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Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society) |  | Author: Ulrich Beck
Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: $56.95
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 90390
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0803983468
Dewey Decimal Number: 306
EAN: 9780803983465
ASIN: 0803983468
Publication Date: September 3, 1992
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Product Description
Ulrich Beck's panaromic analysis of the condition of Western societies has been hailed as a classic. This first English edition has taken its place as a core text of contemporary sociology alongside earlier typifications of society as postindustrial and current debates about the social dimensions of the postmodern.Western industrial society is widely seen to be going through a decisive transitional period into a form defined variously as `post-Enlightenment', `post-Fordist' or `postmodern'. Arguing that we are instead facing a different modernity typified by reflexivity, Ulrich Beck goes beyond these descriptions to provide a coherent picture of the direction of global social change. Underpinning the analysis is the notion of the `risk society'. The changing nature of society's relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact, as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict. Within this framework, Ulrich Beck develops an overview of other key elements of current social development; the centrality of the political economy of knowledge; the changing roles of class and gender in a new work environment; and the politics (both personal and public) of the the risk society. This major analysis of the present and future of modernity will be essential reading for students and scholars in sociology and general theory.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Risk Society : A departure from Rational Risk March 12, 2007
Hooman
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Ulrich Beck argues that industrial society that used to be known as the distribution of goods has now been moved toward distributions of risk and hazard named as risk society. In other words in the advanced modern world, the social production of wealth systematically goes hand in hand with social production of risks. Accordingly, the problems and conflicts of distribution in a society of shortages are over layered by problems and conflicts that arise from over-production, definition and distribution of scientifically and technologically produced risks, says Beck. Then He argues that science has changed from an activity in the service of truth to an activity without truth. Likewise the consequences of this reflexive modernization contain a tendency toward globalization and ignore the boundaries of nation states which lastly results in continuous global endangerment.
The book also describes the way that the general forms of social life has moved from traditional societies in the mid 18th century to early modernity in 20th century and lastly toward reflexive modernity in the late 20th century which individualism is widespread. No longer, unskilled and uneducated people required and instead of high value on long term loyalty to the corporate institutions of the 20th century a shift to the self as the primary agent (i.e. a shift to I) had taken place. To sum up, Beck gives a new identity to risk which long has been dominated by rational doctrine. Manufactured Risks which are at the heart of the Modern society have become a taboo. The modern corporations have build a "Family of Myths" among which the most important is the "Myth of Rationality".
 risk society towards a new modernity September 2, 2000
pushyam (Mumbai,India)
11 out of 41 found this review helpful
The Book consists of two interrelated theses. one reflexive modernization and other issue of risk. The concept of risk is directly bound to the concept of reflexive modernization.It shows how classical modernization is different from reflexive modernization. Risk may be defined as a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself.The risk and hazards of today is of global nature of their threat to people,animals and plants .It results in global industrial pollution,contamination of air,water,foodstuffs etc. and also sickness ,death of plants, animals and people. Another dimension of risk is social transformation with modernity.There is a process of individualization deprive class distints but inequalities by no means disappear.There is a shift from the system of standardised full employment to the system of flexible and pluralised under employment.Risk of scientific development increases disproportionately faster than solution. With the globalisation of industrial society political system looses its function as modernization, technoeconomic system changes the realms of social life and on other hand political systens pre-supposes condition of the system.
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