Ulrich Beck - Living in the World Risk Society

7/29/2019 Ulrich Beck - Living in the World Risk Society

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Economy and Society Volume 35 Number 3 August 2006: 329 345

Ulrich Beck Living in the world risk society

Abstract

In a world risk society, we must distinguish between ecological and

financial dangers,

which can be conceptualized as side effects, and the threat from terrorist

networks as

intentional catastrophes. The principle of deliberately exploiting the

vulnerability of modern civil

society replaces the principle of chance and accident.

Keywords: risk; catastrophe; not-knowing; enlightenment function of world risk

society; cosmopolita realpolitikn .

1.The narrative ofrisk is a narrative ofirony

. This narrative deals with theinvoluntary satire, the optimistic futility, withwhich the highly developed institutions ofmodern society science, state, business andmilitary attempt to anticipate what cannot beanticipated. Socrates has left us tomake sense of the puzzling sentence: I knowthat I know nothing. The fatal irony, into whichscientific-technical society plunges us is, as aconsequence ofts perfection, much moreradical: we do not know what it is we dont knowbut from this dangers arise, which threatenmankind!

1.1.The perfectexample here isprovided by thedebate aboutclimate change

In 1974, about forty-five years after thediscovery of the cooling agent CFC, of all things,the chemists Rowland and Molina put forwardthe hypothesis that CFCs destroy theozone layer of the stratosphere and, as aresult, increased ultraviolet radiation wouldreach the earth. The chain of unforeseensecondary effects would lead to climatechanges, which threaten the basis ofexistence of mankind. When coolants wereinvented no one could know or even suspect


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2.Risk isambivalence

that they wouldmake such a major contributionto global warming.(331)Being at risk is the way of being and ruling inthe world of modernity; being at global risk isthe human condition at the beginning of thetwenty-first century. But, against the grain of

the currentwidespread feeling of doom, I would like to ask:what is the ruse of history which is also inherentin world risk society and emerges with itsrealization? Or more tightly formulated: isthere an enlightenment function of worldrisk societyand what form does it take?

3.The experience ofglobal risksrepresents a shockfor the whole of humanity. Thehistorical irony.

The experience of global risks is an occurrenceof abrupt and fully conscious confrontation withthe apparentlyexcluded other.Nietzsche had a kind of premonition, when hetalked of an age of comparing, in whichdifferent cultures, ethnicities and religions couldbe compared and lived through sideby side.Without being explicit he, too, had an eye forworld historical irony, that in particular it is theself destructivenes not only physical, butalso ethical of unleashed modernity,which could make it possible for humanbeings to outgrow both the nation-stateand the international order, as it werebeings to outgrow both the nation-state and theinternational order, the heaven and earth ofmodernity, as it were.

4. To the extent thatrisk is experiencedas omnipresent,there are only threepossiblereactions: denialapathy ortransformation .

The first is largely inscribed in modern culture,the second resembles post-modern nihilism, thethird is the cosmopolitan moment of worldrisk society. And that is what I am going to talkabout. What is meant by that may be explainedwith reference to Hannah Arendt. Theexistential shock of danger _ therein lies thefundamental ambivalence of global risks _opens up unintentionally (and often also unseenand unutilized) the (mis)fortune of a possiblenew beginning (which is no cause for falsesentimentality).How to live in the shadow of global risks?How to live, when old certainties are shatteredor are now revealed as lies? Arendts answeranticipates the irony of risk.


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5. The expectationof theunexpectedrequires that theself-evident is nolonger taken as self-

evident.The words for

this are neitherutopianism norpessimism butirony andambivalence

The shock of danger is a call for a newbeginning. Where there is a new beginning,action is possible. Human beings enter intorelations across borders. This commonactivity by strangers across borders meansfreedom.All freedom

is contained in this ability to begin.There isa nostalgia built into the foundations ofEuropean sociologicalthought, which has neverdisappeared. Perhaps, paradoxically, thisnostalgia can be overcome with the theory ofworld risk society? My aim is a non -nostalgic,new critical theory to look at the past and thefuture of modernity.

6.Three steps -drawing onempirical researchfindings of theMunich ResearchCentre ReflexiveModernization:

1. Old dangers _ new risks: what is newabout world risk society?2. Ruse of history: to what extent are globalrisks a global force in present and future worldhistory, controllable by no one, but which alsoopen up newopportunities of action for states, civil societyactors, etc.?3. Consequences: in order to understand themanufactured uncertainty, lack of safety andinsecurity of world risk society is there a needfor a paradigm shift in the social sciences?

7.Old dangers _ newrisks: what is newabout world risksociety?We anticipate themin terms of structuralarrangements aswell as of emergencyplanning

Modern society has become a risk society inthe sense that it is increasingly occupiedwith debating, preventing and managingrisks that it itself has produced.After all, our world appears a lot safer than that,say, of the wartorn regions of Africa,Afghanistan or the Middle East.Are modern societies not distinguished preciselyby the fact that to a large extent they havesucceeded in bringing under controlcontingencies and uncertainties, for examplewith respect to accidents, violence andsickness? The past year has once againreminded us, with the Tsunami catastrophe,the destruction of New Orleans byHurricane Katrina, the devastation of largeregions in South America and Pakistan,how limited the claim to control of modernsocieties in the face of natural forces remains.But even natural hazards appear less randomthan theyused to. Although human interventionmay not stop earthquakes or volcaniceruptions,they can be predicted with reasonable accuracy.


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8.The key distinctionbetween risk andcatastrophe. Risk doesnot meancatastrophe. Risk

means theanticipation of catastrophe.

Risks are not real, they are becoming real (Joost vanLoon). At the moment at which risks becomereal _ for example, in the shape of a terroristattack _ they cease to be risks and becomecatastrophes. Risks have already moved

elsewhere: to the anticipation of furtherattacks, inflation, new markets, wars orthe reduction of civil liberties. Risks arealways events that are threatening. Withouttechniques of visualization, withoutsymbolicforms, without mass media, etc., risks arenothing at all. In other words, it is irrelevantwhether we live in a world which is in fact or insome sense objectively safer than all otherworlds; if destruction and disasters areanticipated, then that produces a compulsion toact.

9.Risk is notreducible to theproduct of probability of occurrencemultiplied with theintensity and scopeof potential harm.

Rather, it is a socially constructed phenomenon,in which some people have a greater capacity todefine risks than others. Not all actors reallybenefit from the reflexivity of risk _ only thosewith real scope to define their own risks.Risk exposure is replacing class as the principalinequality of modern society, because of howrisk is reflexively defined by actors: In risksociety relations of definition are to beconceived analogous to Marxs relations ofproduction. The inequalities of definitionenable powerful actors to maximize risks forothers and minimize risks forthemselves. Riskdefinition, essentially, is a power game. This isespecially true for world risk society whereWestern governments or powerful economicactors definerisks for others.

10.Riskspresupposehuman decisions.

They are the partly positive, partly negative,Janus-faced consequences of human decisionsand interventions. Inrelation to risks there is inevitably posedthe highly explosive question of socialaccountability and responsibility, and this isalso true where the prevailingrules allow for accountability only in extremelyexceptional cases. The acknowledged, decision-governed social roots of risks make itcompletely impossible to externalize theproblem of accountability. Someone, on theother hand, who believes in a personal God has


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at his disposal a room for manoeuvre and ameaning for his actions in the face of threatsand catastrophes. Through prayers and goodworks people can win Gods favour andforgiveness and in this way actively contributeto their own salvation, but also to that of their

family and community. There is, therefore, aclose connection between secularization andrisk. When Nietzsche announces: God is dead,then that has the _ ironic _ consequence thatfrom now on human beings must find (or invent)their own explanations and justifications for thedisasters which threaten them.

11.The argumentabout theknowing and not-knowing of globalrisks cancels theestablishednational andinternational rulesystems

The irony lies in the institutionalized securityclaim, to have to control something even if onedoes not know whether it exists! But why shoulda science or a discipline concern itself with whatit does not even know? There is certainly aconclusive sociological answer to that: becausein the face of the production of insuperable manufactured uncertaintiessociety more than ever relies and insistson security and control; and because theargument about the knowing and not-knowing of global risks cancels theestablished national and international rulesystems. It sounds really ironic, but it isprecisely unknown unknowns which provoke far-reaching conflicts over the definition andconstruction of political rules andresponsibilities with the aim of preventingtheworst.For the time being the last and moststriking example of that is the Second IraqWar,which was, at least also, conducted inorder to preventwhatwecannot know, that is, whether and towhat extent chemical and nuclearweaponsof mass destruction get into the hands ofterrorists.Francois Ewald writes:the precautionary principle requires an activeuse of doubt, in the sense Descartes madecanonical in his meditations. Before any action, Imust not only ask myself what I need to knowand what I need to master, but also what I donotknow, what I dread or suspect. I must, out ofprecaution, imagine the worst possible, theconsequence that an infinitely deceptive,malicious demon could have slipped into thefalse of apparently innocent enterprise.


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(Ewald 2002)

12.The boundarybetween rationalityand hysteriabecomes blurred.

Given the right invested in them to avertdangers, politicians, in particular, may easily beforced to proclaim a security which theycannot honour _ because the political

costs of omission are much higher thanthe costs of overreaction. In future,therefore,it is not going to be easy, in the context ofstate promises of security and a massmedia hungry for catastrophes, actively tolimit and prevent a diabolical power game withthe hysteria of not-knowing. I do not even darethink about deliberate attempts toinstrumentalize this situation.

13.From trusteeto suspect: Globalrisks are theexpression of a newform of globalinterdepen dence,which cannot beadequatelyaddressed by way ofnational politics orby the availableforms of internationalcooperation

All of the past and present practical experiencesof human beings in dealing with uncertaintynow exist side by side, without offering anyready solution to the resulting problems. Notonly that: key institutions of modernitysuch as science, business and politics,which are supposed to guarantee rationalityand security, find themselves confronted bysituations in which their apparatus no longerhas a purchase and the fundamental principlesof modernity no longer automatically hold good.Indeed, the perception of their rating changes _from trustee to suspect. They are no longerseen only as instruments of riskmanagement, but also as a source of risk.

14.TragicindividualizationAs a consequenceeveryday life inworld risk society ischaracterized by anew variant of individualiza tion.

The individual mustcope with theuncertainty of the

global world by him-or herself.

Here individualization is a default outcomeof a failure of expert systems to managerisks. Neither science, nor the politics inpower, nor the mass media, nor business,nor the law or even the military are in aposition to define or control risksrationally. The individual is forced tomistrust the promises of rationality ofthese key institutions. As a consequence,people are thrown back onto themselves,they are alienated from expert systems

but have nothing else instead.Disembedding without embedding _ this isthe ironic-tragic formula for this dimensionof individualization in world risk society.For example, responsibility for thedecision on genetically modified foods andtheir unforeseeable, unknowable long-term consequences is ultimately dumpedon the so-called responsibleconsumer.


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Sustaining anindividual self ofintegrity in worldrisk society is

indeed a tragicaffair(!?)

(Consumer choice rules.) The appeal toresponsibility is the cynicism with whichthe institutions whitewash their ownfailure. However _and this is also part of the tragic irony ofthis individualization process _ the

individual, whose senses fail him and herin the face of ungraspable threats tocivilization, who, thrown back on himself,is blind to dangers, remains at the sametime unable to escape the power ofdefinition of expert systems, whosejudgement he cannot, yet must trust..

15.he lines ofconflict of worldrisk society arecultural ones.

World risk society produces new lines of conflict.Unlike the national industrial society of firstmodernity, which was marked by socio-economic Economy and Societyconflicts between labour and capital, and unlikethe international conflict constellations of theEast-West conflict, which were characterized byquestions of political security, the lines ofconflict of world risk society are culturalones.

To the extent that global risks evade calculationby scientific methods, are a matter of not-knowing, then the cultural perception , that is,the post-religious, quasi-religious belief in thereality of world risk, assumes a key significance.

16.Given the culturaldifferences in riskperception thequestion is posed:A.How muchtolerance in theface of theignorance of others can weafford?

B.How can bindingprocedures andstandards of regulation beagreed givenculturaldifferences inperception andnot-knowing withrespect to theconsequences of

1. This is a matter of life and death, not ofindividuals or individual nations, butpotentially of everyone.2. Precisely these decisions central to thephysical and moral survival of mankindhave to be made within a horizon of more orless admitted and disputed not-knowing,and they are socially not assignable.3. In many areas the experimental logic oftrial and error breaks down. It is impossibleto permit just a small amount of geneticallymodified food, just a small amount of nuclearenergy, just a small amount of therapeuticcloning. Given the cultural differences in riskperception the question isposed: how much tolerance in the face of theignorance of others can we afford? Or: how canbinding procedures and standards of regulationbe agreed given cultural differences inperception and not-knowing with respect to theconsequences of decisions which change theanthropological character of being human?


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decisions whichchange theanthropologicalcharacter of beinghuman?

Here two contradictory riskphilosophies come into conflict:

the philosophy of laissez-faire _ it issafe, as long as it has not beenproven to be dangerous; and

the philosophy of precaution _nothing is safe, as long as it has notbeen proven harmless.

17. The theory of worldrisk society addresses the

increasing realization of

the irrepressible ubiquity

of radical uncertainty in

the modern world.

In developing the technologies of the future:genetic technology, nanotechnology androbotics _ we are opening up a Pandorasbox. Radicalization of modernity produces thisfundamental irony of risk: science, the stateand the military are becoming part of theproblem theyare supposed to solve. This is what reflexivemodernization means: we are not living in a

post-modern world, but in a more-modernworld. It is not the crisis,but the victory of modernity, which, through thelogics of unintended and unknown side-effects,undermines basic institutions of first modernity.

18.Thecosmopolitanmoment of worldrisk society

Beck trying to answer this very justifiedscepticism in terms of six components, whichmake up the cosmopolitan moment ofworld risk society: 1) involuntaryenlightenment,2) enforced communication across alldifferences and borders,

3) the political power of catharsis, 4) enforcedcosmopolitanism,5) risk as a wake-up call in the face of the failureof government and6) the possibility of alternative government in aglobalized world.

19.Global risks havetwo sides:theprobability ofpossible

catastrophes andsocialvulnerabilitythroughcatastrophes

1) Involuntary enlightenment HurricaneKatrina was a horrifying act of nature, but onewhich simultaneously, as a global media event,involuntarily and unexpectedly developed anenlightenment function which broke all

resistance.What no social movement, no political party andcertainly no sociological analysis, no matter howwell grounded and brilliantly written (if suchthings existed!), would have been able toachieve happened within a few days: Americaand the world were confronted by therepressed otherracialized face of poverty. TV dislikes images


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of the poor, but they were omnipresent duringthe coverage of Katrina. Likewise the televisionpictures of the Tsunami disaster brought thefirst law of world risk society into every livingroom, which goes: catastrophic risk follows thepoor

.20.How can therelationship betweenglobal risk and thecreation of a globalpublic beunderstood?

There is good reason to predict thatclimate change will cause devastationespecially in the poor regions of the world,where population growth, poverty, the pollutionof water and air, inequalities between classesand genders,AIDs epidemics and corrupt, authoritariangovernments all overlap. It is also part of theambivalence of risk, however, that in addition tothe globalization of compassion _ measuredby the unprecedented readiness to donate tothe relief effort _ at the same time the Tsunamivictims were categorized and discussedpolitically in national terms. Furthermore, themany other catastrophes, whichwere not at all or only briefly reported in theWest, are indicative of the egoistic selectivitywith which the West responds to the threats ofworld risk society.

21.A global publicdiscourse does notgrow out of aconsensus ondecisions, but out ofdissent over theconsequences ofdecisions.(Limits of a globaldissent discourse).

In his 1927 book The Public and its Problems,JohnDewey explained that not actions butconsequences lie at the heart of politics.Although Dewey was certainly not thinking ofglobal warming, BSE or terrorist attacks, hisidea is perfectly applicable to world risk society..Modern risk crises are constituted by just suchcontroversies over consequences. Where somemay see an overreaction to risk, it is alsopossible to see grounds for hope. Because suchrisk conflicts do indeed have an enlightenmentfunction. They destabilize the existingorder, but the same events can also looklike a vital step towards the building ofnew institutions. Global risk has the power totear away the facades of organizedirresponsibility.

22.Risks are thelikely battlegrounds for thesomewhat hazypower space ofglobal domestic

Global risks are not their enemies, althoughthey are not entirely trustworthy allies incolonising the future either.


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politics.

23.1.Enforcedcommunicationacross all differences and

bordersThrough publicdebate of consequences, arange of voicesisheard and there isparticipation indecisions whichotherwise evadepublicinvolvement.

The modern discourse is based onEgoism, autonomy,autopoesis, self-isolation, improbability oftranslation _ these are key terms which, in

sociological theory, but also in public andpolitical debates, distinguish modern society.

The communicative logic of global risk can beunderstood as the exact opposite principle. Riskis the involuntary, unintended compulsorymedium of communication in a world ofirreconcilable differences,in which everyone revolves around themselves.Hence a publicly perceived risk compelscommunication between those who do not wantto have anything to do with one another. Itassigns obligations and costs to those whorefuse them and who often even have currentlaw on their side. In other words, risks cutthrough the self-absorption of cultures,languages, religions and systems aswell as the national and international agenda ofpolitics, they overturn their priorities and createcontexts for action between camps, parties andquarrelling nations, which ignore and opposeone another.For example, the anticipation of catastrophicside-effects means that big companies areincreasingly faced with anticipatory resistanceto their decisions: no power plant is builtwithout protest from nearby residents, no oilfieldexplored without critical scrutiny bytransnational NGOs, no new pharmaceuticaldrug hailed without qualifications about theknown and unknown risks associated with it. Inother words, global risks enforce an involuntarydemocratization. Through public debate ofconsequences, a range of voices is heard andthere is participation in decisions whichotherwise evade public involvement.

23.2.Politicalcatharsis

Who would have thought before, that tearswould become our common language,exclaimed a Turkish TV reporter in Athens intohis microphone. These words were his commenton the incomprehensible surprise that two bigearthquakes one after the other at the end ofthe twentieth century had reconciled the twotraditional enemies who had been feuding for


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180 years: the Turks and the Greeks. Peace inBanda Aceh, public spirit in New Orleans,opening of the border in Kashmir: thecatastrophes of 2005 reflected worldwide asglobal events have also displayed the power toproduce political catharsis. But this is no one-

way street to more freedom, democracy andpeace. As the risk of terrorism shows, radicalchange, removalof the old, the glint of the new,in short, the world historical power of globalrisks, are in principle ambivalent. The ruse ofhistory does not have to be aruse of reason, itcan also become a ruse of unreason or anti-reason _ and often it is all of these things atonce (e.g. the war on terror).

23.3.Enforcedcosmopolitanism

That is whatenforcedcosmopolitanization means: globalrisks activate andconnect actorsacross borders,who otherwise donot want to haveanything to dowith one another

23.3.1.The ability to isolate individual lines of riskwhich that assumes is contradicted, however,by the trans-systemic, trans-national,trans-disciplinary dynamic of world risksociety.

23.3.2.The history of risk corresponds to the (hi)storyof the race between the hare and the hedgehog(or was it a tortoise?).

23.3.3.The risk that was here only a moment agoand had one face is now already over thereand has taken on quite a different facewithin various cultures, systems, regions,scholarly disciplines.

23.3.4.It is the permanent transformation,accumulation and multiplicity of distinct,often spurious risks _ecological, biomedical,social, economic, financial, symbolic andinformational _ that characterizes theambivalence and incalculability of world risksociety.

23.3.5.I propose, in this sense, that a clear

distinction be madebetween the philosophical and normativeideas of cosmopolitanism, on the one hand,and the impure actualcosmopolitanization on the other.

The cosmopolitanmoment of worldrisk society isboth at once:

.The birth of a global risk consciousness isa trauma for humanity; it combines theexperience of an anthropological shock and of a


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deformed andinevitable, thenseemingly it is notan appropriateobject for sociological and

politicalreflections.

cosmopolitan common fate with the happypresentiment of an ability to start anew,collapse with newdepartures. That need not mean Mit der Gefahrwaechst das Rettende auch _With danger, whatsaves also grows us _ because, faced with the

alternative freedom or security, the vastmajority of human beings seem toprioritize security, even if that means civilliberties are cut back or even suffocated. As aresult of the experience of the risk of terror,there is an increasing readiness, even inthe centres of democracy, to break withfundamental values andprinciples of humanity and modernity, e.g.with the principle There can be no torture orNuclear weapons are not for use, that is, toglobalize the practice of torture and to threatenso-called terror states with a preventivenuclear strike.

Global risk servesas a wake-up callin the face of thefailure of government in theglobalized world

There is a surprising parallel between thereactor catastrophe of Chernobyl, the Asianfinancial crisis, 9/11 and the consequences ofHurricane Katrina for the American self-image.In each case they led to world-wide discussionof the question as to what extent the dynamicof world risk society must be regarded andevaluated as a historic refutation of theneoliberal conception of the minimal state. Forexample, a result of the jolt given bythe revelation of the hidden Third World face ofthe United States has been that, despite thesceptical attitude of many Americans to thestate, there has been an opening up of thequestion as to an appropriate role ofgovernment. Inthis way the old opposition between left andright finds new forms of expression. On oneside, it is emphasized that the power ofthe Federal Government exists to minimizethe threats and risks which individualsface; on the other, this definition of thestate is dismissed as mistaken andmisguided.

There is an interesting exception: militarysecurity. Whereas individuals are expectedto cope with issues of social security andto make provision for the event of acatastrophe, the importance of externalsecurity and with it the need to expand


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military apparatuses is dramatized. A socialcontract? A public good?At best an option, not a duty.President Bushs campaign manager argued:the agency that would be responding to Katrinawould best be described as an oversized

entitlement programme, squandering moneyand programmes better delivered byorganizations like the Salvation Army. BarackObama, the Junior Senator for Illinois, himself anAfrican-American, responded: The ineptitudewas colour blind. Whoever was in charge, hewent on, appeared to assume thatevery American has a capacity to load up thefamily in a car, filled with $100 worth ofgasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunkand use a credit card to check into the hotel andsafe ground. It is this scepticism withrespect to thestate which drives forward theindividualization of its citizens,particularly the weakest _ in the face ofglobal dangers _ which from a Europeanperspective is so difficult to understand.

Possibility of alternative government Important as all these arguments are, thedecisive question is a different one: to what extent does the threat and shock of

world risk society open up the horizon to a historic alternative of political action _

first of all, admittedly, for a change of viewpoint, which allows the fundamentaltransformation of national/international, state and non-state politics, which is

occurring, to be even adequately conceptualized, understood and researched by

the social sciences in its range, its ambivalences, its strategic options for action

and its immanent contradictions? Not until this key question as to an alternative

is answered would a new critical theory with cosmopolitan intent, which

overcomes the mistakes of methodological nationalism, be a possibility. It is

precisely these questions that I have tried to answer in my book Power in the

governments and societies. No single player or opponent can ever win on their

own; they are dependent on alliances. This is the way, then, in which the hazy

power game of global domestic politics opens up its own immanent alternatives

and oppositions. The first one, which is dominant today, gives the priority of

power to global capital. The goal of the strategies of capital is, in simplified terms,to merge capital with the state in order to open up new sources of legitimacy in the

form of the neo-liberal state. Its orthodoxy says: there is only one revolutionary

power, which rewrites the rules of the global power order, and that is capital, whilethe other actors _ nation-states and civil society movements _ remain bound by

the limited options of action and power of the national and international order.

This dominant coalition of capital and national minimal state is not only not in a

position to respond to the challenges of world risk society, it becomes


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fundamentally implausible in the experiential space of believed global risks.

The strategies of action which global risks open up overthrow the order of

power, which has formed in the neo-liberal capital-state coalition: global risks

empower states and civil society movements, because they reveal new sources of

legitimation and options for action for these groups of actors; they disempowerglobalized capital on the other hand, because the consequences of investment

decisions contribute to creating global risks, destabilizing markets andactivating the power of that sleeping giant the consumer. Conversely, the

goal of global civil society and its actors is to achieve a connection between civil

society and the state, that is, to bring about what I call a cosmopolitan form of

statehood. The forms of alliances entered into by the neo-liberal state

instrumentalize the state (and state-theory) in order to optimize and legitimize

the interests of capital world wide. Conversely the idea of a cosmopolitan state

in civil society form aims at imagining and realizing a robust diversity and a

post-national order. The neo-liberal agenda surrounds itself with an aura of

self-regulation and self-legitimation. Civil societys agenda, on the other hand,

surrounds itself with the aura of human rights, global justice and struggles for

a new grand narrative of radical-democratic globalization.

This is not wishful thinking; on the contrary, it is an expression of acosmopolitan realpolitik . In an age of global crises and risks, a politics of golden

handcuffs _ the creation of a dense network of transnational interdependencies

_ is exactly what is needed in order to regain national autonomy, not least

in relation to a highly mobile world economy. The maxims of nation-basedrealpolitik _ that national interests must necessarily be pursued by national

means _ must be replaced by the maxims of cosmopolitan realpolitik . The more

cosmopolitan our political structures and activities, the more successful they

will be in promoting national interests and the greater our individual power in

this global age will be.

It is, of course, important to look at the unwanted and unpredicted side-effects

of this Cosmopolitan Vision (Beck 2006): the call for justice and human rights is

used to legitimate the invasion of other countries. How can one be in favour ofcosmopolitan legitimacy when it leads to crises and wars and thus to the bloody

refutation of the idea itself ? Who will rein in the side-effects of a cosmopolitan

moral principle that speaks of peace while facilitating war? What does peace

mean when it generalizes the possibility of war? It is necessary to make a clear

distinction between true and false cosmopolitanism and yet such clarity is hard to

achieve because it is the comparative legitimacy of cosmopolitanism that makes itso tempting to instrumentalize the latter for national-imperial purposes. Fake

cosmopolitanism instrumentalizes cosmopolitan rhetoric _ the rhetoric of peace,

of human rights, of global justice _ for national-hegemonic purposes. There are

numerous examples of this in history; the IraqWar is only the most recent. Theideological ambivalence which is inherent from the beginning in the idea of

cosmopolitanism is the reason why, in the last chapter of my book on Power in theGlobal Age in an (ironic) self-critique, A brief funeral oration at the cradle of the

cosmopolitan age, I warn against the abuse of cosmopolitanism.

Global Age which has just appeared in English translation. Here I can only

outline the basic idea.

Two premises: 1) world risk society brings a new, historic key logic to the fore:


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no nation can cope with its problems alone; 2) a realistic political alternative in the

global age is possible, which counteracts the loss to globalized capital of the

commanding power of state politics. The condition is that globalization must be

decoded not as economic fate, but as a strategic game for world power.

Anew global domestic politics that is already at work here and now, beyond thenational-international distinction, has become a meta-power game, whose

outcome is completely open-ended. It is a game in which boundaries, basic rulesand basic distinctions are renegotiated _ not only those between the national and

the international spheres, but also those between global business and the state,

transnational civil society movements, supra-national organizations and national

Consequences for the social sciences, perspective

It is evident, that the taken-for-granted nation-state frame of reference _ what

I call methodological nationalism _ prevents sociology from understanding

and analysing the dynamics and conflicts, ambivalences and ironies of world

risk society. This is also true _ at least in part _ of the two major theoretical

approaches and empirical schools of research, which deal with risk: on the one

hand in the tradition of Mary Douglas, on the other in that of MichelFoucault. These traditions of thought and research have undoubtedly raised

key questions and produced extremely interesting detailed results as far as

understanding definitions of risk and risk policies is concerned, work which no

one can dispense with and which will always remain an essential component ofsocial science risk research. Their achievement is to open up risk as a battle for

the redefinition of state and scientific power.

An initial defect lies in regarding risk more or less or even exclusively as an ally,

but failing to perceive it as an unreliable ally and not at all as a potential antagonist,

as a force hostile both to nation-state power as well as to global capital. This

exclusion is analytical, deriving from the theoretical approach itself. Surprisingly

the research traditions of Douglas and Foucault define their problem in such a

way that the battle over risk always comes down to the reproduction of the socialand state order of power. As a result, they are taken in by the only apparently

effective surveillance state, a self-misconception of that state itself _ because the

nation-state which attempts to deal with global risks in isolation resembles a

drunk man, who on a dark night is trying to find his lost wallet in the cone of light

of a street lamp.To the question: did you actually lose your wallet here, he replies,

no, but in the light of the street lamp I can at least look for it.In other words, global risks are producing failed states _ even in the West.

The state structure evolving under the conditions of world risk society could be

characterized in terms of both inefficiency and post-democratic authority. A

clear distinction, therefore, has to be made between rule and inefficiency. It isquite possible that the end-result could be the gloomy perspective that we have

totally ineffective and authoritarian state regimes (even in the context of the

Western democracies). The irony here is this: manufactured uncertainty(knowledge), insecurity (welfare state) and lack of safety (violence) undermine

and reaffirm state power beyond democratic legitimacy. Given the maddening

conditions of world risk society, the older critical theory of Foucault is in danger

of becoming simultaneously affirmative and antiquated, along with large areas

of sociology, which have concentrated on class dynamics in the welfare state. It

underestimates and castrates the communicative cosmopolitan logic and irony


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of global risks; consequently the historic question, where politics has lost its

wallet, that is, the question of an alternative, is analytically excluded by the vain

searching in the cone of light of the nation-state street light.

A cosmopolitan sociology, which faces up to the challenges of global risks,

must also, however, shed its political quietism: society and its institutions areincapable of adequately conceptualizing risks, because they are caught up in

the concepts of first modernity, nation-state modernity, which by now havebecome inappropriate. And it has to face the question: how can non-Western

risk society be understood by a sociology, which so far has taken it for granted,

that its object _ Western modernity _ is at once both historically unique and

universally valid? How is it possible to decipher the internal link between risk

and race, risk and image of the enemy, risk and exclusion?

In conclusion I return to the title of my lecture: how to live in times of

uncontainable risks? How to live, when the next terrorist attack is already in

our heads? How worried should we be? Where is the line between prudent

concern and crippling fear and hysteria? And who defines it? Scientists, whose

findings often contradict each other, who change their minds so fundamentally,

that what was judged safe to swallow today, may be a cancer risk in two years

time? Can we believe the politicians and the mass media, when the formerdeclare there are no risks, while the latter dramatize the risks in order to

maintain circulation and viewing figures? Let me end with an ironic confession

of non-knowledge. I know that I, too, simply do not know. Perhaps I may add

something off the record, a postscript to my lecture, as it were: knowledge ofthe irony of risk suggests that the omnipresence of risk in everyday life should

also be treated with sceptical irony. If irony were at least the homeopathic,

practical everyday antidote to world risk society, then there would be less need

to worry about the British, about the Germans. At any rate this piece of advice

is no more helpless than the current hope of finding the lost wallet at night in

the cone of light cast by the nation-state street lamps.

Reference

Ewald, F. (2002) The return ofDescartes malicious demon: an outline

of a philosophy of precaution, in T. Baker

and J. Simon (eds) Embracing Risk ,

Chicago, IL: University

Ulrich Beck - Living in the World Risk Society

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Transcript of Ulrich Beck - Living in the World Risk Society