RISK SOCIETY: TOWARDS A NEW MODERNITY

we are reading a lecture Ulrich Beck gave at the London School of Economics in 2006, entitled “Living in the World Risk Society”.  Since his incredibly influential 1986 work, RISK SOCIETY: TOWARDS A NEW MODERNITY, Beck continued arguing that there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of modern society, from the first industrial society that emerged in the nineteenth century to our own contemporary modern world.

The first industrial society, he says, was focused primarily on wealth distribution and expansion, because its foremost preoccupation was the problem of scarcity, class divides, want.  But, by the closing decades of the twentieth century, he contends, we have moved to a new kind of modernity, one that is focused primarily on the distribution and management of risk, risks that are not simply alleviated by but in fact produced by the very technological, economic and political processes of modern civilization.  Hence, our basic preoccupation has become the problem no longer of scarcity but rather safety and stability.  He makes many intriguing arguments to flesh out this perspective.  I’m appending our reading for Beck below, and, if you decide you would like to write on it, I am appending also the first chapter from his book RISK SOCIETY: TOWARDS A NEW MODERNITY, which I highly suggest you look through in order to grasp his overall argument.  However, this reading from THE RISK SOCIETY is OPTIONAL; it’s for those who find Beck’s ideas interesting and would like to delve further.  You can find both readings appended below and as always in the Documents folder for the course.  Now, here is the prompt for the response on our Beck reading.

In an essay, please address the following questions on our reading from Ulrich Beck:

Beck argues that we are all today living in what he calls a ‘world risk society’.  In what sense is our society more of a ‘risk’ society, one defined by ‘risk’, than earlier societies?  Give examples of the ecological, technological, economic and political risks that might substantiate Beck’s claim that the ‘risk society’ is an inherently global one and that its risks are produced by the very modern technological, economic and political processes that are supposed to allow for societal welfare and advance.  Beck contends that the cosmopolitan character of the risk society has an ‘Enlightenment function’.  What does he mean?  He argues ultimately that we have the potential to move away from the doomed attempt at unilateral ‘risk management’, aimed at redistributing risk, towards more collective cosmopolitan decision making.  Do you buy this argument, or is it an even more unlikely version of the Kantian dream?

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