Ulrich Beck

Bio: Ulrich Beck is an academic researcher from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The author has contributed to research in topics: Risk society & Cosmopolitanism. The author has an hindex of 82, co-authored 272 publications receiving 57772 citations. Previous affiliations of Ulrich Beck include London School of Economics and Political Science & University of Florence.

Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity

Abstract: Introduction - Scott Lash and Brian Wynne PART ONE: LIVING ON THE VOLCANO OF CIVILIZATION - THE CONTOURS OF THE RISK SOCIETY On the Logic of Wealth Distribution and Risk Distribution The Politics of Knowledge in the Risk Society PART TWO: THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY - LIFE-FORMS AND THE DEMISE OF TRADITION Beyond Status and Class? 'I am I' Gendered Space and the Conflict Inside and Outside the Family Individualization, Institutionalization and Standardization Life Situations and Biographical Patterns De-Standardization of Labour PART THREE: REFLEXIVE MODERNIZATION: ON THE GENERALIZATION OF SCIENCE AND POLITICS Science Beyond Truth and Enlightenment? Opening up the Political

Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order

Abstract: The theme of reflexivity has come to be central to social analysis. In this book three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today. Ulrich Beck's vision of the "risk society" has already become extraordinarily influential. Beck offers a new elaboration of his basic ideas, connecting reflexive modernization with new issues to do with the state and political organization. Giddens offers an in-depth examination of the connections between "institutional reflexivity" and the de-traditionalizing of the modern world. We are entering, he argues, a phase of the development of a global society. A "global society" is not a world society, but one with universalizing tendencies. Lash develops the theme of reflexive modernization in relation the aesthetics and the interpretation of culture. In this domain, he suggests, we need to look again at the conventional theories of postmodernism; "aesthetic modernization" has distinctive qualities that need to be uncovered and analyzed. In the concluding sections of the book, the three authors offer critical appraisals of each other's viewpoints, providing a synthetic conclusion to the work as a whole.

Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences

Abstract: Losing the Traditional Individualization and 'Precarious Freedoms' A Life of One's Own in a Runaway World Individualization, Globalization and Politics Beyond Status and Class? The Ambivalent Social Structure Poverty and Wealth in a 'Self-Driven Culture' From 'Living for Others' to 'A Life of One's Own' Individualization and Women On the Way to the Post-Familial Family From a Community of Need to Elective Affinities Division of Labour, Self-Imaging and Life Projects New Conflicts in the Family Declining Birthrates and the Wish to Have Children Apparatuses Do Not Care for People Health and Responsibility in the Age of Genetic Technology Death of One's Own, Life of One's Own Hopes from Transience Freedom's Children Freedom's Fathers Zombie Categories Interview with Ulrich Beck

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Abstract: Good computer and video games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Pikmin, Rise of Nations, Neverwinter Nights, and Xenosaga: Episode 1 are learning machines. They get themselves learned and learned well, so that they get played long and hard by a great many people. This is how they and their designers survive and perpetuate themselves. If a game cannot be learned and even mastered at a certain level, it won't get played by enough people, and the company that makes it will go broke. Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of the fittest. Of course, game designers could have solved their learning problems by making games shorter and easier, by dumbing them down, so to speak. But most gamers don't want short and easy games. Thus, designers face and largely solve an intriguing educational dilemma, one also faced by schools and workplaces: how to get people, often young people, to learn and master something that is long and challenging--and enjoy it, to boot.

Comparing Media Systems: three models of media and politics

Abstract: This book proposes a framework for comparative analysis of the relation between the media and the political system Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables that have shaped their evolution They go on to identify three major models of media system development, the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist, and Liberal models; to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems; and to explore the force of change that are currently transforming them It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication, and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context

The Risk Society: Towards a new modernity

Abstract: The present review discusses one of the pioneer projects authored by Ulrich Beck, regarding risk perception issues, which was originally titled Risikogesellshaft, Auf dem weg in eine andere Moderne or in English The society of risk, towards a new modernity. This review is part of a broader project related to a Social Psychology doctoral thesis on fears of travelling in urban circumstances.

Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method

Abstract: Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method is a systematic introduction to discourse analysis as a body of theories and methods for social research. It brings together three central approaches, Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, critical discourse analysis and discursive psychology, in order to establish a dialogue between different forms of discourse analysis often kept apart by disciplinary boundaries. The book introduces the three approaches in a clear and easily comprehensible manner, explaining the distinctive philosophical premises and theoretical perspectives of each approach as well as the methodological guidelines and tools they provide for empirical discourse analysis. The authors also demonstrate the possibilities for combining different discourse analytical and non-discourse analytical approaches in empirical study. Finally, they contextualize discourse analysis within the social constructionist debate about critical social research, rejecting the view that a critical stance is incompatible with social constructionist premises and arguing that critique must be an inherent part of social research.