"Living on the Volcano of Civilization”. For the Thirtieth Anniversary of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society

Abstract

The English translation of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society appeared in 1992. Since then, the book has never ceased to influence contemporary sociologists, thinkers, scholars and students, thanks especially to Beck’s foresight in analyzing our social disorders. Through the risk society metaphor, Beck probed the new contradictions of our technological world and shed light on the economic, cultural, religious, political and communicative shortcuts afflicting our post-modern uncertainty. Risk Society is an attentive and stunning representation of the public “bads” produced by progress and industrialization, as Beck carefully highlighted in World at Risk (2007) and The Metamorphosis of the World (2016). The dialogue with Bauman, Giddens, Habermas, Huntington, Lash and Luhmann inspired in him a scrupulous reflection on the causes and effects of secondary modernization. Thus, Risk Society laid the foundations of a sociological engagement pivoted on the concepts of reflexive modernization, individualization, institutionalization, standardization, the end of traditionalism, generalization of science and politics, desacralization. [...]