Cosmopolitan Vision

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological analysis of the cosmopolitan implications of globalization.

What Europe needs, Beck argues, is the courage to unite forms of life which have grown out of language, skin colour, nationality or religion with awareness that, in a radically insecure world, all are equal and everyone is different.

Detailed Contents. Acknowledgements. Introduction: What is 'Cosmopolitan' about the Cosmopolitan Vision. PART ONE. Cosmopolitan Realism. Chapter 1. Global Sense, Sense of Boundarylessness: The Distinction between Philosophical and Social Scientific Cosmopolitanism. Chapter 2. The Truth of Others: On the Cosmopolitan Treatment of Difference - Distinctions, Misunderstandings, Paradoxes. Chapter 3. Cosmopolitan Society and its Adversaries. PART TWO. Concretizations, Prospects. Chapter 4. The Politics of Politics: On the Dialectic of Cosmopolitanization and Anti-Cosmopolitanization. Chapter 5. War is Peace: On Postnational War. Chapter 6. Cosmopolitan Europe: Reality and Utopia. Notes. References and Bibliography. Index.