Ulrich Beck - The Cosmopolitan Perspective - Sociology Of The Second Age Of Modernity (2000 British

Ulrich Beck

The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology of thesecond age of modernity*

ABSTRACT

‘Second age of modernity’ is a magical password that is meant to open the doorsto new conceptual landscapes. The whole world of nation sovereignty is fading away– including the ‘container theory of society’ on which most of the sociology of the� rst age of modernity is based upon. In this article I propose a distinction between‘simple globalization’ and ‘re� exive cosmopolitization’. In the paradigm of the � rstage of modernity, simple globalization is interpreted within the territorial compassof state and politics, society and culture. This involves an additive, not substitutive,conception of globalization as indicated for example by ‘interconnectedness’. Inthe paradigm of the second age of modernity globalization changes not only therelations between and beyond national states and societies, but also the innerquality of the social and political itself which is indicated by more or less re� exivecosmopolitization as an institutionalized learning process – and its enemies.

KEYWORDS: First and second age of modernity; cosmopolitization; multiplemodernities; transnational risk communities

I.

The cosmopolitan gaze opens wide and focuses – stimulated by the post-modern mix of boundaries between cultures and identities, accelerated bythe dynamics of capital and consumption, empowered by capitalism under-mining national borders, excited by the global audience of transnationalsocial movements, and guided and encouraged by the evidence of world-wide communication (often just another word for misunderstanding) oncentral themes such as science, law, art, fashion, entertainment, and, notleast, politics. World-wide public perception and debate of global ecologi-cal danger or global risks of a technological and economic nature(‘Frankenstein food’) have laid open the cosmopolitan signi� cance of fear.And if we needed any proof that even genocide and the horrors of war nowhave a cosmopolitan aspect, this was provided by the Kosovo War in spring1999 when Nato bombed Serbia in order to enforce the implementation ofhuman rights.1

British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 1 (January/March 2000) pp. 79–105ISSN 0007 1315 © London School of Economics 2000

In the face of this widening cosmopolitan perspective, the social sciencesand Social Theory � nd themselves embracing contrary views and startingpoints. The nation-state society is the dominant societal paradigm. Themainstream considers that the concept of society is applicable only to thenation-state. Accordingly, the sociological perspective or gaze (the soci-ology of inequality, of the family, of politics and so on) is geared to andorganized in terms of the nation-state. On the whole, sociology observes,measures and comments on its phenomena, for example, poverty andunemployment within a national context rather than in the context ofworld society. Within this frame, the theme of globalization means thatthere are an increasing number of social processes that are indifferent tonational boundaries. This is based on an understanding of globalizationthat decodes it as ‘time–space compression’ (Harvey 1989; Giddens 1996;Featherstone 1990; Appadurai 1990; Lash and Urry 1994; Albrow 1996;Adam 1998). Accordingly, for empirical purposes globalization is opera-tionalized as interconnectedness (Held et al. 1999; Zürn 1997) betweenstate societies. All three criteria – indifference to national boundaries,space–time compression and an increasing network-like interconnected-ness between national societies – are exempli� ed primarily by economicglobalization. But there are many more examples. As more processes showless regard for state boundaries – people shop internationally, work inter-nationally, love internationally, marry internationally, research inter-nationally, grow up and are educated internationally (that is,multi-lingually), live and think transnationally, that is, combine multipleloyalties and identities in their lives – the paradigm of societies organizedwithin the framework of the nation-state inevitably loses contact with reality.These changing circumstances have prompted a never-ending debate onthe condition of the nation-state: Does it still exist or is it already gone? Isthe scope of its activity perhaps even growing as its autonomy – state sover-eignty – is shrinking? Perhaps it has long since been converted into a Super-Supra-Inter-Post-Neo-Trans-Nation state? Or have politics and the statebecome zombies – dead long ago but still haunting people’s minds? Theheat generated by this debate derives in some degree from the premise thatit is only in the framework of the nation-state that essential achievements ofWestern modernity including democracy, the legitimation of state action,the welfare state and the state of law (Rechtsstaat) are possible, real and thriv-ing.

By contrast, within the paradigm of world society, globalization is con-sidered normal and the perspective of the nation-state gives rise to contin-ual baf� ement: Why are the social sciences still dominated by a secretHegelianism which sees society as derived from the state’s claim to embodythe principle of order? How is it that the theorists of the nation-state invari-ably identify society with a piece of land, ‘like animals identifying with theirterritory or like the gangs of youths in Central Park who get ready to repelthe intruder as soon as someone comes too close and trespasses on theirterritory?’ Why are societies seen as ‘somehow rooted in the land, as if they

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needed the soil’? (Kieserling 1998: 65; on this territorial bias of the socialsciences – the container theory of society – see Beck 2000a: 23).

In this article I will develop and discuss the opposing theories, real con-� icts and transition between the cosmopolitan perspective and that of thenation-state within the framework of an epochal distinction between thefamiliar image of the � rst age of modernity and the indistinctness andambivalence of a second age of modernity. The choice of words is in factprogrammatic. Firstly, by distinguishing between a � rst and a second age ofmodernity, I distance myself from the theoretical schemes of postmodern-ism. While the followers of postmodernism emphasize destructuring andend of modernity, my concern is with what is beginning, with new insti-tutions and the development of new social science categories. Secondly, thedistinction between a � rst and a second age of modernity also challengestheories which suggest that the unfolding of modernity at the end of thismillennium should be seen as a linear process of differentiation based on‘evolutionary universals’ (Talcott Parsons) or modern ‘basic institutions’(Wolfgang Zapf). Thirdly, the distinction between a � rst and a second ageof modernity is intended to clarify misunderstandings which have emergedin the debate on ‘re� exive modernization’ (Beck, Giddens and Lash 1994).Reference to a second age of modernity is intended to make it clear thatthere is a structural and epochal break – a paradigm shift – and not merelya gradual increase in the signi� cance of knowledge and re� ection as is mis-takenly suggested by the term ‘re� exive modernization’.

Theory and sociology of the second age of modernity elaborate, there-fore, the basic assumption that towards the end of the twentieth centurythe conditio humana opens up anew – with fundamentally ambivalent con-tingencies, complexities, uncertainties and risks which, conceptually andempirically, still have to be uncovered and understood. A new kind ofcapitalism, a new kind of economy, a new kind of global order, a new kindof politics and law, a new kind of society and personal life are in the makingwhich both separately and in context are clearly distinct from earlier phasesof social evolution. Consequently a paradigm shift in both the social sci-ences and in politics is required.2 This article, however, can only investigateone aspect of this shift, namely which social science categories make thecosmopolitan perspective possible?

II.

There is an excellent example that illustrates the need to understand anddecode the transition from the first to the second age of modernity as aparadigm shift, a change in the co-ordinate system. And that is the diffi-cult relationship between international law and human rights, character-istic of the first as well as the second age of modernity, which has come tothe fore again with the Kosovo War, if not before. Within the paradigm ofthe first age of modernity – where the field of international relations is

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mainly elaborated and represented by the realist school of political theory– the interconnectedness of an increasingly complex world societyremains subject to the order of sovereign independent states which cameinto being with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This means that themagnitude of problems which states can only solve through co-operation– the increasing authority and materiality of supranational organizations,the development of transnational regimes and regulations to legitimizedecisions, the economization or even ecologization of foreign policy and,in conjunction with this, the blurring of the classical boundary betweendomestic and foreign policy in general – none of this affects the inter-national legal principle of non-intervention in the ‘internal affairs’ offoreign states.

In this framework, the Nato bombing in response to the genocide inKosovo appears as a striking breach of international law and even as a warof aggression, something which is, for example, forbidden by the Germanconstitution. A small country is attacked by a military world power inpursuit of sel� sh capital interests and, in a display of moral perversion, asit were, this is ‘legitimized’ as the defence of human rights.

In the con� ict of values between the authority of the sovereign state andthe protection of human rights, Western governments, led by the USA,place a higher value on opposing the genocide against the Kosovars thanon UN Charter procedures based on international law. The basis for thisdecision was a twofold critique of the legal system which the states haveagreed upon amongst themselves and have institutionalized in the UnitedNations Organization. International law does admittedly contain rules con-cerning the international use of violence and it also distinguishes betweenwhat is permitted and what is forbidden. But it does so in a very inadequateway because what is not examined is whether the state authorities themselveshave a legitimate existence, or, to be more precise whether they satisfy theHuman Rights Charter and the demands arising from it. The American Sec-retary of State Madeline Albright establishes a link between a very Ameri-can, that is national foreign policy and a human rights policy which isprimarily guided by normative standards: ‘The promotion of human rightsis not just a kind of international social work. It is indispensable for oursafety and well being because governments which don’t respect the rightsof their own citizens will in all likelihood not respect the rights of otherseither. In this century, almost every major act of international aggressionwas carried out by a regime which suppressed political rights. Such regimesare also more likely to trigger unrest by persecuting minorities, offering asafe haven for terrorists, smuggling drugs or clandestinely manufacturingweapons of mass destruction’ (Albright 1998: 2).

There has always been a tension between national sovereignty andhuman rights, the two sources of national legitimacy, but the relationshiphas now been given a new twist which is bound to have signi� cant conse-quences. A government may now forfeit the recognition of its sovereigntyunder international law by a blatant violation of human rights of its own

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citizens and on its own territory. Thus the transition from a nation-stateworld order to a cosmopolitan world order brings about a very signi�cantpriority shift from international law to human rights. The principle thatinternational law precedes human rights which held during the (nation-state)� rst age of modernity is being replaced by the principle of the (worldsociety) second age of modernity, that human rights precedes international law.As yet, the consequences have not been thought through, but they will berevolutionary. The result is a collapse of the distinctions – between war andpeace, domestic (policy) and foreign (policy) – on which the previous orderwas based.3 No-one really knows which poses the greater danger: the dis-appearing world of sovereign subjects of international law who have longsince lost their innocence, or the indistinct mix of supranational insti-tutions and organizations which act on a global level but remain dependenton the goodwill of powerful states and alliances, or a self appointed hegem-onic power ‘defending’ human rights on foreign territory under thebanner of ‘military humanism’. Regardless of how one judges and assessesthis highly ambivalent constellation, it is precisely in this muddle betweenthe old order based on international law and the new order based onhuman rights that the epochal distinction between the � rst and the secondage of modernity can be pinned down and illustrated.

As has already been noted, the principle ‘international law precedeshuman rights’ characterizes the international co-ordinate system of the � rstage of modernity. It is based on the principles of collectivity, territorialityand boundary. The aim of the concept and development of internationallaw was to secure peace. It regulates relations between states, that is, col-lective subjects, and not between individuals. That is how Hugo Grotius sawit, and that is how it is still appears today in the paragraphs of the UNCharter and the � nal agreement of the OSCE. The high-� own words of the‘creation of a world free from fear and misery. . .’ as ‘the greatest endeav-our of mankind’, proclaimed in the preamble to the Human Rights Con-vention of 1948, could therefore not be followed by deeds against the willof the states concerned because they were protected by international law.Even if the Security Council had taken the Kosovo issue into its own hands,the wording of the UN Charter would have denied it the right to give directhelp to the suffering population of Kosovo, but merely allowed it to ‘safe-guard world peace and international security’.

The principle that human rights precede international law refers,however, to international relations in the cosmopolitan paradigm of thesecond age of modernity. The categorical principles of the � rst age of mod-ernity – collectivity, territoriality, boundary – are replaced by a co-ordinatesystem in which individualization and globalization are directly related toeach other and establish the conceptual frame for the concepts of state, law,politics and individuals which have to be re-de� ned. The bearers of humanrights are individuals and not collective subjects such as ‘nation’ or ‘state’.In essence, human rights are subjective rights. These rights grant individualsthe legal basis to act according their own motives. The crucial point,


however, is, that they do away with a moral code binding the individual. Atany rate, within the limits of what is legally permitted no-one is obliged topublicly justify his actions. With the introduction of subjective liberties,modern law, in contrast to traditional legal systems, endorses Hobbes’ prin-ciple by which everything is permitted which is not explicitly forbidden.Hence law and morality diverge. While the moral code posits duties, the lawestablishes rights without reciprocal obligations. All this serves to create aspace in which institutionalized individualism can thrive.

At the same time, human rights have to be seen not only in individual-ized terms but also in a globalized context. They are, however, inconceiv-able, if they are not endowed with a claim to universal validity, which grantsthese rights to all individuals, independent of status, class, gender, nation-ality, religion.

If, in the relations between individual states, standards and legal con-ceptions develop according to which human rights are no longer amongthe ‘matters’ which ‘are, by their nature, part of the internal affairs of astate’, this is more revolutionary than any reinterpretation of Article 2 ofthe UN Charter would be. Intervention would not only be permitted, itwould be required. That amounts to a paradigm shift from nation-statesocieties to cosmopolitan society in so far as international law goes over theheads of nations and states and addresses individuals directly, thereby posit-ing a legally binding world society of individuals.

Thus is made manifest what has been stated as the consequence ofglobalization processes of the most diverse kind: the political and consti-tutional loss of power of the nation-state. But as soon as national sover-eignties are undermined, conventional international law forfeits its classicsubjects. However distant the actual vanishing point of this process may be,a foreign policy based international law will develop into the constitutionof a world domestic policy along its line of � ight. Subjective human rightscannot be distinguished from domestic legal claims. They do not postulateborder guards between individuals as does the old international law, theymake them redundant.4 Accordingly, Habermas is calling for world citizen-ship rights, so that intervention on behalf of persecuted individuals andnations does not remain a matter of morality alone.

The proposed establishment of a status of world citizenship would meanthat violations of human rights would not be judged and combatteddirectly from a moral viewpoint but prosecuted like criminal offenceswithin a national legal code. A thoroughgoing legalisation [Ver-rechtlichung] of international relations is not possible without establishedprocedures of con� ict resolution. In the institutionalisation of theseprocedures a juridically controlled approach to human rights violationswill prevent a moral de-differentiation of the law and a direct and sweep-ing discrimination of ‘enemies’. This can be achieved without themonopoly of force of a world state and a world government. A minimumrequirement, however, is a functioning Security Council, the binding

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jurisdiction of an international criminal court and the supplementing ofthe General Assembly of government representatives by the second levelof a representation of world citizens. Since such a reform of the UnitedNations is unlikely in the foreseeable future, reference to the distinctionbetween legalisation [Verrechtlichung] and moralisation remains a correctbut ambiguous response. As long as the institutionalisation of humanrights on a global level is relatively weak, the boundary between law andmorality can easily be blurred as in the case at hand. Because the SecurityCouncil is blocked, Nato can only appeal to the moral validity of inter-national law, to standards for which there are no effective authorities toapply and enforce laws recognised by the community of nations. (Haber-mas 1999: 6)

But how do Western states respond to the criticism that it is basically theWestern interpretation of human rights that Nato embraces and promotesand which it wants to enforce by military means, breaching valid inter-national law as it does so? African, Asian, Chinese scholars, intellectuals andpoliticians counter the individualistic nature of the human rights with threearguments: (1) the priority of rights, in principle, has to be balanced byduties; this, in turn (2) would provide for a communitarian ranking ofhuman rights with the purpose of (3) establishing the priority of thecommon good and of community values as against a primarily negative,individualistic system of human rights. But what will happen if one day themilitary alliance of another region, for example in Asia, starts to pursue anarmed human rights policy based on its own, very different interpretationof communitarian-based human rights? In other words, the militaryhumanism of the West is founded on an uninterrogated world monopolyof power and morality that, especially in the course of the transition to thesecond age of modernity, has become extremely questionable.

III.

This, however, leads to a dangerous confusion. The two images of worldsociety – on the one hand, world society as a patchwork quilt of nation-states(that is, the sum of sovereign nation-states), and on the other, the one worldsociety, at once individualized as well as globalized, conceived as cosmo-politan order of human rights – clash and spark a worldwide intellectual andpolitical con� ict. From which there emerges, one way or another, someelement of a world public, some degree of conscious globality. But in bothcases – and this idea is no less crucial – we are dealing with a speci� c systemof world power. Hence the principle that ‘human rights precede inter-national law’, must be understood and decoded not only as a system ofvalues but also as a system of power. Whoever wants to enforce this prin-ciple assumes three things: First, the end of the Cold War, the end of abipolar world order; second, the military and political hegemony of the


USA; and third, the conciliation or inclusion of third powers such as Russiaand China.

There is no question that after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, theWestern democracies suddenly found themselves without an enemy and inneed of new and revivifying sources of legitimation. In the era of globaliz-ation these sources must enable them to establish justi� cations for activityand the self-representation of success. Put very cautiously: the militaryhumanism which the West has taken up by embracing human rights � llsthe vacuum perfectly by providing institutions, which have been deprivedof an enemy, with a cosmopolitan mission.

It is probably no exaggeration to talk of democratic crusades which theWest will conduct in future also to renew its own self legitimation. Preciselybecause the worldwide demand for fundamental human rights is entirelylegitimate and the resulting interventions are regarded as disinterested, itoften remains unnoticed how neatly they can be dovetailed with old fash-ioned aims of imperialist world politics (bringing into play the UnitedNations, mentor and client relationships, market interests) while internallythey simultaneously encourage the creation of stage roles which give ‘lameducks’ – politicians and military men – the opportunity to bathe in theglamour of renewed activity and legitimacy.

This new form of humanitarian disinterest and imperial logic of poweris preceded by developments which can be described as globalization circles,in the sense that with the erosion of territorially-based state power the hourhas come for ‘global responsibility’. Globalization – however the word isunderstood – implies the weakening of state sovereignty and state struc-tures. The collapse of nation-state institutions has, however, led to the verybad human tragedies and wars of the 1990s, not only in the formerYugoslavia but also in Somalia, West Africa and in parts of the former SovietUnion. With the � nancial crisis in South-east Asia, there appears to be athreat of something similar there, in particular in Indonesia. Even if thein� uences of global capital markets are not the sole or primary sources ofthe weakening of centralized state power, it is evident that they can exacer-bate a concealed power and legitimation vacuum and bring it out into theopen with explosive force. This includes the possibility that nation-statebased compromises between ethnic groups can lose their binding force andhitherto latent con� icts explode into civil wars. Since this is happening‘before the eyes of the world’, within a perceived framework of ‘globalresponsibility’, the possibility of military intervention by the West increaseswith the looming eruption of violence and chaos.

In the ‘circle of globalization’, the ‘needs’ of the world market and the‘good intentions’ of a society of world citizens combine with a chain of‘unintended side effects’ to form a civil–military–humanitarian threat(inclusive of all the dilemmas which this threat raises on all sides). Themore successfully the prophets of the free world market act on a global scale– which also means an undermining of the structures of the territorialnation-state – the more an ever larger proportion of the world’s population

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is exposed to the threat of ‘humanitarian intervention’ by the West, anintervention which is now motivated by cosmopolitan concerns. In a worldsystem of weak states, as propagated and established in the course of thedevelopment of neo-liberal world politics, there are no further obstacles inthe way of an imperialist abuse of the cosmopolitan mission.

Thus in Moscow there is continuing debate on the question whether theKosovo War might become the dress rehearsal in the event that Russia col-lapses and the nuclear power at the centre of ethnic con� icts becomes thesource of a new world war. In the Arab states also, in China and in Israel,people are asking themselves whether the war in Kosovo could become aprecedent. What is happening to the Serbs today may happen to theChinese, the Arab States or even Israel tomorrow. There are plenty ofreasons for humanitarian intervention. Almost every state has a couple ofminorities that it does not treat properly. It is becoming clear that the merethreat, the possibility of such a military human rights policy is alreadyshaking the very foundations of the exercise of power in world politics.Even if nothing happens, a lot is happening: the military humanism of theWest must also be decoded (neo-realistically, as it were) as a strategy, acalculation of world power politics.

IV.

In the cosmopolitan paradigm of the second age of modernity, therefore,new power strategies and rifts are emerging between the champions of thenew democratic world order, that is, the original countries of the West, andthe ‘Global Underdogs’, countries which do not or cannot satisfy theserequirements. But this is only one side of the development. On the otherside, in the transition from the � rst, nation-state, age of modernity to thesecond, cosmopolitan, age of modernity, the Western claim to a monopolyon modernity is broken and the history and situation of diverging mod-ernities in all parts of the world come into view. In the paradigm of the � rstmodernity, world society is thought in terms of the nation-state and nation-state society. Accordingly, globalization is seen as additive and not substi-tutive, in other words: globalization appears as a process coming fromoutside, which assumes as a given territorial principle of the social and thepolitical. This view of globalization as a matter of increasing links ‘betweennations’, ‘between states’ and ‘between societies’, does not call into ques-tion the distinctions between � rst and second world, tradition and mod-ernity, but con� rms them.

Within the paradigm of the second modernity, however, globalizationnot only alters the interconnectedness of nation-states and nationalsocieties but the internal quality of the social. Whatever constitutes‘society’ and ‘politics’ becomes in itself questionable, because the prin-ciples of territoriality, collectivity and frontier are becoming questioned.More precisely: the assumed congruence of state and society is broken


down and suspended: economic and social ways of acting, working andliving no longer take place within the container of the state. The categoriesframing world society – the distinction between highly developed andunderdeveloped countries, between tradition and modernity – are col-lapsing. In the cosmopolitan paradigm of second modernity the non-Western societies share the same time and space horizon with the West.Moreover, their position as ‘provinces’ of world society is derived from thesame challenges posed by second modernity which are variously perceived,assessed and processed in a variety of cultural contexts and locations.

The epochal break results from the fact that the guiding ideas and withthem the interdependent institutionalized core answers of the � rst age ofmodernity are no longer self-evident and persuasive: in the dimension ofglobalization this is the idea of territoriality, on the level of work society itis the idea of full employment, in the dimension of individualization theidea of a given, communal collectivity and hierarchy, in the dimension ofgender relations the idea of the ‘natural’ division of labour between menand women, in the dimension of ecological crisis the idea of the exploi-tation of nature as the basis of unlimited growth. This entails a signi� cantconsequence: the guiding ideas, the foundations and, ultimately, also theclaim to a monopoly on modernity by an originally western Europeanmodernism are shattered.

In the � rst age of modernity the non-Western societies were de� ned bytheir foreignness and otherness, their ‘traditional’, ‘extra-modern’ or ‘pre-modern’ character. In the second age of modernity everyone has to locatehimself in the same global space and is confronted with similar challenges,and now strangeness is replaced by the amazement at the similarities. Thisimplies a degree of self-criticism of the Western project of modernity whichcan defend neither its role as spearhead of progress nor its claim to amonopoly on modernity. The extra-European world is de� ned on the basisof its own history and no longer regarded as the opposite or absence ofmodernity (even today, however, many social scientists believe that it isonly necessary to study pre-modern Western societies in order to makeuseful statements on the situation and problems of non-Westernsocieties!). In the second age of modernity, various cultures and regionsof the world are proceeding along various routes to various ideas of mod-ernity, and they may not achieve them for various reasons. Hence, the tran-sition to the second age of modernity raises the problem of a comparisonof cultures within the different, world-regional (‘national’) frames of refer-ence in a radical way. It also makes necessary, on the basis of the recog-nition of multiple modernities, dialogue between them (Jameson andMiyoshi 1998).

It is therefore mistaken to exclude non-Western countries from the analy-sis of Western society. This applies to the history as well as to the presentof Europe. Shalini Randeria turns the evolutionary hierarchy of progressbetween Western and non-Western countries upside down: ‘Putting Marx’sjudgment on its feet and not on its head, one can say that in many ways the

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‘Third World’ today holds up a mirror in which Europe can see its ownfuture’ (Randeria 1998). Set out in more detail, this means that the Westshould listen to non-Western countries when they have something to sayabout the following experiences

– How can coexistence in multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies work?

– Western societies can obtain realistic, non-utopian, that is, dis-appointment-proof answers to the question: How is tolerance possiblein a con� ned space and in the face of cultural differences prone tolead to violence?

– Also non-Western countries are ‘highly developed’ when it comes todealing with legal and judicial pluralism.

– Finally even a previous ‘lack’ proves to be an advantage: non-Westerncountries are experienced in dealing with multiple sovereignties on aneveryday basis, a situation which will become normal, for example, ina multi-national Europe with one currency.

On the other hand, Western societies are beginning to adopt non-Westernstandards of reality and normality which do not bode well

– Deregulation and � exibilization of wage labour normalize somethingwhich used to be regarded as a surmountable disgrace: informaleconomy and informal sector.

– In addition, the deregulation of the labour market also leads to anabandonment of the co-operatively organized employee society thatfroze the class con� ict between work and capital by harmonizing acapitalist supply dynamic with a system of privileges for the ‘workingcitizen’. Consequently, with the casualization of labour relations andcontractual conditions, trade-union free zones are spreading in thecentres of Western post-work society.

– Many countries of the non-Western world are regarded as weak states.If the neo-liberal revolution perseveres, state legitimation crises,accompanied by civil war-like eruptions of violence, such as are rife incountries of the South, could well become part of the future of theWest.

The current situation of the world can perhaps be summed up – ironically– in a single image: during the � rst age of modernity capital, labour andstate played at making sand cakes in the sandpit (a sandpit limited andorganized in terms of the nation-state) and during this game each side triedto knock the other’s sand cake off the spade in accordance with the rulesof institutionalized con� ict. Now suddenly business has been given apresent of a mechanical digger and is emptying the whole sandpit. Thetrade unions and the politicians on the other hand have been left out ofthe new game, have gone into a huff and are crying for mummy.


V.

The crucial question of the second age of modernity is, therefore: Whathappens to territorially bounded politics in world society? How do collec-tive binding decisions become possible under post-national conditions?Will politics wither away? Or will it undergo a transformation? And if so,what will it be like? Will the transformation be evolutionary or will it be seenas a political process in itself? That is to say, it does not happen but is rathera function of the opening out of the cosmopolitan perspective. And if thistransformation of the political can only be understood politically, will it, ifat all, emerge from the world-wide con� ict over the cosmopolitanization ofnation-state societies? This is in fact the direction that is to be presentedand sketched out – hypothetically – in this article. The cosmopolitan projectcontradicts and replaces the nation-state project.5 An essential differencebetween the discourse of world society and of cosmopolitan society is � rstof all the fact that in the latter globality becomes re� exive and political,which is to say it is present in or even governs thinking and political action.In other words, the term world society is at once too big but also too un-political and unde� ned because it does not answer the key question: howdo people’s cultural, political and biographical self awareness change orhow does it have to change if they no longer move and locate themselvesin a space of exclusive nation-states but in the space of world society instead?So the question is: How to re-image post-national political communities?

As far as I can see this question has not, as yet, really been analysed anddiscussed, either in political theory and science or in social theory and soci-ology. For example: In their brilliant work Global Transformations (1999)Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton give very stimulating analyses ofglobalizing politics, economics and culture but they do not enquire howsociety or the concept of political community changes under conditions ofcosmopolitanization. Or what cosmopolitanization means in terms ofimages of political community, of social structure, political programmes,transnational parties and con� icts.

So the theme of this article is not (once again) the transformation of theinterstate system, not governance and democracy in a globalizing world, notthe prospects of cosmopolitan democracy; neither is it the statelessness ofworld society; nor the proposition that world society models are copied andso give shape to nation-state identities, structure and behaviour as part of aglobal cultural and associational process (Meyer, Boli, Thomas and Ramirez1997). The question I want to put on the agenda is: how to imagine, de� neand analyse post-national, transnational and political communities? How tobuild a conceptual frame of reference to analyse the coming of a cosmo-politan society (behind the facade of nation-state societies) and its enemies.

Neither Habermas nor Luhmann provide an answer to this question.Luhmann does not do so because he posits world society as post-politicalworld society without enquiring into the political and cultural self awarenessof world citizens, as opposed to citizens of nation-states (Luhmann 1975:

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51–63; 1997: 145ff). He sees politics in terms of a millennial antithesis anddismisses it: the world society which undermines the paradigm of the nation-state, has its counterpart in nation-state politics which is condemned to diefor this very reason. To be more precise: Luhmann formulates the zombietheory of nation-state politics in world society – politics becomes one of theliving dead and is unable to die. It is at the same time a theory of world-widefalse consciousness. We are still playing democracy but is an epochalphantom sensation and it happens under false pretences. The place of poli-tics in the paradigm of the nation-state is taken by a vacuum which is (not)� lled by the theory of functional differentiation on a world scale.

Habermas, on the other hand, does stress the overall importance of thequestion: How will politics and democracy be possible in the post-nationalconstellation. He is looking for ‘possibilities of a political closure of a globallynetworked, highly interdependent world society without regression’(Habermas 1998: 130, 133ff, 153ff) What he is ultimately talking about,however, is the question of a ‘European people’ as the subject of a post-national democracy which is conceived in terms of an ‘extended closure’of national democracy.

In both cases, politics is thought exclusively on the model of the nation-state. In Luhmann’s case it is negated: transnational politics can only bethought as zombie-politics or remainder politics (non-governmentalorganizations are a prime example); in Habermas it is extended nationalpolitics, one historical size bigger, as it were (European democracy, Euro-pean nation-state, European welfare state etc). Ultimately, Habermas getscaught in the contradictions of the theory of a post-national nation.

In the paradigm of the second age of modernity, however, the questionsbecome acute and are addressed (Beck 2000a: 26–113): what transform-ations do society and politics undergo in the course of the transition fromnational to cosmopolitan society and politics? Which political categoriesand theories, which actors, which political institutions and ideas, whichconcept of the state and of democracy corresponds to the epoch of worldsociety? Who inhabits the transnational space – not only capital and know-ledge elites but also Blacks, immigrants, the excluded? Is there only a classof cosmopolitans or a cosmopolitanization of classes? How do global prob-lems and opportunities for the development of transnational associationseffect individual consciousness and how can these associations become partof individuals’ understanding of themselves? And which indicators and pro-cesses of the cosmopolitanization of national societies can be identi� ed,analysed, commented on by the social sciences?

Old fashioned modernists believe (positively or negatively) that only anall-embracing national project, held together by language, military serviceand patriotism (with or without a constitution) makes possible the inte-gration of modern society and guarantees it. Cosmopolitanization by con-trast means that ethnic identities within a nation become plural and relatein a plural and loyal way to different nation-states. As, for example, NathanSznaider (1999) argues: Being an Israeli, for example, can mean that one


reads Russian papers, watches Russian television, goes to a Russian theatreand listens to Russian rock music. But being an Israeli means equally thatone takes one’s Jewish-oriental identity seriously and, paradoxically, thanksto the in� uence of Western multiculturalism rejects everything Western.And, last but not least, being an Israeli also means that non-Jewish Israelis,Palestinians with an Israeli passport, claim multicultural autonomy forthemselves.

For the inhabitants of the � rst, nation-state, age of modernity, who recog-nize patriotic identity as the only true and legitimate one, this ‘ethnic’ con-� ict is no more than a primitive tribal war which will be resolved bymodernization in an all-embracing state. The inhabitants of the second,post-national, age of modernity, however, are constantly re-formulating andabandoning new categorizations. The resulting mixture is not a sign of thefailure of integration, it is rather precisely the speci� c individuality deter-mining identity and integration in this global society (Beck-Gernsheim1999).

Thus individuality is a result of overlaps and con� icts with other identi-ties. For each individual this is a creative achievement. The national publicsphere becomes a space in which divisions can be overcome through con-� ict and in which certain kinds of indifference and social distance make apositive contribution to social integration. Con� ict is the driving force ofintegration. World society comes into being because it is divided. Tensionswithin national public spheres are immediately buffered by indifferenceand relativized by transnational identities and networks. The cosmopolitanproject both entails the national project and extends it. From the perspec-tive of transnational identities and ways of life this means that it will beeasier to try out and rearrange various combinations. One chooses andweights different overlapping identities and lives on the strength of thecombination (Bauman 1996). The effect is of central importance: theenclosed space of the nation-state is no longer extant in the cosmopolitanproject. The various groups remain in touch beyond the boundaries of thestate, not only for the bene� t of business and the development of scholar-ship but also in order to contain and control national divisions and con-� icts by embedding them in intersecting transnational loyalties.

The question remains as to what extent collectively binding decisions arepossible under these conditions. It is no longer a matter of solidarity or obli-gation but of a con� ict-laden coexistence side by side in a transnationallyneutralized space.

VI.

In the � rst, nation-state, age of modernity, solidarity is always limited toone’s own nation, it has degenerated to solidarity among equals. In thesecond age of modernity, therefore, the question to be asked is not how torevive solidarity, but how solidarity with strangers, among non-equals can be

92 Ulrich Beck

made possible. I will � rst explore the relationship between mobility andmigration in this context and then develop the concept of transnational riskcommunities.

In the societal project of cosmopolitan modernity the signi� cance ofmobility and migration also changes. In the nation-state paradigm of the � rstage of modernity there is a very clear cut distinction between mobility andmigrations in the sense that they are associated with diametrically oppositevalues. Movement within nation-states is called mobility and is highly desir-able. Movement between nation-states is called migration and is extremelyundesirable. At the borders of nation-states the virtue of � exibility mutatesinto the vice of potentially criminal immigration. The paradigm of cosmo-politan society can now be explained on the basis of the post-national distri-bution of labour and wealth (Elkins 1995)

(1) Global population movements: increasing inequalities on a world scaleand the differences between the sparsely populated wealthy states of theNorth and the densely populated poor states of the South will, as manyargue, lead to new mass migrations from the overpopulated areas of theworld to the sparsely populated regions with their tempting standard ofliving.(2) Migration of labour: not the people but the workplaces move. Jobs(combined with corresponding training opportunities) are exported tothose places where the poor and the unemployed live, that is, to the over-populated regions of the world.(3) Transnational job-sharing between rich and poor countries: new ways ofsharing work and wealth across borders and continents develop – withoutmigration. In the long term this means that the elimination of distance– made possible by modes of production based on information tech-nology – facilitates a cosmopolitan distribution of work and wealth. Richcountries would then export low skill jobs to poor countries, while jobsrequiring greater skills would be located in sparsely populated but highlyskilled countries.

Within the paradigm of the nation-state, the � rst scenario is regarded asa nightmare scenario. The metaphor of the boat which is allegedly full, fansthe � ames of xenophobia. The second scenario has been a reality for at leasttwenty years, but it meets with considerable resistance on the part of thestates and trade unions of the ‘job exporting’ countries. The third scenarioof international job-sharing deserves to be discussed as an alternative to massemigration and Western protectionism. David J. Elkins argues that in cosmo-politan society two contrary questions are posed: assuming that trans-national audiences and communities do in fact develop on the basis of adivision of labour which implies a distribution of life chances will this leadto a decrease in the pressure leading to emigration? Does the cosmopolitanproject contain a model to ease world tensions because the need to seekone’s happiness on another continent, is diminished? To put the question


differently: if territoriality and nationality no longer de� ne one’s identityand life chances why should one emigrate?

But one can also ask precisely the opposite question. If staying in oneplace becomes less and less important for social relations and context, whyshould migrants remain migrants and not be welcomed as mobile? If apattern of social relations establishes itself in which transnational identitiesand networks dominate, that is, in which people also live and work acrossborders, why should they be prevented from emigrating to those placeswhere they want to go?

The crucial question therefore is to what extent forms of the division oflabour and distribution of wealth are linked to the cosmopolitan project.The protectionist double standard, distinguishing between undesiredmigration and desired mobility, will become meaningless if such a link isestablished. The idea of mobility – not only in the spatial sense but also cul-turally and intellectually – which was originally linked to modernity, isdetached from the constraints of geographical labour mobility and themobility of wealth. Consequently in a cosmopolitan society it will be poss-ible to rediscover and explore the speci� c cultural meaning of ‘mobility’.At the same time, it may become possible to reduce and overcome thetyranny of the spatial mobility of traf� c.

What becomes evident in this context is that the cosmopolitan project alsoinvolves a new division of labour between business and politics. Businessbecomes, whether wittingly and willingly or not, the location and arm oftransnational politics. Big companies determine the conditions and situ-ations of people in society – usually unnoticed, often narrow-mindedly andthus exclusively pursuing their own economic interests. In future much willdepend on whether they – under state guidance – perceive and accept thepolitically formative role in world society which has become theirs. Since thecompanies determine the distribution of labour and income through theirinvestment decisions, they create the basis for inequality, justice, freedomand democracy on a world-wide scale. Why not, for example, privatize bothpro� ts and the costs of unemployment and ecological destruction so thatbusinesses are held responsible for the social consequences of their decisionsand have to anticipate those consequences in their own economic interest?

VII.

In the second age of modernity the relationship between state, business anda society of citizens must be rede� ned. The state-� xated perspective ofnationally de� ned society seems to have particular dif� culty in recognizingand exploring the bene� t of the scenario of a society of citizens for thetransnational revival and encouragement of politics and democracy. Onething, however, is certain. Without stronger citizen elements, solidarity withforeigners and a corresponding extension and restructuring of nationalinstitutions (trade unions, consumer movements) is impossible. Trade

94 Ulrich Beck

unions for instance would no longer be tied to plants and industries in anational frame but must adapt to fragile, risky labour conditions andoperate along global chains of value creation?

This raises a key question. On what basis do transnational ‘communityties’, which are no longer supported by place (neighbourhood), origin(family) or nation (state organized solidarity of citizens), have their ma-terial basis and sense of obligation? How can decisions be made which areat once post-national and collectively binding, or, in other words, how ispolitical activity possible in the age of globalization?

Whoever poses the question, how modern societies, having dissolved allgivens and transformed them into decisions, handle the uncertainties oftheir own making, encounters a core invention of modern times: the social-ization of shared risks or shared risk de� nitions (Beck 1992, 1996, 1999).Risks presuppose decisions, de� nitions and permit individualization. Theyrelate to individual cases here and now. At the same time, however, they setan organizational pattern of formulae of community formations and bonds,which is separate from individual cases, and allows the establishment ofmathematical calculable probabilities and scenarios, on the one hand, andnegotiable standards of shared rights and duties, costs and compensation,on the other. In world risk society, the risk regime also implies a hidden,community building aspect and force (Elkin 1995). If, for example, thestates around the North Sea regard themselves as a risk community in theface of the continuing threat to water, humans, animals, tourism, business,capital, political con� dence and so on, then this means that an establishedand accepted de� nition of threat creates a shared space for values, responsi-bilities and actions that transcends all national boundaries and divisions. Byanalogy with the national space, this can create active solidarity amongstrangers and foreigners. This is the case, if the accepted de� nition of a threatleads to binding arrangements and responses. The accepted de� nition ofa risk thus creates and binds – across national boundaries – cultural valueframeworks with forms of more or less compensatory, responsible counteractivities. It is a transnational answer to the key question of active solidarity.From whom can I expect help if and when necessary and to whom will Ihave to give help in an emergency? Risk communities, therefore, combinewhat is apparently mutually exclusive:

– They are based on culturally divergent values and perceptions.– They can be chosen.– They can be regulated informally or by contract.– They conform to or create de� nitions of community.– In culturally divided, socially constructed de� nitions of risk, they estab-

lish socially binding cross-frontier neighbourliness.– They are not comprehensive but affectual, linked to certain themes

and priorities.– They create a moral space of mutual commitments across frontiers.– This space is de� ned by answers to the question: From whom can I


expect help? To whom will I have to give help if this or that happens?What kind of help can I expect or do I have to give?

The realities which are perceived and assessed as risks are secondary real-ities of civilization and not fate. The de� ning element of risk communitiesis, therefore, not a common destiny which has to be accepted but theircovert political character, the fact that they are based on decisions and ques-tions which can be made and answered differently. Who is responsible?What has to be done and changed on a small and on a large scale, locally,nationally and globally in order to avert risks?

VIII.

With that we once again come to the key question of this article: what doescosmopolitanization and/or cosmopolitan society mean? A further steptowards answering this question is to specify and investigate empirical indi-cators of cosmopolitanization (without any claim to comprehensiveness andsystematic exposition).

Cultural commodities: developments in the import and export of culturalcommodities, transnationalization of the book trade, developments inthe import and export of periodicals, in the number and proportion oflocal and foreign productions in the cinema, in the proportion of localand foreign productions in television, corresponding radio broadcastsand so on.

Dual citizenship: legal basis and of� cial practice in dealing with migrants,asylum seekers; how are ‘foreigners’ de� ned statistically, in the mediaand in everyday (administrative) practice?

Political intensities: to what extent are various ethnic groups representedand present in the centres of national power – parties, parliaments,governments, trade unions?

Languages: who speaks how many languages? (Recently, for example, anews item was widely reported in the [German] media, according towhich in a small town in Bavaria – Landshut – more than 20 different lan-guages are spoken by children in one secondary modern school class).

Mobility: permanent immigration, development of immigration, develop-ment of labour migration; temporary immigration, development ofrefugee numbers, development in the number of foreign students;

Routes of communication: development of items sent by letter post, nation-ally and internationally; development of telephone conversations,nationally and internationally, of the corresponding data exchangethrough the electronic network and so on;

96 Ulrich Beck

International travel: development of international passenger air travel,development of international tourism, the number and proportion ofjourneys abroad;

Activity in transnational initiatives and organizations: short or long-terminvolvement in campaigns by Greenpeace, Amnesty International,NGOs, etc, participation in international collections of signatures, con-sumer boycotts and so on;

Criminal activity: development of international (organized) criminality,development of politically motivated acts and/or acts of violence bytransnational terrorism;

Transnational ways of life: diaspora communities and their cross-borderprivate and public networks and decision-making structures, number andkind of transnational marriages, births of transnational children, newemerging ‘hybrid’ cultures, literatures, languages;

Transnational news coverage: for example of wars on television; to whatextent is a change in perspectives taking place?

National identities: what is the relationship of the number and kind ofnational identities to citizenship identity? Does cosmopolitanism cancelnational identity? Or is there something like a ‘cosmopolitan nation’ andwhat does that mean?

Ecological crisis: development in the (stratospheric) ozone layer, develop-ment of world climate, development of world-wide � sh resources,development of cross-border air and water pollution, development ofattitudes to local, national and global world crises, environmental legis-lation, environmental jurisdiction, environmental markets, environ-mental jobs.

The quantitative development of these indicators is of course dif� cult toassess simply because of the available statistics and the immense problemsof comparability. And yet an initial survey shows that cosmopolitanizationcan be understood and represented empirically, although it varies con-siderably by country and dimension (see Held et al. 1999; Beisheim et al.1999). Since the 1990s, however, the breadth and intensity of cosmopoli-tanization acquires a new quality, and surpasses by far what could beobserved at the beginning of the twentieth century. Parallel to cosmo-politanism on the micro level in the life-worlds, ways of life and everydayinstitutions of society (such as school or municipality), a process of cos-mopolitanization is also taking place on the macro level. This is occurring,not solely as a result of world market dependencies, but also in the inter-national and supranational network of institutions (Lapid and Kratochwil1997; Rosenau 1998; Kaldor 1998; Falk 1998; Held et al. 1999).

But that does not answer the question, What is a cosmopolitan society? Itis probably easier to say what it is not. It is certainly not useful to talk about


a cosmopolitan society, if the process of cosmopolitanization has begun andis continuing exclusively on an objective level, but is at the same time being(actively) masked by a dominant national project and a national self-de� nition of society – in the political parties, in the government, in themedia, in the educational system etc. It follows that it is only meaningful totalk of cosmopolitanization, once this process is not only objectively indi-cated, but is also re� exively known, commented on and institutionalized.But that in turn means, only through the contrast and con� ict betweencosmopolitan and national projects does the former become real and effec-tive. Social locations in which the speci� c space–time dimension and thenew subjects of the global become concentrated and self-aware are not onlythe privileged capitalists and the intellectual professions, but also variousethnic groups, women, immigrants, all those who are marginalized in thenational space. Here too a politics informed by cosmopolitanism can dis-cover zones of activity which belong neither to the state nor to business.

Roland Robertson (1992) was probably the � rst to make becoming awareand awareness of one world the indicator of cosmopolitanism as doesMartin Albrow in his book The Global Age (1996). Armin Nassehi (1998)pursues a similar argument, when he links cosmopolitanism to the ThomasTheorem and thus to the self-de� nition and public re� exivity of trans-national ways of life and situations, not only at the top but also at the bottomand in the middle of an emerging society of world citizens.

The process concept ‘cosmopolitanization’ must therefore be understoodas a relational concept, a relational process, in which, on the one hand, theconnections between cosmopolitan changes and movements and on theother the resistances and blockades triggered by them are analysed together. Cos-mopolitanization, therefore, by no means indicates ‘a’ cosmopolitan society,but the interactive relationship of de-nationalization and re-nationalization,de-ethnicization and re-ethnicization, de-localization and re-localization insociety and politics (Bauman 1999; Miller 1995; Eade (ed.) 1997).

This gives rise to a twofold reproach of the conspicuous popularity of theterm identity (Meyer and Geschiere 1999). Identity denies ambivalence,pins things down, attempts to draw boundaries in a process of cosmpoli-tanization that suspends and blurs boundaries. There is a correspondingnostalgia on the part of social scientists (not forgetting anthropologists) foran ordered world of clear boundaries and the associated social categories.In such a world theoretical re� ection simply assumed the existence ofboundaries rather than questioning them, with a high degree of re� exivity,as problematic constructs as is done today.

Bearing this in mind, it is very tempting to develop the argument of cos-mopolitization as a phased model in which progressive cosmopolitanizationdevelops in tandem with its ambivalences, that is to say, cosmopolitansociety and its enemies. Phases of blocked cosmopolitanization overlap withphases and movements of cosmopolitan re� exivity in which the self-aware-ness and the political aims of cosmopolitan movements within and betweennational societies and nation-states articulate and organize themselves

98 Ulrich Beck

(Cheah and Robbins 1998). Where this is the case, cosmopolitanization isno longer merely an objective process but also a publicly re� ected one inwhich rebellious groups break out of the shell of their dependence onnation-state identity. The symbolism of the ‘melting pot’ – the model ofintegration in the � rst age of modernity – is replaced by the symbolism ofthe ‘salad bowl’, an image which anticipates elements of a de-territorializedconcept of society, but also becomes caught up in a web of contradictions(Beck-Gernsheim 1999).

Self-re� ection points to a blind spot in current talk of ‘space–time com-pression’. What does the de-territorialization of time mean? Or, putting thequestion differently: What does global memory, that is remembering meanin world society? In the cosmopolitan project historical time is no longerconceived as ‘national culture of memory’, with individual rememberingenclosed within it, but as fragmented, plural, in other words, a cosmo-politan and therefore optional remembrance and memory with all theresulting contingencies, complexities and contradictions of individualmemory. The place of publicly re� ected national history and historiogra-phy – which includes the time and becoming of self – is taken by stagedlandscapes of memory which can only be deciphered transnationally. Theselandscapes of memory can no longer be dismissed as ‘national absent mind-edness’. They pave the way for forms of de-territorialized memory andremembrance in world society. An exemplary illustration of this process isprovided by the liberation movements and by ‘African Americans’ who havebroken the spell of national memory. Likewise in the historiography of‘Blacks in the USA’ they are discovering their roots by developing frag-mented and staged transatlantic forms of memory and remembrance andrelated historiographies and self-discoveries (Beck-Gernsheim 1999).

Accordingly, we have to distinguish between different forms of expres-sion of cosmopolitan self-re� ection. There is � rst of all the pattern ofminority revolution under majority dominance. In the course of this pub-licly conducted con� ict, the national monopoly on remembrance collapsesand a variety of loosely connected, boundary-transcending layers ofmemory emerge, unfold (and are invented!). This critique of collectivememory allows the various minorities to get a clearer picture of theirhistory of oppression and detaches it from the nation-state equation ofspace, time and society. In the media and in the social sciences, thesestruggles over remembrance, memory and identity are debated under theheading of multi-culturalism. The increasing self con� dence of the ‘multi-cultural’ – by now on a transnational level – shatters the frame of referenceof national integration and with it a key principle of societal organizationof the � rst age of modernity. As this entails a questioning of the culturaland political claim to power of the state-determining minority, this kind ofre� exive cosmopolitanism is dramatized as an identity crisis and a politicalcrisis of the nation-state. This is exempli� ed by the USA, as well as by theUK, France, Germany and Israel.

A retrospective historical view may be instructive here. In the context of


the � rst, nation-state epoch of modernity an illuminating debate took placeon the connections between cosmopolitanism, nation and state. Thisdebate must be re-opened in order to address the challenges of this secondage of modernity. For example, in the eighteenth century, the idea of the‘citizen of the world’ was one of the programmatic, indeed fashionablephrases of the Enlightenment. It developed in close relationship with trans-national organizations (such as Freemasonry), served the promotion oftolerance, was closely linked to the concept of humanity and not least to auniversal ‘eternal peace’ (from Kant to Croce) encompassing all the statesof the earth. Even then there was lively discussion as to how world citizen-ship and nationality can be combined, that is the degree to which cosmo-politan orientations in particular are the basis and limit of a nationalconsciousness.6 The idea of a ‘cosmopolitan nation’ was born.

Against this background, a few at least of the basic features of the idealtype of ‘cosmopolitan society’ can be determined; this is a type of de-territorialized society, which

– is essentially structured by an objective process of cosmopolitanization(as given by corresponding indicators and their empirical signi� canceand interpretations);

– is on its way to a re� exive cosmopolitanism;

– simultaneously, an institutionalized re� exive learning process isgaining in importance, perhaps even becoming dominant; it is the aimof this learning process to test, how in one’s own life, in a world withoutdistance, ways of relating to the otherness of others can be learned.This includes, in particular, issues of shifting perspective and trans-national con� ict resolution;

– a society in which cosmopolitan values rate more highly than nationalvalues;

– a society in which national-cosmopolitan parties, identities, institutionsare invented, tested and developed;

– and in this way they gain increasing power by comparison with nationaland nationalist counter-movements, and can assert themselves on aworld-wide scale.

In other words, cosmopolitan society means cosmopolitan society and itsenemies.7

IX.

A congenital defect of the � rst age of modernity, which may become adramatic problem in second modernity, is that thus far the institutionaliz-ation of con� ict has almost only been developed within nation-states.

100 Ulrich Beck

Procedures have not been developed in those places within a world societywhere explosive sources of con� ict will arise, that is, out of the mix of pro-tectionist reactions, the constraints of co-operation and the oversize ques-tions of the second age of modernity, which demand concrete and radicalchanges in the economy, administration, politics and everyday life. For sure,the global and the transnational has its address and its jurisdictions: theGeneral Assembly of the United Nations, the International Court of Justicein the Hague or also – with reference to Europe – the supranational insti-tutions of the European Union. And yet it is not hard to demonstrate that astriking and growing imbalance exists between new and intensifying sourcesof con� ict between nations, regions and cultures, on the one hand, and, onthe other, the few, rather non-obligatory, relatively weak institutions of trans-national or even global con� ict resolution � oating somehow above things,with large moral claims but without the power to make decisions binding.

The old–new sources of con� ict are more quickly named than exorcized.First the establishment of free world markets itself must be stressed, andthat for at least two reasons. Within nation-states, wherever there existedstrong working-class parties, welfare state social security systems and formsof trades union negotiating power, this leads to a de-institutionalization ofthe con� ict between capital and labour. The demand for ‘� exibility’, whichis heard on all sides, means nothing else but the relaxation or abolition ofrules as to how collective labour contracts, co-determination standards andindustrial health and safety requirements are negotiated. At the same timethe neo-liberal revolt aims at an internal and international minimization ofthe state. However, this can easily turn into a militarization of internal andinter-state con� icts.

Other new areas of con� ict, whose results are likewise very far from fore-seeable can only be mentioned here: ecological crises, catastrophes andwars. And the con� icts of the divergent modernities over old and newfundamentalisms are already casting dark shadows over the future. It is pre-cisely in the opening out and compression of the world, in the spacewithout distance of the mass media, in the new production and labourforms of transnational companies, spreading over frontiers and across con-tinents, that new sources of con� ict are emerging which are dif� cult toassess. Their force must be seen in an overlapping and combination of vir-tuality and reality. They include the global risks and processes of possiblemass migrations from the poor to the rich regions of the world; the nuclearpower stations which may explode tomorrow or in a thousand years; thenew (deliberately) hidden internationally organized crime and so on.Characteristic of these global threats is that they can develop a society-changing power precisely in places where they have not appeared and putinto action the underlying political meaning of risk dramaturgy, (not) toact before it is too late.

In future those transnational con� icts that emerge from the triumphalmarch of neo-liberal policies, and hence develop a capacity for politicalirritation, will substantially affect the everyday life of business, politics and


people. Closely regulated industries have been liberalized in recent years:telecommunications, energy, food and � nance. The world-wide competi-tiveness released as a result has brought con� ict between national stan-dardization bodies. With free movement of goods the problem hasmeanwhile become a global one. And all this is only the beginning.Further sources of con� ict are already becoming apparent, for example,over agreements on global food, environmental or labour market stan-dards, that is, over-regulation in � elds in which con� icts are even moredif� cult to manage, because they are politically highly sensitive.

The � rst wave of national deregulation makes necessary a second waveof transnational regulation. Thus state and politics which were devalued inthe 1980s now become revalued. What is needed is the complete oppositeof neo-liberal deconstruction, that is to say strong, transnationally activestates, so that global market regulations can be established internally andexternally. To the extent that such agreements are found, invented, nego-tiated, globality will become a theme, an axis of con� ict not only in politicsand business but also in the everyday life of people around the world

What follows from all of this? In a world without distance, which is con-sequently becoming more crowded and susceptible to con� ict, it is the taskof political action and activity to establish and test – with all the availablehuman creativity and political-institutional imagination – transnationalforums and forms of a regulated, that is, acknowledged, non-violent reso-lution of con� icts between mutually exclusive and often mutually hostilenational and cosmopolitan movements. In order for this idea of trans-national institutions, transnational con� ict recognition and resolution – acentrepiece of cosmopolitan democracy – to assume a shape and power, anew political subject needs to be legitimated and founded: movements andparties of world citizens. The sociology of the second age of modernity canmake a contribution to this by both widening the cosmopolitan perspectiveand focusing it more sharply.

(Date accepted: August l999) Ulrich BeckInstitut für Soziologie der Ludwig-

Maximilians-Universität, Münchenand

Centennial Visiting ProfessorThe London School of Economics and Political

Science

NOTES

102 Ulrich Beck

*. Translated by Martin Chalmers.1. This war is post-national (and there-

fore can no longer be grasped by theconcept developed by von Clausewitz in hisbook ‘On War’) because it is neither waged

in a national interest – ‘the continuation ofpolitics by other means’ – nor can it be seenin the context of older rivalries betweenmore or less hostile nation-states. Whatmakes the war in Kosovo post-national is in


fact the opposite of this, namely the globalweakening of the sovereign order of thenation-state, the debilitation, even bar-barization of the state guilty of the expul-sion and genocide of its own citizens and, atthe same time, the belief in the morality ofhuman rights as a source of civility (on this,see below).

2. See Beck and Bonß (1999) where thequestion of the change of paradigmbetween � rst and second age of modernityin many areas of the social sciences isformulated at the initiation of a researchcentre (funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft for an extended period).

3. This also applies to other basic dis-tinctions of the � rst age of modernity suchas work and non-work (Beck 2000b),society and nature (Beck 1999, Latour1999, Adam 1998), family and non-family(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995, Giddensand Pierson 1998: 118–150); see Beck andBonß (1999).

4. International law is dissolving theworld’s border. That idea has beengrowing since the end of World War II.The Nürnberg tribunal introduced theconcept that leaders’ treatment of theirown people was subject to internationalprosecution. The United Nations createdthe 1948 Universal Declaration of HumanRights. Nations also signed the GenevaConvention and a treaty promising topunish genocide carried out anywhere inthe world. These laws were never enforcedbecause Cold War politics intervened. In1998 120 nations, not including the USA,signed a treaty establishing an inter-national criminal court, in which inter-national law trumps national sovereignty.One might even say that the G7-states areforming an embryo-like world govern-ment. But the attacks in 1999 onsovereignty did have two victims: � rst, ofcourse, Serbia and its prime ministerMilosevic; but second the Nato memberstates themselves as well – France, Italy,USA, Germany, Spain, Ungeria, Polandetc. – who somehow lost their sovereigntyby getting involved actively in the Kosovawar without being able to decide on thisissue of life and death autonomously. Whoactually did decide to start bombingSerbia? None of the attacking nations ontheir own. Nato? But who is Nato? One

could say: a military organization of post-sovereign, post-national nation-states.

5. This implies the prediction that inthe global age the dominant polarizationbetween political programmes and partieswill be in behalf of the challenges ofcosmopolitan movements and counter-movements and not (as it was in the � rstage of modernity) in the relation to theeconomy – capital vs. labour.

6. See for this the discussions in Herder,Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, Novalis,Schiller, Goethe, Heinrich Heine,Nietzsche and many others. Heine, inter-estingly, dreads a German national feelingwithout cosmopolitanism. But this is preciselywhat came to pass in the course in thetwentieth century’s history of madness;and still continues today in a certain sense,because the tradition of a German cosmo-politanism as a reservoir of ideas for politi-cal philosophy and theory is nowherepresent. Here also it holds true that thenation-state epoch has buried that whichmust be rediscovered.

7. As Manuel Castells (1997: 11–131)points out there may be various oppositionsto globalization: religious fundamentalism,nationalism, ethnic or territorial identities.

‘I propose the hypothesis that theconstitution of subjects, at the heart of theprocess of social change takes a differentroute to the one we knew during mod-ernity. . . : namely, subjects, if and whenconstructed are not built any longer on thebasis of civil societies (as in the case ofsocialism on the basis of labour move-ment) but as prolongation of communalresistance against globalization’ (p. 11).But Castells misses the importance of cos-mopolitanization (objective and re� exive)and the coming of cosmopolitan move-ments and ideologies – namely the inside-outside-politicization of nation-statesocieties – from which counter-cosmo-politan movements like ethnic national-ism, fundamentalism and territorialidentities derive and must be understood.

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Ulrich Beck - The Cosmopolitan Perspective - Sociology Of The Second Age Of Modernity (2000 British