Current Sociology

To face an unequal world requires us to interpret and explain it, to be sure, but also to engage it, that is, to recognize that we are part of it and that we are partly responsible for it. In other words, inequality is not just something external to us, but also invades our own world. I begin, therefore, by examining the global community of sociology through the lens of inequality. I then consider two recent perspectives on our unequal world from outside sociology: the moral radicalism of Pope Francis that emphasizes exclusion from market society, and the innovative research of the economist Thomas Piketty that emphasizes unequal inclusion in market society. These two faces of global inequality mirror the social movements reverberating from the economic crisis of 2008 but which have their roots in a reaction to a broader wave of marketization, the third to engulf modern capitalism. To explore the meaning of third-wave marketization, otherwise known as neoliberalism, and the social movements it provokes I draw on two concepts from Karl Polanyi – ‘fictitious commodities’ and ‘countermovement’ – as well as a theory of the dynamics of capitalism. I conclude with three challenges facing a global sociology that centers social movements: to develop a theory that speaks to the globally diverse experiences of commodification; to develop a methodology that recognizes that we are unavoidably participants in the world we study; and to develop a politics that defends a particular vision of that world, a vision that has defined the sociological tradition from its beginning, namely one that upholds the centrality of civil society against the over-extension of market and state.

This study examines descriptions of families after separation and re-partnering, with a focus on family boundaries between those considered family and those excluded from it. Adults in stepfamilies may try to maintain a large number of family ties originating from various partnerships, or they may limit the recognition of their family to the members of their new household. Children, on the other hand, are encouraged to maintain contact with both parents and their relatives. Family descriptions of 48 re-partnered mothers residing in Switzerland, as well as their current partners and children, are analysed by focusing on exclusiveness and inclusiveness in written or drawn descriptions. Descriptions collected in family interviews follow a balance of social tensions among interdependent individuals by which responses of children usually match those of their mothers. Mothers’ responses show a high level of exclusiveness, whereas responses of mothers’ partners and children are more balanced between exclusivity and inclusivity. Inclusiveness in families after re-partnering is also connected to conditions such as family structure, mothers’ education and employment.

The attention of social movement studies has so far tended to focus on visible phases of movements, neglecting latent ones. This study argues that invisible mobilizations may be critical in preparing the groundwork of public mobilizations, particularly in authoritarian contexts. Using a process-oriented constructivist account of mobilization which incorporates insights from resistance studies, this article analyzes the Kurdish case in Turkey in the authoritarian 1940s and semi-authoritarian 1950s. Based on in-depth interviews, memoirs, newspaper reports, and official documents, it is demonstrated that a latent Kurdish dissent emerged in this period through the constitution of a sense of shared grievance and common identity both in hidden ways within the submerged networks of Kurdish students and professionals, and in public and visible, yet disguised, ways. Incubating the movement out of the gaze of the authorities within the authoritarian context, this latent dissent formed the groundwork of public acts of defiance and mobilization which emerged towards the end of the 1950s as the political changes encouraged Kurdish dissenters to publicly declare their opposition, and expanded in the more liberal context of the 1960s.

The metamorphosis of the world is about the hidden emancipatory side effect of global risk. This article argues that the talk about bads produces ‘common goods’. As such, the argument goes beyond what has been at the heart of the world risk society theory so far: it is not about the negative side effects of goods but the positive side effects of bads. They are producing normative horizons of common goods. This is what the author defines as ‘emancipatory catastrophism’. Emancipatory catastrophism can be seen and analysed by using three conceptual lenses: first, the anticipation of global catastrophe violates sacred (unwritten) norms of human existence and civilization; second, thereby it causes an anthropological shock, and, third, a social catharsis.

Climate change is socially constructed by the way we imagine the future. Catastrophism and the fear of future climate risk dominate public discourse and constitute how we respond to climate change now. In the debate on climate change, there are two competing catastrophisms: one is emancipatory catastrophism, coined by Ulrich Beck; and the other is what the author of this article calls apocalyptic catastrophism – the dystopian imagination of the future climate and a discourse serving to feed the idea of a ‘techno-fix’, namely geoengineering the Earth’s climate. The two catastrophisms are different in their view on climate change and democracy. This article explores the discursive contours of these two catastrophisms.

The purpose of this article is to respond to Ulrich Beck’s (2014) two crucial concepts –metamorphosis and emancipatory catastrophism – by examining the articulation between transportation disasters and financial crises. The article explains why metamorphosis is an ongoing and open process that is unpredictable, unintentional, and inclusive. It also illustrates how dialogical communities of risk, as one of the possible emancipatory side effects of global risk, may weaken due to social organisms and inequality in risk definition.

The fact that a large portion of the lithium needed for the batteries of electric or hybrid cars required for the technological change lies in a triangle between Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, has put these countries under the spotlight. Historically, exploitation of natural resources in Latin America has been conducted under colonial and neocolonial conditions, a kind of enforced inclusion that is based on domination and implies inequality between and within countries. This article discusses Ulrich Beck’s 2014 Seoul lecture on ‘Emancipatory catastrophism: What does it mean to climate change and risk society?’ to analyze if and how the ‘hidden emancipatory side effects of global risk’ he diagnoses, which imply a ‘metamorphosis of the world,’ can be seen in the case of lithium mining and processing in South America. The case, which focuses mostly on the equality–inequality dimension, may represent an empirical contribution to the discussion of the novelty of Beck’s proposal, and the accuracy of its implied prognosis.

This article offers a concrete case study with the intention of demonstrating the empirical significance of the concepts of emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis by identifying the forces which interact when a social transformation takes place. In his public lecture at the 2014 Seoul Conference Beck explains emancipatory catastrophism through three conceptual lenses, that is, the violation of sacred norms of human existence, anthropological shock, and social catharsis. This article seeks to systematize the driving force of emancipatory catastrophism as consisting of push and pull factors and to apply this analytic scheme to the concrete case of transnational marriage which involves both the catastrophic push factor and an emancipatory pull factor for the ‘unmarriageable bachelors’ in rural Korea and the South Asian women who come to Korea to get married.

Over the years, Ulrich Beck has established himself as an important sociologist due in large part to the imaginative and skillful way in which he has continuously added new conceptual bricks to his theoretical edifice and cosmopolitan vision. His work at the present juncture is no exception, spurred as it is by the urgency of responding to the global risks of climate change via reworking key categories of social theory. More strongly than existing notions of world risk society and second modernity, his new concept of metamorphosis (‘Verwandlung’) captures the way contemporary social upheavals imply a fundamental transformation in our very coordinates of social change, in the face of as-yet uncertain collective futures. Likewise, as Beck propounds in this issue of Current Sociology, the concept of emancipatory catastrophism starkly underlines the core moral ambiguity of global risks: (future) risk is not yet (present) catastrophe – and this very gap may lead to mobilizations and the emergence of new normative horizons of expectation. This text suggests the notion of cosmopolitan middle-range theorizing in order to capture the novel practice of social theory is contained, but so far insufficiently specified, in Beck’s project.

This article explores the broad contexts and meanings of Ulrich Beck’s new concepts of emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis (Verwandlung) from an East Asian perspective. At the same time, it responds to the dialogue papers solicited from the participants of The Seoul Conference on 2014 - Climate Change and Risk Society: New Trends of Megacity Transformation. It serves as an introduction to a cosmopolitan dialogue with Beck in the age of global risk society, as well as an invitation to further forward-looking exploration and critical testing of these imaginative concepts.