Sociology. Anthony Giddens

      In March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan caused a tsunami which crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, resulting in three nuclear meltdowns and the release of radioactive material. While earthquakes and tsunamis have always been a risk on the east coast of Japan, our development of nuclear power plants made this a much more serious disaster and has created much greater risk.

Beck’s ideas on risk are discussed in more detail in chapter 5, ‘The Environment’.

      According to Beck, an important aspect of the risk society is that its hazards are not restricted spatially, temporally or socially. Today’s risks affect all countries and all social classes; they have global, not merely personal, consequences. Terrorist attacks have impacted on the extent to which people think of their communities as being at risk from extreme violence. The fear of terrorism created inertia in economies around the world, particularly in the months after the attacks of September 2001 (9/11), as businesses became reluctant to risk large-scale investment. Terrorist attacks also changed the assessment that states made over the balance between the freedom of its citizens and their security, with many curtailing civil liberties to increase surveillance of potential terrorist threats.

      Many decisions taken at the level of everyday life have also become infused with risk. Risk and gender relations are actually closely linked, as many uncertainties have entered the relationships between the sexes (see chapter 15, ‘Families and Intimate Relationships’). A generation ago, in the developed societies, marriage was a fairly straightforward process of life transition – people moved from being unmarried to being married, and this was assumed to be a fairly permanent situation. Today, many people live together without getting married, and divorce rates are relatively high. Anyone contemplating a relationship with another person must take these facts into account and must calculate the risk, setting the likelihood of happiness and security against an uncertain backdrop.

       Cosmopolitanism

      Beck’s later work followed that of other sociologists (Vertovec and Cohen 2002; Benhabib 2006) into a theory of cosmopolitanism (Beck 2006; Beck and Grande 2007). Beck’s version begins from a critique of ‘nation-state-based’ thinking – that is, theories which take (national) societies as their main unit of analysis. Beck (2006: 18) argues that this ‘national outlook’ ‘fails to grasp that political, economic and cultural action and their (intended and unintended) consequences know no borders’. In our age of globalization and environmental crisis, where national borders are becoming more permeable and individual states are less powerful, social reality is being transformed in a thoroughly cosmopolitan direction. And the process is occurring behind the backs of sociologists. If allowed to develop without direction, cosmopolitanization presents as many threats as opportunities, particularly for those who are exploited by multinational corporations traversing the globe seeking cheaper labour and maximal profits.

      Beck argues that the narrow viewpoint of the nation-state becomes an impediment when it comes to tackling new risks, such as global warming, or dealing effectively with global health pandemics such as the Covid-19 outbreak in late 2019 and 2020. Beck suggests we need a cosmopolitan system based on the acknowledgement and acceptance of cultural diversity. Cosmopolitan states do not fight only against terrorism but also against the causes of terrorism in the world. To Beck, cosmopolitanism provides the most positive way to cope with global problems, which may appear insoluble at the level of the individual state but are manageable through cooperation. New forms of activism are also appearing as we see the emergence of a field of ‘sub-politics’. This refers to the activities of groups and agencies operating outside the formal mechanisms of democratic politics, such as ecological, consumer or human rights groups.

Beck concedes that thinking in universal or cosmopolitan terms is not really new. Previously, the idea of citizenship beyond the nation-state was the preserve of well-travelled and well-connected social elites who voluntarily chose to see themselves as ‘Europeans’, for example, or as ‘citizens of the world’. Roudometof (2018) traces the first usage of the term back ‘at least 2,000 years’, with the modern concept being widely used in the period of the French Enlightenment to refer to ‘a citizen of the world’. Cosmopolitanism today has much stronger roots in global processes and is therefore, at least potentially, more effective. Beck argues that it is not enough for sociologists simply to analyse the emerging cosmopolitan world society; if the problems associated with globalization are to be tackled, they should also be involved in shaping it in positive directions.

       THINKING CRITICALLY

      Are the theories in this section really departures from the sociological classics? Do you detect any traces of Marxism, functionalism or interactionism within them? Similarly, do any of them fit the characterization of a consensus or conflict theory?

Conclusion: sociological theory in development

      In this chapter we embarked on a whistle-stop tour of the history of sociological theorizing, illustrated with brief discussions of some influential theories, trends and critiques.

      And it is the case that sociological theories develop in close contact and competition with each other. However, sociological theory cannot be successful if it develops only through such internal debate. It has to provide us with insights into the key issues of the day and must be empirically adequate as well as internally coherent.

      The history of sociological theory shows that successful perspectives are always in a process of development and do not remain static. For example, neo-Marxist theories today remain close enough to Marx’s original ideas to be recognizable, but they have been modified, amended and renewed along the way by the force of changing circumstances. A similar process of revisiting and revising has occurred in relation to Durkheimian and Weberian ideas, which today are less formal and systematic than in the past.

      At the same time, the diversity of contemporary sociological theories has led to combinations of theories, crossing the divide between the classical and the modern. Indeed, it might be argued that theoretical syntheses offer the greatest hope of preserving the best of the classical traditions while updating them for today’s world. As the final section shows, the best contemporary theories are able to help us get to grips with the most important issues of the age.

Chapter review