Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community - conceptual and methodological clarifications Ulrich Beck To cite this version: Ulrich Beck. Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community - conceptual and methodological clarifications. 2013. halshs-00820297 HAL Id: halshs-00820297 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00820297 Preprint submitted on 3 May 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community – conceptual and methodological clariications Ulrich Beck N°31 | april 2013 his paper discusses four problems. (1) Risk and class: why ‘class’ is too soft a category to capture the explosi- veness of social inequality in World Risk Society? (2) Risk and crisis: how do these two concepts relate to each other? (3) Risk and hazards: by hazards I mean material substances that are sources of threat. (4) Risk and cosmopolitan community/solidarity: how do cli- mate risks liberate politics from given rules and enemy images and/or produce new ones? Working Papers Series Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 190 avenue de France - 75013 Paris - France http://www.msh-paris.fr - FMSH-WP-2013-31 Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community 2/11 Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community – conceptual and methodological clariications Ulrich Beck April 2013 The author Professor Ulrich Beck is Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and has been the British Journal of Sociology LSE Centennial Professor in the Department of Sociology since 1997. He has received Honorary Doctorates from several European universities. Professor Beck is editor of Soziale Welt, editor of the Edition Second Modernity at Suhrkamp. He is founding director of the research centre at the University of Munich (in cooperation with three other universities in the area), Sonderfors- chungsbereich - Relexive Modernisation inanced since 1999 by the DFG (German Research Society). Among his recent works : Power in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005); Cosmopolitan Vision (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006); & Edgar, G., Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); World at Risk (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009). About this paper his text was written for a workshop on « Risk and Climate Change: he Shaping of a Cosmopolitan Future », held in Paris on 10-11 December 2012, in the frame of the Chaire of Ulrich Beck entitled « Cosmopolitan Risk Communities » at the Collège d’études mondiales. Citing this document Ulrich Beck, Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community – conceptual and methodo- logical clariications, FMSH-WP-2013-31, april 2013. Les Working Papers et les Position Papers de he Working Papers and Position Papers of la Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme the FMSH are produced in the course of ont pour objectif la difusion ouverte des tra- the scientiic activities of the FMSH: the © Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 2013 vaux en train de se faire dans le cadre des chairs of the Institute for Global Studies, diverses activités scientiiques de la Fonda- Fernand Braudel-IFER grants, the Founda- Informations et soumission des textes : tion : Le Collège d’études mondiales, Bourses tion’s scientiic programmes, or the scholars [email protected] Fernand Braudel-IFER, Programmes scien- hosted at the Maison Suger or as associate tiiques, hébergement à la Maison Suger, research directors. Working Papers may also Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme Séminaires et Centres associés, Directeurs be produced in partnership with ailiated 190-196 avenue de France d’études associés... institutions. 75013 Paris - France Les opinions exprimées dans cet article n’en- he views expressed in this paper are the http://www.msh-paris.fr gagent que leur auteur et ne relètent pas author’s own and do not necessarily relect http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/FMSH-WP nécessairement les positions institutionnelles institutional positions from the Foundation http://wpfmsh.hypotheses.org de la Fondation MSH. MSH. Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 190 avenue de France - 75013 Paris - France http://www.msh-paris.fr - FMSH-WP-2013-31 Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community 3/11 Abstract his paper discusses four problems. (1) Risk and class: why ‘class’ is too soft a category to capture the explosiveness of social inequality in World Risk Society? (2) Risk and crisis: how do these two concepts relate to each other? (3) Risk and hazards: by hazards I mean material substances that are sources of threat. (4) Risk and cosmopolitan community/solidarity: how do climate risks liberate politics from given rules and enemy images and/or produce new ones? Keywords classe, cosmopolitanism, risk society, climate risks, crisis Risque, classe, crise, dangers et solidarité cosmopolitaine/communauté de risque. Clariications conceptuelles et méthodologiques Résumé Ce papier discute quatre problèmes. (1) Risque et classe : pourquoi la catégorie de « classe » est-elle une catégorie trop molle pour capturer l’explosion des inégalités sociales dans la société mondiale du risque ? (2) Risque et crise : comment ces deux concepts sont-ils liés l’un à l’autre ? (3) Risque et dangers : par dangers [hazards] je vise des éléments matériels qui sont sources de menaces. (4) Risque et communauté/ solidarité cosmopolitaine : comment les risques climatiques afranchissent-ils les politiques des règles données et des représentations de l’ennemi et/ou en produisent de nouvelles ? Mots-clefs cosmopolitisme, classe, société du risque, risque climatique, crise Sommaire 1. Risk and class 4 2. Risk and crisis 6 3. Risk and hazards 6 4. Risk community/Cosmopolitan solidarity 8 Cosmopolitan empathy 8 Cosmopolitan empathy is not enough, ‘work’ in networks of a cosmopolitanism from below creates ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’/’risk communities’ 9 References 9 Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 190 avenue de France - 75013 Paris - France http://www.msh-paris.fr - FMSH-WP-2013-31 Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community 4/11 1. Risk and class What I mean by this becomes clear when one Why ‘class’ is too soft a category to capture the thinks of the major risk events of recent decades explosiveness of social inequality at the beginning – Chernobyl, 9/11, climate change, the inancial of the twenty-irst century? crisis, Fukushima, the euro crisis. hree features are common to them all. (1) Because they give In my book ‘Risk Society’ (25 years ago) I used rise to a dramatic radicalization of social ine- the metaphor: ‘Hunger is hierarchical, smog is quality both inter-nationally and intra-natio- democratic.’ (an ongoing discussion) Dean Cur- nally, they cannot continue to be conceptualized ran attempts in his article, ‘Risk Society and the in terms of the established empirical-analytical Distribution of Bads’ (Curran 2013) to chart how conceptual instrumentarium of class analysis as the growing social production of risk increases ‘class conlicts in the class society’. By contrast, the importance of class. He argues, that my they indeed vary the narrative of discontinuity as theory of the risk society contains the basis of a contained in the theory of the world risk society. critical theory of class relations in the risk society. (2) Before they actually occurred, they were He tries to show “how not only is the ‘risk society inconceivable. (3) hey are global in character and thesis’ not antithetical to class analysis, but that in in their consequences and render the progressive fact it can be used to reveal how class antagonisms networking of spaces of action and environments and associated wealth diferentials will gain even tangible. hese ‘cosmopolitan events’ were not greater importance as risks continue to grow” only not envisaged in the paradigm of the repro- (Curran 2013). his is undoubtedly an important duction of the social and political (class) system, step which is apt to make the sociology of class, but they fall outside of this frame of reference whose self-understanding is rooted in the expe- in principle and as a result place it in question. riences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, In contrast, the theory of the ‘world risk society’ receptive to the new realities at the beginning of consciously starts from the premise of the self- the twenty-irst century. My objection is: Even if endangerment of modernity and attaches central this might be helpful at the national level, ‘class’ importance to the question of how, in view of the is too soft a category to capture the transnational, impending catastrophe, the nation-state social cosmopolitical explosiveness of social inequality and political system is beginning to crumble. in world risk society. Let me give you a short overview how class is being theorized in world risk society. Figure I: Theorizing class in world risk society Classe Reproduction Transformation Bourdieu