Abstract
The Metamorphosis of the World consists of the last reflections of Ulrich Beck about the instability and uncertainty of the world. This book is about the specificities of the metamorphosing world, which is characterized by various crises, such as natural disasters, economic instabilities and political uprisings.
The Metamorphosis of the World can be separated into two parallel sections. First, Beck presents a theorization of the metamorphosis of the world and its historical dimensions. The second part explores and applies the various themes concerning the theory of the metamorphosis of the world. In what follows, I primarily elaborate the theorization of the metamorphosis of the world in the first part of the book while simultaneously connecting the themes the author addresses in the second half.
In the first chapter, Beck argues that the classical concepts of sociology like transformation and change can no longer reflect the reality of the new world order. As such, Beck presents and elaborates a new sociological concept: metamorphosis. He defines metamorphosis as an ‘epochal change of worldviews, the refiguration of the national worldview … that is caused by side effects of successful modernization, such as digitalization or the anticipation of climate catastrophe to humankind’ (p. 5).
In order to elaborate on the metamorphosis of the world, Beck looks into ‘cosmopolitized spaces of action’. As Beck argues, this cosmopolitization refers to the internationalization of the world in which successful action necessitates the use of ‘transnational, transborder resources for action, such as the differences between judicial regimes, radical inequalities and cultural differences’ (p. 12). The metamorphosis of the world implies a Copernican revolution that supposes ‘the world and humanity as fixed stars around which the nations rotate’ (p. 17). For Beck, the agent of this metamorphosis is ‘the endless story of failure’.
Thus the metamorphosis of the world is about the positive aspects of global catastrophes and how such catastrophes ‘challenge our way of being in the world, thinking about the world, and imagining and doing politics’ (p. 20). Consequently, as Beck reminds us, the metamorphosis of the world requires a paradigmatic shift from methodological nationalism to methodological cosmopolitanism.
In Chapter 3, Beck argues that global threats and global risks, specifically climate change, drive nations to cooperate and become interdependent. He calls this process ‘emancipatory catastrophism’. As Beck demonstrates, the global risks and the common perceptions of humanity generate a new sort of global cooperation between cities alongside the international community. He elaborates: ‘we should look not only to the United Nations but also to the United Cities’ (p. 45). Concepts like green urbanism and sustainability are normalized in the new era of global urbanization. Along the same vein, Chapter 11 concerns cities as the key actors in a metamorphosing world. As Beck explains, independently from nation-states, cities in the era of globalization ‘are embedded in an active way in international law-making’ (p. 165). As such, cities and not the nation-states play a key role ensuring the metamorphosis of the world: ‘the United Cities, not the United Nations, could become the cosmopolitan agency of the future’ (pp. 166–167).
In Chapter 4, Beck theorizes the metamorphosis of the world by looking into risk societies as powerful actors of this process. Specifying the two major aspects of this phenomenon, Beck distinguishes between colonization and cosmopolitization. He argues that postcolonialism is metamorphosing into cosmopolitanism, especially because of the emancipation of power in the global periphery. Thereafter, Beck underlines two interlocked processes whose synthesis realizes the metamorphosis of the world: the process of modernization and the process of the production and the distribution of bads (p. 69).
After developing his theory of the metamorphosis of the world, in the second part of the book, Beck addresses the themes that support his theory. In Chapter 5, the author demonstrates how natural catastrophes and climate risks reshape the sociological concept of class into the risk-class. This reconfiguration of class requires a paradigmatic shift from ‘power relations of production in modern global capitalism to power relations of definition in world risk society’ (p. 97). Subsequently in Chapter 6, Beck elaborates the invisibility of global risks as the key factor of the ‘relations of definition as relations of domination’ (p. 97).
In Chapter 7, Beck goes beyond his theory of risk society in order to clarify the meaning of the metamorphosis of the world: ‘it is not about the negative side effects of goods but about the positive side effects of bads’ (p. 116). The author argues that the so-called publicness of global catastrophes and risks increases the awareness and sensitivity of the public about the aforementioned bads. It is this publicness of global phenomena that leads Beck to develop, in Chapter 8, how cosmopolitan data and the metamorphosis of digital communication shape the globalized publics who make global risks visible and political (p. 127).
In Chapter 9, by giving the example of digital freedom risks and the Snowden NSA scandal, Beck demonstrates how risks can challenge the legitimation of social and political institutions and foster more participatory democracy on behalf of the average person. Culminating in catastrophic events such as failing financial markets, widespread terrorist attacks and increasing fragility of state-sponsored intelligence mechanisms, Beck argues that individuals, such as Edward Snowden, single-handedly reorient our perspectives on the legitimacy of the political institutions. With mass media outlets pervading the contemporary world, the dissemination of knowledge and information is not only instantaneous, it is far-reaching in its reality. The combination of social actors like Snowden and the media’s constant coverage thereof highlights, for Beck, a metamorphosis of societies’ collective imagination concerning institutions and their legitimacy.
Chapter 10 deals with the metamorphosis of international relations by discussing the dynamics between the authority of the European Union and that of its constituent members. Beck also discusses the discursive shift in the viewpoint of the Chinese Communist Party on climate change from a national perspective to a cosmopolitan one. As he mentions, this paradigmatic shift indicates how the global risks can change the national self-imagination of a nation-state from isolation to participation.
In the last chapter, Beck answers the question of the metamorphosis of future generations and their socialization. He argues that although present and future generations share the same risks simultaneously, they do not necessarily share the same reactions and solutions to global problems. As Beck elaborates, ‘the difference between the national outlook and the cosmopolitan outlook turns into a conflict between generations, which is manifest in a clash of generations inside and outside of the family’ (p. 190). He concludes that new generations around the world are more interconnected than previous generations.
In general, this book succeeds in proposing a new way of thinking about sociological problems on the global scale and can provide subsequent generations of scholars with thematically and temporally appropriate conceptual tools. Whereas this book does provide the reader with many innovative theoretical perspectives, Beck fails to offer reliable conceptual and methodological alternatives for a metamorphosing discipline. This book lacks an adequate theorizing of the way sociology can engage with global issues. Beck criticizes major sociological theories for being end-of-history sociologies. Thereby, Beck posits that theories like Foucauldian, Bourdieusian and Luhmannian ones ‘focus on the reproduction of social and political systems and not on their transformation into something unknown and uncontrollable’ (p. 70). In spite of Beck’s many arguments and critiques of historical and contemporary sociology, he does not propose a reliable alternative to existing theories. Furthermore, this book focuses on the climatic and digital aspects of global threats yet does not elaborate adequately the political, social, cultural and economic aspects of such threats.
Still, beyond the study of cosmopolitization of global threats, sociologists need to analyse new waves of anti-globalization and anti-immigration sentiment and phenomena like Brexit in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump in the United States as new forms of rightist resistance to globalization. These examples of collective action require new reflections on the ways global risks threaten institutionally consecrated organizations, like the United Nations or the European Union. The social sciences, and sociology in particular, can no longer remain fixed on an understanding that successful collective action coalesces under leftist banners or ideologies. As such, the theories presented by Beck offer new sociological perspectives for further reflections on new risks that threaten such collective and global actions.