Therborn (1995).4 Eisenstadt argues thatmodern societies are characterized by structural antinomies, which may bepolitically articulated and socially institutionalized in quite different ways.Historical comparison shows that ‘Western’ modernity does not represent auniversal type of social modernization, but merely a specific combination ofstructural features. Outside Europe, for example in China and Japan, otherforms of modernity may be found, which, and this is the point, do not merelydisplay structural variations on European modernity but constitute indepen-dent, autonomous types of society.

In the context of a theory of cosmopolitan modernities, however, the idea of‘multiple modernities’ has to be developed further in two directions. In Eisen-stadt’s theory the mechanisms and processes responsible for the structuralvariations, are insufficiently elaborated, as are the relationships of the indi-vidual types to one another. The respective types are conceived as relativelyclosed units and their formation appears as the product of internal mecha-nisms and processes. Neither, however, can be generalized. This is GöranTherborn’s starting point (Therborn 1995). He argues that the variations inmodern societies are the product of different paths ‘in and through modernity’.In postcolonial theory (Conrad and Randeria 2002; Young 2001) and in‘Global’ and/or ‘Atlantic History’ (Bayly 2004; Benjamin 2009; Osterhammel2009) this aspect is systematically developed. These studies show convincinglythat the various social modernization processes were interwoven from theoutset, and that the individual societies were tied into complex relations ofdependence. This is also true, as Maharaj’s contribution to this issue shows(Maharaj 2010), of ‘Western’, European modernity. The concept and historyof the ‘Atlantic world’ is a perfect illustration of this point. The focus (here) ison the

connections, interactions and exchanges that crisscross the Atlantic Oceanfrom the fifteenth century.These attachments and engagements transformedEuropean, West African and Native American societies and also creatednew peoples, societies, cultures, economies and ideas throughout the Atlan-tic littoral. (Benjamin 2009: xxiii)

2. Discontinuous changes within modernity: distinguishing between firstand second modern conditions

The idea of multiple modernities and their entanglements must, however,also be extended in a second direction: the possibility of discontinuous trans-formations within modernity. In the last twenty years this thought figure has



been developed in particular within the framework of the theory of reflexivemodernization (Beck 1992, 1997, 2009: ch. 12; Beck, Giddens and Lash 1994;Beck, Bonß and Lau 2003; Beck and Lau 2005; Beck and Mulsow 2011;Giddens 1990, 1991, 1994). This concept is based on the distinction betweenbasic principles and basic institutions of modernity. The distinction opens upthe theoretical possibility of a structural break, of discontinuous societalchange within modern societies. Modern societies can be distinguished fromtraditional, pre-modern societies (but also from post-modern ones) by spe-cific basic structural and organizational principles. These structural and orga-nizational principles, however, can be institutionalized in very different ways.This allows us to distinguish different varieties of modernity in historicalcomparison, in particular between a First and a Second Modernity. Since theidentification and exact definition of these principles and institutions is notonly a theoretical question, but also a normative one, the relevant literaturedisplays a certain degree of conceptual ambiguity. Nevertheless, the majorpublications clearly reveal what lies at the heart of the distinction. Accordingto Beck, Bonß and Lau (2003: 4–5), the ‘premises of First Modernity societ-ies’ include:

the nation-state, a programmatic individualization bounded by collectivestructures and identities, gainful work and employment, a conception ofnature founded on its exploitation, a concept of scientifically defined ratio-nality, and the principle of functional differentiation.

Building on the distinction between basic principles and basic institutions,the theory of reflexive modernization argues that the epochal break withincontemporary (modern) societies is characterized by the transformation ofthe basic institutions of industrial society, while simultaneously preservingthe basic principles of modernity. Thanks to the global victory of the prin-ciples of modernity (such as the market economy) and the ‘side effects’ ofindustrial modernity (climate change, global financial crisis), the basic socialinstitutions of the First Modernity have become ineffective or dysfunctionalfor both society and individuals. Across the world, nation-states, politicalparties, trade unions, democracy, market economies, industrial enterprises,welfare systems, educational and occupational systems, families, gender roles,etc., increasingly display seemingly irreversible weaknesses in deliveringsocial functions and individual utilities that used to be taken for granted.Individuals, for example, increasingly find it necessary to design their bio-graphies in terms of permanently individualized endeavours, pursuits and lifecourses (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001). This transition by no means takesplace uniformly throughout the world, but breaks and reflects itself in dif-ferent contexts, paths, thresholds, etc. (for Japan see Suzuki et al. 2010: 514–39, for China see Yan 2010: 490–513, for South Korea see Chang and Song2010: 540–65).



The case studies on the processes of reflexive modernization in extra-European societies (in particular on China, Japan and South Korea) show thatdifferent varieties of a Second Modernity arise and that the course of mod-ernization processes can differ significantly between individual regions orcountries. For this reason, we suggest that the varieties of reflexive modern-ization processes should themselves be considered a key variable in the analy-sis of transformative change in modern societies. More specifically, we canidentify several process variables, which allow us to distinguish different pat-terns of reflexive modernization processes:

• the logic of transformative change: unintended vs. intended, active vs.reactive;5

• the duration of the transformation process: ‘stretched’ vs. ‘compressed’• the result: ‘successful’ vs. ‘failed’.

On the basis of these process variables, we can distinguish in particularbetween:

• the Western path or model as the project of an unintended, temporallystretched and (more or less) successful modernization of modern societ-ies;

• the project of an active, ‘compressed’ modernization driven by a develop-mental state (Korea, China);

• post-colonialism as the project of a reactive, enforced modernization;• and the path of a ‘failed’ modernization – where the establishment of the

institutions of the First Modernity (like the nation-state) or the transfor-mation into the Second Modernity ends in failure

In its initial formulation (see, e.g., Beck 1992; Beck, Giddens and Lash 1994),the theory of reflexive modernization was very much a theory of ‘Western’modernity itself. It shared a number of basic assumptions with traditionaltheories of modernity and modernization. Among others, it had the sameuniversalist aspiration, i.e. it assumed that its norms, principles and institu-tions could (and should) be applied (sooner or later) throughout the globe.This idea must be revised and replaced by the idea of ‘cosmopolitan moder-nities’. We argue that the process of reflexive modernization is indeed uni-versal, i.e. that we cannot avoid the side-effects of industrial, nation-statemodernization, which undermine the institutions of the First Modernity. Wedo not maintain, however, that the process of reflexive modernization takesthe same form everywhere. On the contrary, the form it takes depends verymuch on actual circumstances. It produces new varieties of modern societies,which do not simply arise because of changes in the varieties of modernityidentified by Eisenstadt. The process of reflexive modernization not onlyproduces new cosmopolitan imperatives, it also reflects the ways in which thepre-modern, first and second modern constellations overlap. In order to be



able to analyse adequately these cosmopolitan constellations sociologically,an expansion of the sociological horizon is required. In a nutshell, as long aswe (continue to) see the Second Modernity isolated in a Western context, weshall misunderstand it.

3. Cosmopolitization: through this process national societies areinternalizing each other

Our third theoretical building block is the concept of cosmopolitization (Beck2006): We do not live in an age of cosmopolitanism but in an age of cosmo-politization – the ‘global other’ is in our midst. This concept does not simplyadd to the first two figures of thought; rather, it links them in such a way, thatthe weaknesses of each is compansated for. On the one hand, the theory ofreflexive modernization is opened up to the existence of multiple modernities;on the other, the theory of multiple modernities is itself opened to the possi-bility of discontinuous social change.

The concept of cosmopolitanism has been the object of one of the mostsignificant debates in the Social Sciences and Humanities during the lastdecade6. In the process, cosmopolitanism has refashioned itself, movingbeyond philosophy and political theory, its conventional home, to social theoryand research, and ranging widely across anthropology, geography, culturalstudies, literary criticism, legal studies, international relations, and socialhistory. New, more or less reflexive and critical cosmopolitanisms have sinceproliferated. They have been preoccupied, first, with squaring the circle ofabstract universalism by emphasizing respect for the particularity of humandiversity. In the second place, they have sought to expand the circumference ofthe circle to include (if not to favour) those for whom cosmopolitanism is nota lifestyle choice, but the tragic involuntary condition of the refugee or other-wise dispossessed.

The starting point of our analysis here is with the two dimensions of theconcept of cosmopolitanism. In the first, the vertical dimension, cosmopoli-tanism refers to individual or collective responsibilities towards mankind. Inthis context, the theory of reflexive modernization argues that modern soci-eties – Western and non-Western alike – are confronted with qualitatively newproblems, which create ‘cosmopolitan imperatives’. These cosmopolitanimperatives arise because of global risks: nuclear risks, ecological risks, tech-nological risks, economic risks created by insufficiently regulated financialmarkets, etc. These new global risks have at least two consequences: firstly,they mix the ‘native’ with the ‘foreign’ and create an everyday globalawareness; and secondly therefore, they create chains of interlocking politicaldecisions and outcomes among states and their citizens, which alter the natureand dynamics of territorially defined governance systems. These risks link theglobal North and the global South in ways that were unknown hitherto.



However, the result of global interconnectedness is not a normative cosmo-politanism of a world without borders. Instead, these risks produce newcosmopolitan responsibilities, cosmopolitan imperatives, which no one canescape. What emerges, is the universal possibility of ‘risk communities’ whichspring up, establish themselves and become aware of their cosmopolitan com-position – ‘imagined cosmopolitical communities’ which come into existencein the awareness that dangers or risks can no longer be socially delimited inspace or time. In the light of these cosmopolitan imperatives a reformulatedtheory of reflexive modernization must argue that nowadays we all live in aSecond, Cosmopolitan Modernity – regardless of whether we have experi-enced First Modernity or not.

In its second dimension, cosmopolitanism is a theory of diversity, moreprecisely, of a specific way of interpreting and coping with diversity (Delanty2009; Tyfield and Urry 2009). To speak of a cosmopolitan modernity in thiscontext means broadening our horizon to include a variety of western andnon-western modernities. The conceptual challenge for a theory of cosmopoli-tan modernization is to identify the patterns of variation, their origin and theirconsequences. In short, the idea of cosmopolitan modernity must be developedout of the variety of modernities, out of the inner wealth of variants ofmodernity. Cosmopolitan modernization, however, must not be equated withthe concept of pluralization. It not only highlights the existence of a variety ofdifferent types of modern society, it also emphasizes the dynamic interminglingand interaction between societies. In this regard it takes up key concepts of theliterature on post-colonialism, such as ‘entanglement’ (Randeria 2004), and onglobalization, such as ‘interconnectedness’ (Held et al. 1999), and it takes themfurther by introducing the concept of ‘dialogical imagination’ or the ‘internal-ization of the other’: the global other is in our midst. Cosmopolitization relatesand connects individuals, groups and societies in new ways, thereby changingthe very position and function of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Such an ‘internal-ization of the other’ can be the product of two entirely different processes. Onthe one hand, it can be the result of an active, deliberate and reflexive openingof individuals, groups and societies to other ideas, preferences, rules and cul-tural practices; on the other hand, however, it can also be the outcome ofpassive and unintended processes enforcing the internalization of otherness.Hence, cosmopolitization is not, by definition, a symmetrical and autonomousprocess; it may well be the product of asymmetries, dependencies, power andforce, and it may also create new asymmetries and dependencies within andbetween societies.

In integrating these two dimensions of cosmopolitization, it becomesapparent that a cosmopolitan modernity differs significantly from a Kantianworld of ‘perpetual peace’. It is characterized, rather, by structural contradic-tions resulting from two conflicting processes, which create what we call a‘cosmopolitan dialectic’. On the one hand, there is a centripetal, unifying



process, the formation of a ‘world risk society’ (Beck 1999, 2009). At the sametime, the Second Modernity is subject to powerful, centrifugal, diversifyingprocesses resulting from the co-existence, and probably even the hegemoniccompetition between different types and visions of modernity; and from resis-tances to economic, political and cultural globalization within societies (cf.Kriesi et al. 2008): The more the world is brought together by global risks(climate change, nuclear threats, financial crisis), the more it is also torn apartby global risks. How do these contradictory tendencies accommodate eachother?

This can be condensed into the argument that the coming ‘world society’ ofthe Second Modernity is characterized by new forms of ‘systemic competition’between ways and visions of modernity and new types of cosmopolitical con-flict and violence. Global entanglement and interconnectedness are not onlythe preconditions for the establishment of new ‘cosmopolitan communities offate’; they are at the same time the sources of the emergence of powerfulcounter-movements. In order to adequately observe and fully understandthese processes and dynamics, sociological theory must, however, give up its‘nationalist’ perspective and its universalistic assumptions.

Is there any mileage in this cosmopolitization to develop into a self-reflexive, critical cosmopolitanism, actively and consciously trying to createnew cosmopolitan institutions, as Craig Calhoun (2010: 595–620) in his inspir-ing comment is supposing? No, this is not a Hegelian theory. We need towarn against this ‘cosmopolitan fallacy’ (Beck 2006: 89). It seems more likelyit could end up as a ‘façade’ for national interests where cosmo-credentialsmask or mix with anti-cosmopolitical mentality (Maharaj 2010). Cosmopoli-tization without cosmopolitanism is a reflexive condition: the growing neces-sity for all sorts of actors – Chinese stem scientists (Zhang 2010), climatescientists (Hulme 2010), migrants (Glick Schiller 2009), business, religiousgroups (Beck 2010; Levitt 2007), human rights groups (Levy 2010), workers,teachers, medical professions, ‘distant lovers’ (Beck/Beck-Gernsheim 2011)or criminals and even neo-nationalists, Al Qaida terrorists – to enlarge theirframe of reference beyond borders, to actively compare, reflect and accom-modate diverse perspectives. But this reflexivity must not be confused withnormativity. Cosmopolitization does not have an answer to the question:What is human(ity)? But it does have an answer to the question, why thequestion ‘what is human(ity)?’ is all over on the agenda inducing more astruggling than a learning process.

III. De-constructing and redefining western modernity: the examples ofindividualization and risk

The ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in sociological theory leads to the question, what canWestern social sciences learn from the discourse on varieties of the Second



Modernity, and especially from extra-European experiences and perspectives?In the following, we will show that basic concepts of the theory of the SecondModernity, like any other theory of society, cannot simply be ‘applied’ indifferent contexts in different parts of the world; neither do they operate at theglobal level. These concepts have to be deconstructed and redefined for dif-ferent social and historical situations. Therefore, the cosmopolitan turn criti-cizes the universalistic assumptions and expectations of the early theory ofreflexive modernization. The theory itself has to be cosmopolitanized (i.e.we might speak of the ‘de-provincialization’ of the theory of reflexivemodernization). The questions then are: How can basic concepts of ‘individu-alization’ and ‘risk’ be adapted to a multi-path prospect of modernity? Whatare the theoretical implications of the East Asian, South American etc. path-dependent varieties (of the Second Modernity) for the theory of the SecondModernity in general?

1. Redefining the European model of individualization

In the light of the ‘entangled’ cases and contexts of the Chinese (Yan 2010),Japanese (Suzuki et al. 2010) and South Korean (Chang and Song 2010) pathsto individualization, we find ourselves conceptually and empirically in posses-sion of rich resources for de-constructing and redefining the European modelof individualization. The individualization thesis (see Bauman 2001; Beck1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001; Giddens 1991) highlights four basicfeatures of the individualization process: (1) detraditionalization; (2) institu-tionalized dis-embedding and re-embedding of the individual; (3) compulsorypursuit of a ‘life of one’s own’ and the lack of genuine individuality; (4) thebiographical internalization of systemic risks. As Yan (2010) convincinglyargues in his contribution to this issue, the individualization thesis likewiserests on two premises: Theoretically it claims to be an antithesis to neoliber-alism and, implicitly, to liberalism and classic individualism as well; socially, itdefines the individualization process under the conditions of cultural democ-racy, the welfare state and classic individualism. These premises, however,

relate primarily to the history and reality of Western Europe. The emphasison these two premises effectively locks the individualization thesis into theparticular version of the Second Modernity in Europe, or a Western Europebox. If we decouple the two premises from the four basic features, we can seethat individualization is actually a global trend of our time.While sharing theabove-mentioned four features to various degrees, the global trend of indi-vidualization also displays some features that are not necessarily condi-tioned by the two premises. (Yan 2010: 508)

The European model simply takes it for granted that, operating under theconditions of the post-welfare state, the instrumental relations of capitalist



markets have produced an individualization in which the ideas of culturaldemocratization have been instilled. Manifestly this does not hold for Chineseindividualization. In China there is neither a culturally embedded democracynor a welfare state. Moreover, individualization in China, in contrast toEurope, has not been institutionally anchored in a system of basic rights(family law, labour law, etc.).

This demonstrates that what is presented in the European context as the‘universal logic’ of individualization – namely the concurrence of the institu-tionalized legal forms and the biographical patterns of individualization – is infact a historically and culturally limited special form, the result of a particularamalgamation of modernization and individualization in the West Europeancontext. As the Chinese example shows, these two developments – legal formsand biographical patterns – can also be uncoupled and re-combined, thusconstituting different paths to individualization.

There is, in principle, a close connection between individualization and thestate in both the European and the Chinese contexts.This connection, however,can assume completely different forms, indeed it can lead in diametricallyopposite directions. If in China, too, the individual is becoming increasinglyimportant, then this is not occurring within an institutionally secured frame-work,nor is it based on the civil,political and social basic rights which in Europewere won through political struggles during the First Modernity. Instead thesegoals are still the objects of struggles whose outcome remains open.

It is striking that, by comparison with the European path, the Chinese pathtowards individualization is unfolding in a characteristically different, indeedreverse sequence. In China, the neoliberal deregulation of the economy andthe labour market, of everyday culture and consumption, is being initiatedbefore and without the constitutional anchoring of individualization aswe know it in Europe. As a result, political and social basic rights haveto be gained on the basis of a neoliberal, depoliticizing, market-basedindividualization. One consequence of this inversion is that the authoritarianstate, having revoked social guarantees along with the obligations to the col-lective, is trying to set limits to the claim to political participation, inherent inthe process of individualization, by placing a tight network of controls aroundthe individual. Individual rights are being granted as privileges, not as invio-lable basic rights that everyone possesses as a citizen.The government is tryingto restrict the individualization that it needs by linking it to officiallycelebrated national and family values. To sum up, one could say that whereasin Europe justice and law speak the language of individualization, in China apractice of tolerated, even enforced individualization is taking place, coupledwith an official ideological stigmatization of that same individualization (Yan2009).

These East Asian experiences and perspectives on the SecondModernity are conceptually enriching. This is what makes methodological



cosmopolitanism so fruitful and creative. Chang and Song, to take anotherexample, in their contribution to this special issue, introduce a set of differentdimensions and forms of individualization – defamiliarization, risk-averse indi-vidualization, reconstructive individualization, nomadist individualization,demographic individualization, and institutionalized individualization – inorder to understand the ambivalences of this process both in East Asia and ingeneral. Most importantly, they argue, that some of these forms of individual-ization ‘do not have to be preceded by positive individualism as a generic socialculture’ (Chang and Song 2010: 540–65). Therefore, it is more than possible tohave ‘individualization without individualism’, something they find empiricallyin the case of South Korean women.

2. Redefining the European model of risk society

The necessity of redefining basic concepts of social theory can be demon-strated in the case of the risk concept as well.7 Examining various types of risksassociated with East Asian ‘compressed modernity’, Han and Shim (2010:465–89) conclude that ‘the concept of risk society is more relevant to East Asiathan to Western societies’ – but it has to be redefined. They distinguish twomodes of risk production in contemporary societies. On the one hand, ‘newglobal risks’ produced by a radicalization of the First, industrial modernity,have been emerging.These so-called ‘manufactured uncertainties’ (Beck 1996;Giddens 1994) are the dominant type of risk in Western, in particular WestEuropean societies. Examples are climate change, transnational terrorism andsystemic economic risks. However, Han and Shim argue that

it is wrong to conceptualize all risks along this way. On the other hand,certain types of risk are produced as consequences of the deficiencies builtinto rush-to strategy of development in East Asia. (Han and Shim 2010: 471)

Examples of these ‘deficiency risks’ are large-scale accidents of various kinds,violence, contamination of foods and tap water, fraudulent constructionprojects, dislocation of the family and so on.

Han and Shim also distinguish two different modes of risk dispersion: trans-national and regional.

Risks may be called ‘transnational’ if they can, in principle, happen every-where in the world. In contrast, risks may be ‘regional’ if they tend to occurnot everywhere but in those specific countries that merge into a particularpathway to modernity. (Han and Shim 2010: 471)

The ‘deficiency risks’ produced by the rush-to strategy of modernization inEast Asia are mostly regional in scope. They affect East Asian countries in aspecific way, although they materialize in a global context. As a result, risksociety in East Asian countries takes a completely different shape than in



Western Europe. It is constituted by different risks, different risk cultures anddifferent risk conflicts. Han and Shim conclude that by examining ‘world risksociety’, we need to focus also on the concrete reality of East Asia. This is notbecause the Western view of global risks lacks validity, but because other typesof risks, which originate from deficiencies of rush-to modernization, call forattention that is no less urgent in East Asia (Han and Shim 2010: 465–89).

In order to develop further this distinction between modes of risk produc-tion by examining the successes and deficiencies of modernization we proposedistinguishing between ‘self-induced’ and ‘externally-induced’ dangers. Thisallows us to locate the problems of inequality and dominance within theconcept of globalized risks itself. In this way, it is possible to grasp moreprecisely than before that there is a radical inequality in the situations ofdecision-makers and of those affected by risks and/or dangers. With the cos-mopolitan turn it becomes evident that the distinction between self-inducedrisk and external risk is a cosmopolitan flash-point, in so far as the relation ofwhole regions of the world to one another can be analysed in terms of theexternalization of self-produced dangers, i.e. by shifting them onto others. Thepowerful produce and profit from the risks, whereas the powerless are affectedto the core of their being by the ‘side effects’ of decisions taken by others.

Even this very rough distinction between self-induced risks and externalrisks allows, indeed compels, a revision of the theory of risk society. Thepremise that all human beings and societies understand the world of risks,which threaten them existentially, as side effects of ‘own’ decisions (and henceas ‘risks’ in the narrow sense) has to be abandoned in favour of the assump-tion, that for large parts of the world population the consequences of modern-ization can be ascribed to dangers externally induced by other decision-makers in other parts of the world, that is, the West. Such regions, however, areno longer disadvantaged in varying degrees by the consequences of their ownfailed dependent modernization alone (as for example dependency theoristssuggest); they have suffered also from the catastrophic effects of the successfulmodernization processes of other (Western) societies.

This problem can be located first of all in the abstract nature of the conceptsthemselves: ‘Capitalism’ and ‘modernity’ are sufficiently general to be linkedto almost any social phenomenon. At this point the concept of world risksociety offers a strategic research advantage. It provides a clear reference pointto the ‘intersection’ between conflict and integration: the Janus face of globalrisks. On the one hand, new ‘imagined cosmopolitical communities’ arisewithin the discursive spaces of global risks. These communities do not replacethe national imagined communities so brilliantly analysed by Benedict Ander-son (1991), but they can under the pressure of a ‘cosmopolitan imperative’open up to one another and network co-operatively. On the other, it is pre-cisely around transnational risk inequalities – measured by impact and socialvulnerability – that hegemonic risk conflicts once again flare up. And they do



so in ways that persistently resist global standardization (see, for example, theCopenhagen Summit on Climate Change in 2009). At the same time, theresources and mechanisms that have been developed for civilizing class con-flicts are being exhausted. The new conflicts of world risk society are con-cerned with anticipated future catastrophes in the present, which – and this isthe crucial point – have been set in motion precisely by legal forms of action.If one sets aside the anticipatory policy of prevention then there arefew resources and little leeway for ‘redistributing’ expected ‘legal’ futurecatastrophes.

3. Theoretical implications

What are the more general theoretical implications of such exemplaryde-construction and re-construction of basic sociological concepts? The firstinsight is that the progression from Pre-modernity to the First Modernityand Second Modernity is not universal and cannot be generalized. On thecontrary, this progression is a central feature of the particular European pathto modernity. The false universalism implicit in sociological theories cannotbe uncovered by looking at Europe from a European standpoint. It can onlybe ‘seen’ by looking at Europe from a non-European perspective, that is with‘Asian eyes’ (or ‘African eyes’, etc.), in other words by practising meth-odological cosmopolitanism! Methodological cosmopolitanism not onlyincludes the other’s experiences of and perspectives on modernization butcorrects and redefines the self-understanding of European modernity. Thequestion of how varieties of the Second Modernity can be constructedreceives a systematic answer here – in terms of different sequences, combi-nations and mixtures of Pre-modernity, First Modernity and Second Moder-nity. Most importantly, advanced capitalist societies may be characterized bythe immanent, self-induced consequences of the process of reflexive mod-ernization, i.e. the transformation from the First to the Second Modernity, inwhich the basic institutions of the First Modernity are undermined. In thiscase, most of the driving forces of radicalized reflexivity – individualization,cosmopolitization and risk society – originate as the ‘side-effects’ of self-induced risks. Late developing and rapidly developing capitalist societies(and socialist transition societies) may be characterized and distinguishedprecisely by different types of time-space differentiations, and by thecombinations and conjunctions of Pre-modernity, First and SecondModernity.

Two types of constellations may be distinguished theoretically: on the onehand, the opposite sequence (to the European one), in which the challengesof the Second Modernity come before the First Modernity, with the conse-quence that the latter’s institutional resources are absent. This could becalled the ‘victim-constellation of late developing countries’. On the other



hand, there is the constellation of ‘compressed modernization’ (Chang 1999,2010). This means that the development of the First Modernity (which in theEuropean context has been stretched over 150 years) and the transition tothe Second Modernity (i.e. processes of individualization, risk and cosmo-politization) take place almost simultaneously, i.e. within the very shortperiod of one or two decades, as was the case in South Korea. Of course,‘stretched’ European and ‘compressed’ East Asian modernization obey verydifferent logics. First of all, the cumulative effects multiply; secondly, thepolitical risks involved (arising from the cycle of public denial and hysteria)are very different in these two varieties of the Second Modernity; and,thirdly and as a consequence of the first two, ‘reflexivity’ means quite differ-ent things in each context.

All paths of modernization are confronted with the problem of what kindand quality of insurance can be provided to enable individuals, groups andclasses to come to terms with the risks, insecurities, uncertainties and threatsproduced by social transformations. Basically three types of risk insurancecan be distinguished in theory. There is a statist model, in which the stateprovides protection against risks; a societal model, in which risks are insuredagainst by various social institutions (families, companies, etc.); and lastly, aneoliberal model, in which the individual has to cope with risks on his or herown. The statist model is exemplified in the European welfare state whichemerged out of the class conflicts of industrialization (Ewald 1986).8 By con-trast, Japan represented the societal model of risk insurance. As MunenoriSuzuki and her collaborators (2010) show in their contribution in thisissue,

In Japan’s first modernity, the mechanism responsible for risk managementof an integrated society, and stabilized social order was neither a welfaristredistribution policy, nor a sense of class solidarity between workers incontrast to Europe. The functional equivalents in Japan were, first, privatecorporations that guaranteed long-term stability for employees and theirfamilies (so-called Japanese management/company-centrism) and, second,land development rapidly implemented under the guidance of bureaucrats(Keynesian macroeconomic policy/developmentalism). From the 1950sthrough to the 1980s, those two systems functioned as mechanisms toconvert the improvements in productivity fueled by technological innova-tion into stability in the lives of individuals. (Suzuki et al. 2010: 516)

The process of reflexive modernization – in particular individualization andglobalization – has eroded the basic institutions of both models, although indifferent ways. In the case of the West European welfare state, globalizationincreased the burden on social security systems while at the same producingstrong cost pressures. In the Japanese case, the social institutions responsible



for insuring social risks have collapsed due to economic globalization andthe transnationalization of Japanese corporations since the 1990s.

Private corporations abandoned the role of stabilizing their employees’lives, while the government lost the rationale to develop national land. Inthis manner, individuals who had lost the protection of corporations and thestate were thrown out into a global risk society exposed and unprotected.(Suzuki et al. 2010: 516)

As we can learn from developments in China in the last two decades, such anexposure of the individual may well result in a new ‘hybrid’, combining aneoliberal type of insurance regime with a strong party-state. As Yan hasput it,

individualization in China is characterized by the management of the party-state and the absence of cultural democracy, the absence of the welfare stateregime, and the absence of classic individualism and political liberalism.(Yan 2010: 511)

The general point is that there is a global dynamic of reflexive modernizationwhich dissolves path-dependent functionalities of different First Modernityinstitutions in different contexts. Since the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury, many people in many countries around the world have found that thebasic institutions of economic, social and political life have suddenly becomeineffective, unreliable or have begun to self-destruct. Because of the differentmixtures of deficiencies as well as the successes and failures of national indus-trial capitalist modernization in different world regions, this has produceddifferent modernization paths, patterns of risk society and types of SecondModernity. It is an open question, both theoretically and empirically, whetherand how these different types of Second Modernity can find ways to co-exist.

IV. Methodological cosmopolitanism: the problem of the unit of analysis

Another question raised by the cosmopolitan turn in the social sciencesrefers to the unit of analysis: What is the most appropriate unit of analysisfor social theory and empirical research? Or more precisely: How canresearch units beyond methodological nationalism be found and definedwhich allow us to understand processes of cosmopolitization and comparevarieties in cosmopolitan modernity? What are the reference points ofanalysis if we wish to free it from the ‘container’ of the nation-state,while refusing to take refuge in abstract concepts of ‘world society’ (Beck2006)? In the preceding sections we provided examples of a methodological



cosmopolitanism. Instead of nation-states and/or national societies weproposed the use of thematic units derived from sociological theory –‘individualization’, ‘cosmopolitization’ and ‘risk society’, all concepts derivedfrom the theory of reflexive modernization. This allowed us to de-constructand redefine in historical and comparative analyses the path-dependency ofthese theorems and their societal specificity. This enables us to distinguishnew forms of dependence, interdependence and interconnectedness relevantfor social action, conflict and integration.

These examples already provide important clues to possible solutions to theproblems of methodological nationalism. Empirical research in such diversedisciplines as sociology, anthropology, geography or political science has inrecent years developed a multiplicity of concepts, all of which are designed tobreak down the supposedly ‘natural’ equation of ‘society/culture/nation/state’.Paul Gilroy’s conceptualization of the ‘Black Atlantic’ (1993), Saskia Sassen’sidentification of the ‘Global City’ (1991), Arjun Appadurai’s notion of ‘scapes’(1991), Martin Albrow’s concept of the ‘Global Age’ (1996) and our ownanalysis of ‘Cosmopolitan Europe’ (Beck and Grande 2007) are examples ofthis kind of research.

This variety of concepts and approaches can be usefully systematized withthe help of two distinctions. On the one hand, new units of research may bedistinguished according to whether they refer to de-nationalized processes orstructures. An example of the former would be transnational migration pro-cesses, an example of the latter are ‘diasporic communities’ in which migrantscreate new forms of transnational (co-)existence. A second distinction relatesto the scope and the level of cosmopolitization. Scope refers to the role of thenational, i.e. the nation-state, national cultures, etc., in the ‘global age’. More-over, cosmopolitization can take place at different levels of sociological analy-sis, above the national (world regions, world religions, etc.); as well as below thelevel of the national (local communities, the family, the individual, thecompany, the workplace, etc.).

With the help of these distinctions, we can identify two ways of dealing withthe national in methodological cosmopolitanism. The most far-reaching possi-bility is to replace the national as a unit of analysis by other foci, e.g. ‘ships inmotion’ or ‘world religions’. In this case, the national becomes obsolete orirrelevant.This is what we would call the ‘replacing of the national’.The secondpossibility, of course, is that the nation-state and the national continue to berelevant, but lose their epistemological monopoly position, for example, bybecoming integrated in new forms of political organization and societal order.The methodological consequence would be that new units of analysis have tobe found, which incorporate the national, but no longer coincide with it. Wewould describe this as ‘embedding the national’.

It is important to emphasize here that the functional importance and poli-tical salience of the nation-state in a globalizing world does not justify a



methodological nationalism in sociological or political research.This would bea false equation of actor and observer perspective (Beck 2005: ch. 2). Even ifthe nation-state would gain in importance functionally, it must lose its episte-mological monopoly position as the unit of research, because the empiricalanalysis of cosmopolitization processes can only succeed if other foci aremoved centre stage (Grande 2006). Rather than being the pregiven frameworkof analysis, the nation-state has to be treated as an empirical variable in sucha cosmopolitan research design (Zürn 2001).

Table I sums up the four varieties of methodological cosmopolitanism whichresult from these distinctions. For each of these varieties, we have indicatedselected examples from the literature on cosmopolitanism, transnationalismand globalization. This list of examples is far from exhaustive. Much morecould have been added. In the following, we give some illustrations for thevarious possibilities of redefining the unit of analysis in methodologicalcosmopolitanism.

a) Ships in motion: replacing the national by transcontinental processes

One of the first and most radical alternatives to methodological nationalism(though it wasn’t described in this way) was introduced by Paul Gilroy. In hisseminal study he did not take the national ‘container’ but a transcontinentalspace, the Black Atlantic (1993), as the field for his theoretical and empiricalstudy. Gilroy convincingly argued that the ideas of nation, nationality andnational allegiance do have epistemological consequences: they affirm aresearch programme and a practice of ‘cultural insiderism’, based on essen-tializing ethnic difference. Gilroy’s starting point therefore is not a fixed entity,instead the image of ships in motion between Europe, America, Africa and theCaribbean is the central symbolic concept organizing his research.

The image of the ship – a living, micro-cultural, micro-political system inmotion – is especially important for historical and theoretical reasons. . . .

Table I: Units of analysis in methodological cosmopolitanism

Processes Structures

Embedding the national ‘Compressed modernization’(Chang 1999, 2010);cosmopolitanEuropeanization (Beck andGrande 2007); ‘recursivecosmopolitization’ (Levy 2010)

Transnational policy regimes(Grande 2004); globalassemblages (Sassen2006);world regions(Katzenstein 2005)

Replacing the national ‘Ships in motion’ (Gilroy 1993);supply chain capitalism (Tsing2009); ‘cosmopolitaninnovations’ (Tyfield and Urry2009)

World religions; transnationalmigrant networks (GlickSchiller 2009); border zones;global city; the local; the family;the individual



Ships immediately focus attention on the middle passage, on the variousprojects for redemptive return to an African homeland, on the circulation ofideas and activists as well as the movement of key cultural artefacts: tracts,books, gramophone records, and choirs. (Gilroy 2008: 204)

A similar approach, replacing the national as the basic unit of research by newtransnational processes, was taken by Anna Tsing (2009) in her research onnew forms of transnational supply chain capitalism. In contrast to theories ofgrowing capitalist convergence and homogeneity, her analysis points to thefundamental role of difference in mobilizing capital, labour and otherresources. The focus and unit of analysis in her research is again not a fixedentity but a process: labour mobilization in supply chains, as it depends on theperformance of gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and citizen status. Heranalysis reveals that diversity is of central importance to global capitalism andnot merely decorative.9

b) Transnational networks, border zones and empires: Replacing thenational by new transnational structures

In the last decade there has been a substantial amount of research in the fieldof transnational studies (Khagram and Levitt 2008; Pries 2008a, 2008b). Irre-spective of different research objects and academic disciplines they have incommon that they replace the national as unit of analysis by new structureswhich can be observed at a multiplicity of levels. Most innovative here isresearch on transnational migration by Nina Glick Schiller (2009) and others(Khagram and Levitt 2008). They privilege a constructivist view of territorialspaces, in which transnational social formations – such as transnational net-works, kinship groups, migrant organizations and diaspora communities – crossand overlap with the territories of nation-states without necessarily having aglobal reach. Another example are various concepts of empire, which havebeen presented in recent debates on the role of the USA in a new global orderand on the results of the European integration process (see, e.g. Katzenstein2005; Beck and Grande 2007).

c) Compressed modernization, global assemblages, transnational policyregimes: Embedding the national in new transnational structuresand processes

The cosmopolitization of modern societies does not, however, inevitably meanthe end of the national.All predictions of the end of the nation-state in the ageof globalization have so far proved premature. The nation-state does notdissolve in the process of reflexive modernization; it is transformed in the mostdiverse ways (Sorensen 2004; Grande and Pauly 2005; Sassen 2006; Grande



2008). This implies that the national, i.e. national borders, national monopoliesof the legitimate use of physical force, national norms, institutions and culturescan still be powerful factors shaping societies. Consequently, a methodologicalcosmopolitanism cannot entirely neglect the national. It must not, however,accept it as an unquestioned premise; it must treat it as a conceptual variable,whose significance must be empirically investigated.

The embedding of the national in processes of cosmopolitization can takeplace in very different ways. The new units of analysis which have been devel-oped in this variant of methodological cosmopolitanism are correspondinglydiverse.A first example is the concept of ‘transnational policy regime’ (Grande2004; Grande and Pauly 2005; Grande et al. 2007). This refers to new forms oftransnational institution building which have established themselves in anumber of global regulatory problems such as climate change, internet regu-lation or the taxation of transnational enterprises. These institutions organizetransnational interactions whose boundaries are not defined by national juris-dictions, but by a specific regulatory problem; they include very different andextremely variable groups of actors (public and private) and extend to diverseterritorial levels. For an empirical analysis of transnational politics, these policyregimes are the most appropriate unit of analysis. Crucial here is that thesenew institutions do not replace nation-states, but instead incorporate them.The nation-states are embedded in new transnational systems of regulationand one of the most important tasks of empirical analysis is to investigate thespecific importance of nation-states in these institutions. Where the nation-state continues to dominate, as we can at present observe in the case of climatepolicies, there the transnational dimension threatens to become merely the‘showcase of the national’.

The work of Daniel Levy (2010) and Saskia Sassen (2006) provides furtherevidence of the need to choose the nation-state as the unit of analysis andnevertheless overcome the narrowness of methodological nationalism. Theyshow that globalization processes derive from transformations within nation-states and gain their dynamic there, whether it is the rise of the global capitalmarket or of networks of committed human rights activists (Kurasawa 2007).In short, the national space becomes a highly complex ‘showcase of the global’here. In this instance, national institutions and cultures, their path dependencyand their particular history take on a new – and not necessarily a lesser –importance. Precisely because of the interconnectedness of the world, manythings begin locally, even if on occasion in unlocalized proximity. The border-transcending network of strategically decisive subnational actors, linkedby intensive transactions and flows of experts, is an embodiment ofde-nationalized spatiality and temporality. As such, it is neither national norglobal, but cosmopolitan.

The transnational spaces, processes and structures which constitute the unitsof analysis in a cosmopolitan methodology can be constructed in various ways.



They can either be deduced from major theoretical concepts, as we have shownalready in the case of individualization and risk; or they can be identifiedinductively on the basis of (1) historical, (2) functional, (3) social or (4) insti-tutional criteria (Grande 2006). Empirical research on ‘Reflexive Moderniza-tion’ in the Munich research programme has provided examples of each ofthese possibilities (see, in particular, Beck and Bonß 2001; Beck and Lau 2004;Beck and Mulsow 2011; Bonß and Lau 2010).

An example of historically defined units of analysis can be found inthe’transnational spaces of remembrance’ identified by Daniel Levy andNatan Sznaider in their work on the Holocaust (Levy and Sznaider 2005).These transnational spaces of remembrance have been produced by commonhistorical experiences constituted by the Holocaust. Although the CentralEuropean countries affected most directly have developed distinct practicesand policies for coming to terms with the Holocaust, these can only be under-stood adequately if interpreted in the context of the ‘transnational spaces ofremembrance’ in which they are embedded.

A second possibility is provided by functionally defined units of analysis, aswe have seen them in connection with the ‘transnational policy regimes’ men-tioned above. In this case, the thematic core and boundaries of the unit ofanalysis are constituted by common regulatory problems, e.g. of financialmarkets, corporate taxation or environmental policy (see, e.g., Drezner 2007).This is not to suggest a functionalist perspective on social problems, however.There is abundant empirical analysis showing that the problems at stake areconstructed in the course of political conflicts with varying forms and degreesof politicization; and the same holds good for the institutional frameworksestablished to deal with them. Since these conflicts themselves are focused onspecific regulatory problems, however, it makes sense to take these problemsthemselves as a starting point and frame of reference for empirical analysis.

Thirdly, we can identify transnational spaces and units of analysis by takingsocial practices, in particular social conflicts and conflict structures, as a focalpoint of analysis. Examples are ‘transnational political campaigns’ and‘debates’ (see Kriesi et al. 2010). While campaigns are constituted by politicalevents and actors, debates are defined by a specific thematic core, e.g. immi-gration and European integration. Analysing transnational processes with thehelp of these concepts allows us to focus empirical analysis on two chiefvariables: variations in actor constellations (e.g. political parties, transnationalorganizations etc.), and variations in the territorial scope of political activities.Such an analytical framework enables us to group different forms of politicalmobilization and articulation under the same heading, and to provide ananalysis of cross-border political conflict.

Finally, transnational units of analysis can be identified by new forms oftransnational institution building. In this case, exemplified by research onEurope (Beck and Grande 2007; Delanty and Rumford 2005), it is the process



of formal and informal regional integration and its outcomes which constitutesthe frame of reference for social theory and empirical analysis. As PeterKatzenstein (2005) has shown in his work on the ‘world of regions’, this alsoopens up new possibilities for comparative research across world regions.

V. Perspectives of cosmopolitan sociology: normative questions, addressees,possibilities of realization

The cosmopolitan turn in social theory and research would be incomplete, ifmethodological cosmopolitanism were to be understood exclusively in con-ceptual terms and if we failed to emphasize the centrality of the fusion,characteristic of the social sciences in general, of epistemological object andcontexts of application and uses of research results. As Han and Shim argue,global risks are a push factor of reflexive modernization.

However, push factor alone is not enough. Pulling factor is as crucial forreflexive modernization since it provides energy and meaning. If push factoris a blind force working behind individuals, pull factor invites them to comealong to the suggested alternative institution. Reflexive modernization maywork well when these two factors are combined to produce synergy effects.(Han and Shim 2010: 478)

This raises three questions: (1) the normative question: What are the cos-mopolitical alternatives and visions? And under what conditions does ‘cosmo-politization’ lead to ‘reflexive cosmopolitanisms’ and not to ‘reflexivefundamentalisms’? (2) Who are the addressees of cosmopolitan social sci-ences? (3) How realistic are cosmopolitan ideas and alternatives in the face ofthe dominance of the national and of re-ethnicization tendencies everywherein the world, as well as the plurality of risk perceptions and antagonisms? Iscosmopolitanism necessarily an idealist utopia?

1. Normative questions

‘I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen, a proud citizenof the United States and a fellow citizen of the world,’ announced BarackObama to a crowd of cheering Berliners. Ever since Immanuel Kant there hasbeen no shortage of normative ideas and proposals as to the meaning of ‘fellowcitizen of the world’.The connection between cosmopolitanism, patriotism andnationalism was already a concern of the greatest and most creative minds inEurope in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Delanty 2009: ch. 1).By the twentieth century, however, cosmopolitanism had almost disappearedas a serious intellectual and political position. Only with the collapse of SovietCommunism did the Kantian dreams of ‘perpetual peace’ once again stir the



public imagination and regain currency within very different fields of science.The crucial question, however, which arises here, is: How cosmopolitan is thenormative debate about cosmopolitanism or, rather, cosmopolitanisms (in theplural!)? Are there, for example, feminist visions of cosmopolitanism, whichare not based on the male maximalism of the ‘world citizen’?

Any cosmofeminism would have to create a critically engaged space that isnot just a screen of globalization or an antidote to nationalism but is rathera focus on projects of the intimate sphere conceived as a part of thecosmopolitan. (Pollock et al. 2000: 584)

Above all there arises the question: ‘How radically can we rewrite the historyof cosmopolitanism and how dramatically redraw its map once we are pre-pared to think outside the box of European intellectual history’ (Pollock et al.2000: 586)? Our approach to conceptualizing this normative issue is to distin-guish three future scenarios – optimistic, realistic and pessimistic.

The optimistic scenario suggests that there is a hidden link betweenclimate change and Immanuel Kant. It does indeed require a decisive step, atleast a part of the way towards ‘perpetual peace’ in order to create an effec-tive response to climate change. That is, concealed in the formula of thescientific and economic language of world risks is something normative,great, virtually unthinkable, the realism of which is part of the realism whichis gaining in force with the looming ecological apocalypse. It is not sufficient(to adopt Max Weber’s famous distinction) merely to want good – to adhereto a cosmopolitan ‘ethics of conviction’ (Gesinnungsethik). A cosmopoli-tan ‘ethics of responsibility’ (Verantwortungsethik) is required too – or, toformulate it even more ambitiously: what is required is the constitutionof a political subject called ‘humanity’. The new normative imperative is:Individuals, neo-liberals and neo-nationalists, corporations, social groupsand societies, the powerful and the weak of the world – only if you sit downat the same table and negotiate the conditions of a global deal of a justbalance – that is, realize a bit of Kant in the world – will you have achance of surviving! This diabolic pact on the part of a civilization whichthreatens to destroy itself – the pitilessness of the survival maxim: Kant orcatastrophe! – is also cause for hope.

The realistic scenario goes as follows: It is the antagonism between produc-ers and recipients of climate risks which both constitutes and blocks acosmopolitics of climate change. There is no way to resolve this dilemma.Consequently the agnostics of climate change will prevail; there will be somekind of continuing eco-technological modernization moving towards a more orless ‘green capitalism’; the more the mainstream of the political parties agreesto keep the big tanker sailing straight head, the more absurd and unbelievabletheir staged differences will be. This corresponds to the classic position propa-gated by Niklas Luhmann (1995): Evolution is sufficient.There is neither room



nor necessity for change. All that remains is the cynical maxim: minimize thedamage of excitement!

The negative scenario does not at all rule out the mainstream position, andmay even be a consequence of it: Both the radically unequal impacts of climatechange and climate politics itself function as the ‘fire accelerant’ of fundamen-talist counter-movements. Or to put it differently: There is a deadly viciouscircle of climate disasters, migration flows, fundamentalist nationalism andreligious fundamentalism, leading to outbreaks of violence and even climatewars.10

Naturally within different modernization contexts these scenarios will takedifferent forms and/or combine differently. Against this background the nor-mative question can be formulated more precisely in social scientific terms:Firstly, under what conditions might the future of cosmopolitan modernityadopt the positive scenario, that is, creating imagined cosmopolitical commu-nities of global risks? This includes, secondly, the question of the identity of theactors who will dominate the hegemonic struggles that might emerge and ofthe power strategies that will be available to them (Beck 2005). Normativecosmopolitanism, however, is not only the product of transnational andnational conflicts, but also requires a cosmopolitical civilizing of thesestruggles. Thirdly, there is the question, then, of how to bring about an ecologi-cal and social civilizing of capitalism beyond the outdated nation-states and autopian ‘world state’. These questions open up theoretical, normative andpolitical problem horizons, in which cosmopolitan social sciences can find acreative, politically highly relevant function.This normative turn in cosmopoli-tan social theory and research must inevitably find itself in opposition to thecontemporary spirit of both liberalized capitalism and the implacability of thenation-state. Precisely, this would be its enlightening spur.

2. Who are the addressees of cosmopolitan social sciences?

Methodological nationalism already included implicit assumptions which linkcategorical frames to a practical–political relationship to addressees of therespective theories. In the ‘container model’ the definition of the nationalsociety as research object is short-circuited with more or less exclusive refer-ences to national actors (governments, political parties, trade unions, classes,elites, social movements, etc.). These serve as the principal objects of socialtheory building and empirical research (even if unintentionally) and asaddressees of practical recommendations and interventions. Here we can dis-tinguish two kinds of ‘value relevance’ (Wertbeziehungen; Max Weber) andpartisanships: explicit and implicit. The values and partisanships explicitlybundled up in methodological nationalism were focused after the SecondWorld War in the European context on the emerging democratic intervention-ist welfare state as the new representative of the common good and common



will. The development and expansion of sociology and political sciences afterthe Second World War in Western Europe were closely linked to the twin tasks,on the one hand, of guarding against a relapse into Fascism and NationalSocialism and, on the other, of preventing the working class from going over tothe Communist competitor. Moreover, it is easy to demonstrate in detail (evenif it is not possible here) that the academic self-description dominant today,namely that social theory and research is ‘value free’ and conducted with‘purely scholarly goals’ in mind is blatantly contradicted by implicit actualpartisanships.These are the consequence of the adoption of the national ‘actorperspective’ in the ‘observer perspective’ of social sciences, for example byexcluding the externalization of risks from consideration. In the case of newglobal risks, value freedom is not a sign of maturity, but a misunderstanding ofthe responsibility of the social sciences.

In the age of globalization, methodological nationalism becomes antiquatednot only as a conceptual framework but also in its addressee relationship. Thisis a fundamental reason why highly professionalized social science, on the onehand, loses itself in a nirvana of abstractions and, on the other, breaks downinto an esoteric fragmentation of unrelated, highly detailed empirical researchprojects (Burawoy 2005). In other words, a de-provincialized and re-locatedpost-universalistic social theory, which is re-discovering and reflecting itsEuropean roots, finds itself looking for a new, historical ‘value relevance’. Thisnew value relevance both possesses cultural (future) validity, and links thehistoricity of social scientific research problems with new addressees.

As we have seen, in methodological nationalism the nation-state categoricalframe of research coincides (behind the researcher’s back, so to speak) withspecifically national actor categories (for example, social classes, civil societymovements, national governments, etc.). This definitely does not hold for theaddressee relationship of cosmopolitan social science. On the contrary, withreference to the addressee relationship the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ means: nospecific actor categories, that is, neither governments, nor trade unions, employ-ers’ associations, social classes, or social movements. Most importantly, a cos-mopolitan social science does not follow a false analogy by searching for, anduniting with, new ‘transnational classes’, ‘multitudes’ or ‘elites’. Rather, thesubjects of cosmopolitan social theory are cosmopolitan coalitions of actors inall their diversity. They are to be found in these heterogeneous, permanentlyfluctuating coalitions which include governments, national and international‘sub-politics’, international organizations, informal gatherings of states (suchas the G-8, G-20), etc. It is in such coalitions that hegemonic struggles arefought out between conflicting projects, all claiming to represent the universaland to define the symbolic parameters of social life. And in forging suchcoalitions across borders of all kinds, new spheres and spaces of political actionopen up, under conditions which still have to be researched. Confronted witha new quality of global dependencies and interdependencies, no single player



can expect to win on his/her own; they are all dependent on coalitions, alliancesand networks (Beck 2005).This is the way, then, in which the hazy power gameof ‘global domestic politics’ opens up its own immanent alternatives andoppositions and creates novel collective identities and political subjects.

3. Possibilities of realization

Up to this point, our diagnosis is ambivalent, critics might even say:contradictory. Some theorists hold the all-purpose word ‘dialectical’ in reservefor such cases. This, finally, raises the question: How can global risks be suc-cessfully dealt with under the conditions of multiple competing modernitieswith their different normative models, material interests and political powerconstellations? The key to answering this question is provided by the conceptof cosmopolitical realpolitik. In order to understand and develop this conceptit has to be distinguished in particular from normative-philosophical cosmo-politanism on the one hand, and idealistic utopian cosmopolitanism (Held2004; Archibugi 2008) on the other. Cosmopolitical realpolitik does not appeal(at least not primarily) to shared ideas and identities, but to power and inter-ests to be brought into play. If we adopt such a ‘realist’ perspective, the crucialquestion is how the hegemonic ‘meta-power games’ of global domestic politics(Weltinnenpolitik) can be shaped and interests pursued in such a way that theyserve the realization of common cosmopolitan goals? In short (followingMandeville), how can private vices be transformed into public, cosmopolitanvirtues?

The concept of cosmopolitical realpolitik, which aims at answering thisquestion, is based on four assumptions. Firstly, the new historical reality ofworld risk society is that no nation can master its problems alone. Those whoplay the national card will inevitably lose. Secondly, global problems producenew cosmopolitan imperatives which give rise to transnational communities ofrisk. Thirdly, international organizations are not merely the continuation ofnational politics by other means. They can transform national interests.Fourthly, cosmopolitan realism is also economic realism. It reduces and redis-tributes costs because costs rise exponentially with the loss of legitimacy.

Cosmopolitanism thus understood implies a specific approach to ensuringthat one’s own (individual or collective) interests are promoted and made toprevail. Cosmopolitan realism calls for neither the sacrifice of one’s owninterests, nor an exclusive bias towards higher ideas and ideals. On the con-trary, it accepts that for the most part political action is interest-based. But itinsists on an approach to the pursuit of one’s own interests that is compatiblewith those of a larger community. Thus cosmopolitical realism basically meansthe recognition of the legitimate interests of others and their inclusion in thecalculation of one’s own interests. In this process, interests become ‘reflexivenational interests’ through repeated joint strategies of self-limitation; more



precisely, empowerment arises from self-limitation. Ideally, individual and col-lective goals, both national and global, can be achieved simultaneously. Inreality, however, there are often limits and dilemmas of cosmopolitanrealpolitik. It is no panacea for all the world’s problems and it by no meansalways works. In particular, whether a problem has a cosmopolitan solution,depends on the normative and institutional framework, in which decisionshave to be taken.11 Nevertheless, the basic message of cosmopolitan realpolitikis this: The future is open. It depends on decisions we make. The research wedo and the conceptual frames we use make a difference.

(Date accepted: June 2010)

Notes

1. The Research Centre on ‘ReflexiveModernization’ (Sonderforschungsbereich536) at the University of Munich financedby the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft(DFG) for 10 years offered an excellentenvironment to develop this perspective onExtra-European Varieties of Second Moder-nity; we are very grateful for this opportu-nity to cooperatively research far beyondthe original research programme intounknown territory.

2. For example, human rights regime (seeLevy 2010; Levy and Sznaider 2010) or inrelation to global risks ‘cooperate or fail!’(see later).

3. Our notion of ‘modern societies’ is anopen one, it must not be misunderstood inthe sense of nation-state based and orga-nized societies.

4. For a critical reflection of this body oftheory see, in particular, Arnason (2003); forcomparative case studies based on Eisen-stadt’s theory see among others Schwinn(2006).

5. Since the theory of reflexive modern-ization assumes that at least in the case ofthe Western precursors of reflexive modern-ization this process does not take placeby design, we cannot work with Therborn’sdistinction between voluntary or enforcedmodernization here (Therborn 1995). In-stead, we need a more differentiated con-cept of the logics at work.

6. Some of most important contributionsto this debate include: Appiah 2006;Archibugi 2008; Baban 2006; Beck 2005,2006, 2009; Beck and Grande 2007; Beck andSznaider 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2010; Beitz2005; Benhabib 2007; Berry 2008; Boon andFine 2007; Braeckman 2008; Brassett andSmith 2007; Bray 2009; Breckenridge et al.2002; Brock and Brighouse 2005; Brown2008; Calcutt, Woodward and Skrbis 2009;Calhoun 2007a, 2007b; Cheah 2006; Delanty2009; Delanty and He 2008; Dobson 2006;Edwards 2008; Eriksen 2009; Featherstoneet al. 2002; Fine 2007; Garsten 2003; Holme2010; Hannerz 2004; Held 2010; Inglis2009; Kendall, Woodward and Skrbis 2009;Khagram and Levitt 2008; Kurasawa 2004;Levy, Heinlein and Breuer 2010; Mau,Mewes and Zimmermann 2008; Meckled-Garcia 2008; Mendieta 2009; NederveenPieterse 2006; Nowicka and Rovisco 2009;Pichler 2008; Poferl and Sznaider 2004;Rapport 2007; Rumford 2007; Slaughter2009; Todd 2007; Tyfield and Urry 2009;Vertovec and Cohen 2002; Werbner 2008;Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002; Ypi 2008;see also Constellations 2003; Daedalus2008, and The Hedgehog Review 2009.

7. For an excellent summary of thevarious sociological concepts of risk seeArnoldi (2009) and Wilkinson (2010).

8. The ‘three worlds of welfare capital-ism’, identified by Esping-Andersen (1990),



vary with regard to the scope and extent ofpublic risk insurance and the specific ways ofburden sharing between the state and theindividual. However, these are only varietiesof the statist model.

9. Another example is the ‘cosmopolitaninnovation regime’ (Tyfield and Urry 2009),a transnational process stimulating the inter-national collaboration in innovation neces-sary for the development of various ‘globalgoods’.

10. Empirical analyses of the politicalconsequences of globalization in Western

Europe have shown that globalizationhas produced a new ‘cosmopolitanism-nationalism’-cleavage, which hitherto hasbeen articulated most successfully by newradical right populist parties fighting for are-nationalization of politics in the age ofglobalization (Kriesi et al. 2008).

11. In our book on ‘CosmopolitanEurope’ we have identified some ofthese dilemmas of cosmopolitan real-politik (see Beck and Grande 2007:ch. 8).

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