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Since the 1980s, Ulrich Beck has worked extensively on his theories of second modernity and the risk society. In Ulrich Beck, Mads P. Sørensen and Allan Christiansen provide an extensive and thorough introduction to the German sociologist's collected works. The book covers his sociology of work, his theories of individualization, globalization and subpolitics, his world famous theory of the risk society and second modernity as well as his latest work on cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the theory outlined in Beck's chief work, Risk Society, and on his theory of second m.

Intro -- Contents -- Title page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Introduction -- 1 The Age of Side-effects: On the Politicization of Modernity -- What does 'reflexive modernization' mean? -- The sociology of simple and reflexive modernization - a comparison -- Reflexive democracy -- The politics of rationalization -- On the fragility of social life -- A new Reformation? -- 2 The Construction of the Other Side of Modernity: Counter-modernization -- Counter-modernity means constructed certitude -- The invention of the nation: national democracy as restricted modernity -- National and global modernity: problematizing strangers -- Militarily restricted democracy -- Enemy stereotypes empower -- The naturalization of femininity -- Dilemmas -- Ecological ligatures: on the road to eco-democracy or eco-dictatorship? -- 3 Subpolitics - The Individual Returns to Society -- Individualization - on the unliveability of modernity -- Politics and subpolitics -- Congestion - the meditative form of the strike in reflexive modernity -- 4 Ways to Alternative Modernities -- Further differentiation of industrial society: feminization and naturalization of society -- Freedom for technology! -- On dealing with ambivalence: the 'round table' model -- Chapter04.xhtml#ch4.sec4"> -- Rationality reform: code syntheses -- The political bourgeois -- 5 The Reinvention of Politics -- The politics of politics -- The façadism in politics -- Metamorphosis of the state -- The third way to the society of citizens: what will become of the parties? -- Anti-governmental nationalism? -- Beyond left and right? -- Life-and-death politics -- Profession as political action -- 6 The Art of Doubt -- Dare to use your own doubt - Michel de Montaigne -- A wealth of realities -- Scepticism: the political programme of radicalized modernity -- Civilizing conflict? -- Criticism by doubt -- Notes.

Public resistance to environmental and health safety risks from radiations emanating from cell phone towers has been sporadic but spatially and temporally widespread in India. Civic actions have been led by civic activists, resident welfare associations, gram panchayats, lawyers, scientists and even an actor from the Bombay film industry. Large scale technical systems like cell-phone towers are remarkably resilient to public criticism. Industry response to such resistance is usually in the form of aesthetic tinkering to hide structures from public gaze, incremental regulation and science communication to assuage public doubt. The legislature rather than Courts has been more responsive to such civic actions. Courts due to their overreliance on risk discourses have continued to defer to State experts. Faced with incrementalism from formal institutional actors, resistance movements have become localized and used site requirements to stymie such developments. Drawing on Beck's idea of subpolitics, this study explores the disaggregated nature of the resistance movement against cell tower radiation in India. It is based on a multi-sited ethnography based on field research and 35 interviews with activists, journalists, regulators, lawyers, industry representatives, doctors and scientists, conducted between November 2017 to December 2019. Jurisprudential developments, parliamentary committee and scientific reports were also reviewed. Subpolitics as a category has purchase in STS studies because it allows us to focus on the disaggregated nature of affected publics and interrogate public engagement with State institutions and new social expectations and solidarities with reference to technology.

This article explores the relationship between ICTs and politics. The first part of the article briefly looks back over the literature reconstructing the framework within which this relationship has been located. According to the optimistic approach, ICTs could act as a catalyst in establishing democracy worldwide: great expectations have been nurtured but they have been frustrated by reality. From the pessimistic perspective, this outcome is not surprising as politics in the virtual world reflects politics in the real world. Both approaches share a traditional idea of politics and therefore fail to find any relevant change. But significant changes have occurred, as shown by how citizens have refocused their political attention outside the formal political arena. Social movements, civil associations, single issue groups or even discussion groups can be considered indicators of what has been called 'life politics' or 'sub-politics'. In a nutshell, this new kind of politics crosses the boundaries between politics, cultural values, civil values and identity processes. The picture that emerges gives us a different idea of politics to which ICTs make a significant contribution.

Intended as an introduction, this article aims to highlight some of the lessons that stem from the different contributions that compose this issue on the "politics of economization". Referring to the paradox that is underlying this particular form of politization, we draw attention on three analytical figures that are found in all the presented studies, though at varying degrees and through different formulas. According to this initial inventory, we address the politics of economization following three dimensions: (1) in the first dimension they should be understood as a bypassing of politics; (2) in the second dimension it is necessary to understand them in their opposition to politics; (3) in the third dimension they are best understood as politics that are not spelled out as such. These three dimensions are referred to the concepts of "subpolitics", "anti-politics" and "quasi-politics"; we propose a definition for each of these dimensions. Adapted from the source document.

Until the late 1990s, Israeli legislation had focused largely on the distribution of disability allowances and benefits, rather then on disability rights. Since then, owing largely to the efforts of the Bizchut organization and to two national disability protests in 1999 and 2001, Israeli disability policy and legislation have gradually shifted from a needs-based to a human rights and equality-based platform. Using Beck's (1994) theory of subpolitics, I analyze the emergence of disability rights advocacy and protestation, and their role in bringing about policy and legal changes in Israel. I argue four connected points: that Israeli disability politics demonstrate how civil society actors can advance change: that the activism of these actors, Bizchut and the two protests, is interconnected and mutually empowering; that these events represent the rise of the disability community as a legitimate and active social actor; and that these events constitute an Israeli visibility project and are crucial for advancing both disability rights and needs.

Abstract
This article explores the significance of politicisation in social work and its role in challenging power dynamics and promoting transformative change. It is viewed as a means to challenge established power structures, raise awareness of issues and engage in political action. Three pitfalls are identified in the way politicisation is conceptualised and used. First, there is a tendency to define politicisation too broadly. The authors assert that politicisation should involve challenging the existing system rather than merely making modifications. Secondly, the belief in consensus thinking about democracy is criticised, as it overlooks power imbalances inherent in politics. The authors advocate for an agonistic politics approach, where ideological opponents engage in a struggle over competing values and interests within a shared democratic space. Lastly, the adoption of subpolitics as a politicising strategy, which focuses on individual actions, is deemed inadequate as it often fails to address structural inequalities. Instead, the authors propose prefigurative politics, which involves creating concrete collective interventions that anticipate and embody a different society in the present. In conclusion, this article underscores the importance of understanding its distinct meaning and strategies. The authors suggest agonistic and prefigurative politics as a promising framework for politicising practices in social work.

The article reports from a research project about how the media function as a democratic resource for citizens in Denmark. It brings together discourse- and audienceanalysis perspectives into one research design, questioning the often simplified notions of media power found in media/politics research. Our three-tiered study explores the media/citizen nexus, in a social context where politics spans the continuum from traditional parliamentary politics, through grassroots organizations ('subpolitics') and everyday politics ('life-politics'). First, we explore the citizens' daily life with the media in the perspective of democratic citizenship, as people report this to us in group conversations. Second, we analyse the media's discursive constructions of 'politics', focusing on the political issues around traffic and transport policy, but including all political coverage of a variety of media during one selected week. Third, we explore the citizens' construction of 'politics' through focus group discussions. We see these studies as interrelated, but abstain from making causal generalizations about agenda setting and definitional power, preferring to map them as three interrelated discursive territories of contemporary politics, and to discuss possible linkages between media discourses and citizens' discourses. We thus end up by 'complexifying' the media/citizen connection beyond simplistic notions of media power.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 From Mimetic Expression to the Rational Mastery of Nature -- The Discourse of Enlightenment in Early Critical Theory -- The Critique of Rational Mastery, Left and Right -- Rationalized Authority and Adorno's Modernism -- Moral Absolutism and Mimetic Regression -- Critique in the Anthropocene "Age of Ecology" -- Chapter 2 Holism, Modernism, and "the Problem of the Environment" -- Everything Is Connected to Everything Else: Deep and Social Ecology -- The Communitarian Turn -- Radicalizing Ontology -- Closing the Circle -- Chapter 3 From Enlightenment Hubris to Neo-Enlightenment Humility -- Legitimation Crisis -- The Crisis of Democracy -- The Reagan Revolution -- Justifying a Return to Moral Authority: The Hayekian Cosmology -- Overcoming the Right's Paradox of Freedom -- Chapter 4 Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Neocommunitarianism -- Left neoliberalism, A Win-Win-Win Solution -- Modernism and the Third Way -- Subpolitics and Risk Awareness -- A Force for Freedom and Prosperity -- The Postpolitical Condition -- Chapter 5 Postpolitics and the Return of Moral Authority -- The Externalization Thesis -- Communicative Rationality in the Age of Ecology -- Postpolitical Moral Authority and "Neoliberal Jurisprudence" -- Shamans of the Anthropocene? -- Chapter 6 Meaning Lost, Meaning Refound . . . -- An Inebriate Tendency toward the Absolute . . . -- The Hangover . . . -- Critique for another Time Past -- From Occupy to the Trump Administration -- Conclusion -- Authority and Meaning -- Coda: Agonism or Agnosticism? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Since the 1980s, Ulrich Beck has worked extensively on his theories of second modernity and the risk society. In Ulrich Beck, Mads P. Sørensen and Allan Christiansen provide an extensive and thorough introduction to the German sociologist's collected works. The book covers his sociology of work, his theories of individualization, globalization and subpolitics, his world famous theory of the risk society and second modernity as well as his latest work on cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the theory outlined in Beck's chief work, Risk Society, and on his theory of second modernity, Sørensen and Christiansen explain the sociologist's ideas and writing in a clear and accessible way. Largely concerned with the last 25 years of Beck's authorship, the book nevertheless takes a retrospective look at his works from the late seventies and early eighties, and reviews the critique that has been raised against Beck's sociology through the years. Each chapter of Ulrich Beck comes with a list of suggested further reading, as well as explanations of core terms. The book also includes a biography of Beck, and full bibliographies of his work in both English and German. This comprehensive introduction will be of interest to all students of sociology, contemporary social theory, globalization theory, environmental studies, politics, geography and risk studies.

An outline of the "risk society" thesis of the German social theorist Ulrich Beck is given, and some points that he has taken from food safety examples are discussed. The potential for exploring the viability and utility of the thesis, via a comparative study of historical food safety episodes is illustrated through an account and discussion of the large corned beef‐associated typhoid outbreak which occurred in 1964 in Aberdeen, Scotland. The outcome of the Aberdeen affair, in terms of public and political interest in food safety, and impact on the official food safety system, is compared with the outcome and impact of the series of food safety episodes of the 1980s and 1990s. The interactions between the latter episodes and the new food movement, the proactive responses of corporate interests, and the dramatic changes in the food safety regime represented by the formation of the Food Standards Agency in Britain, are contrasted with the relative lack of impact of the Aberdeen outbreak. Despite criticisms of Beck's thesis, this comparative study highlights, in particular, the value of his concept of "subpolitics", and his expectation that the transition to risk society will involve the emergence of new social institutions. Such insights may help orientate epidemiologists and community health specialists who are currently active in food safety and regulation.

Les thèses de l'autonomie de la technique et l'identification du progrès au progrès technique ont exclu la notion de démocratie du champ de la réflexion de la philosophie politique sur les sciences et les techniques, au profit de conceptions technocratiques. Ce sont l'histoire et la sociologie qui ont essentiellement abordé les relations entre technique et démocratie. En examinant leurs travaux, cette thèse montre à la fois l'importance des facteurs socio-culturels pour expliquer le développement technique d'une société et l'existence d'une forme faible de déterminisme par lequel les techniques structurent les relations sociales. La possibilité et la pertinence qu'il y a à faire de la technique un objet du débat démocratique apparaissent alors à double titre : d'une part, la technique nous engage collectivement dans un mode de développement – ce que traduit la notion de subpolitique – et, d'autre part, elle est déjà un objet de politique puisqu'elle fait l'objet de législations et constitue, sous la forme de l'innovation, un élément majeur des projets politiques nationaux et internationaux ainsi que de l'actuel discours de la gouvernance. Il s'agit alors d'établir que, confrontée à différentes critiques, la démocratie technique doit étendre son champ d'analyse afin de ne pas s'en tenir à une réflexion sur l'expertise et la participation, et d'être en mesure de répondre aux enjeux des conditions juridiques, économiques et épistémiques de la (co)production des savoirs et des innovations, comme aux enjeux classiques de la démocratie. Cette redéfinition du champ de la démocratie technique permet de l'articuler autour d'une interrogation sur le sens du progrès. ; Because of the idea of technology as an autonomous actor and of the reduction of progress to its technical dimensions, political philosophy excluded democracy from its reflections on sciences and technologies. It examined foremost technocratic conceptions of power. It is mainly history and sociology that research the relationship between technology and democracy. By analysing their conclusions, this PhD thesis develops two insights: 1) the importance of socio-cultural factors for explaining the technical development of society; 2) the existence of a weak version of determinism which implies that technologies shape social relationships. Taking these two insights as the starting point for further reflections, we derive two central reasons why technology is a necessary object of considerations on democracy: first, technology sets a society on a development path – by a subpolitical action – which citizens must be entitled to discuss; second, technology is already a political object for it is addressed by legislation and, as innovation, is a key element of national and international politics and of the discourse of governance. Thus, this thesis stresses that the concept of technical democracy needs to become more complex. Only then it can leave its narrow scope on expertise and participation behind and fully address both the economic, juridical and epistemic conditions of (co)production of knowledge and innovation, and the classical philosophical considerations on democracy. Redefining the field of technical democracy in such a way, we will be able to have a more multi-layered debate on the meaning of progress.

Les thèses de l'autonomie de la technique et l'identification du progrès au progrès technique ont exclu la notion de démocratie du champ de la réflexion de la philosophie politique sur les sciences et les techniques, au profit de conceptions technocratiques. Ce sont l'histoire et la sociologie qui ont essentiellement abordé les relations entre technique et démocratie. En examinant leurs travaux, cette thèse montre à la fois l'importance des facteurs socio-culturels pour expliquer le développement technique d'une société et l'existence d'une forme faible de déterminisme par lequel les techniques structurent les relations sociales. La possibilité et la pertinence qu'il y a à faire de la technique un objet du débat démocratique apparaissent alors à double titre : d'une part, la technique nous engage collectivement dans un mode de développement – ce que traduit la notion de subpolitique – et, d'autre part, elle est déjà un objet de politique puisqu'elle fait l'objet de législations et constitue, sous la forme de l'innovation, un élément majeur des projets politiques nationaux et internationaux ainsi que de l'actuel discours de la gouvernance. Il s'agit alors d'établir que, confrontée à différentes critiques, la démocratie technique doit étendre son champ d'analyse afin de ne pas s'en tenir à une réflexion sur l'expertise et la participation, et d'être en mesure de répondre aux enjeux des conditions juridiques, économiques et épistémiques de la (co)production des savoirs et des innovations, comme aux enjeux classiques de la démocratie. Cette redéfinition du champ de la démocratie technique permet de l'articuler autour d'une interrogation sur le sens du progrès. ; Because of the idea of technology as an autonomous actor and of the reduction of progress to its technical dimensions, political philosophy excluded democracy from its reflections on sciences and technologies. It examined foremost technocratic conceptions of power. It is mainly history and sociology that research the relationship between technology and ...

The precautionary principle falls under a decisional context in evolution, marked by a multidimensional uncertainty as for environmental, economic, social, political or ethical consequences of the technological innovations. In French-speaking political science, it is understood as a strategic tool, a political response to the emergence of a new flow of societal uncertainty, mainly directed towards the hesitations of the scientific world. We argue that the precautionary principle redefines the way to manage scientific uncertainty in a society characterized by the blurring of the borders between political and subpolitical actors. Around its application, a line of fracture is drawn, which reduces the decisional breathing space of certain subpolitical entities and/or encourages others to act more. However, we stress that in a world ever more globalised and interconnected, the application of the precautionary principle only has temporary and local effects. Nevertheless, it may contribute to important debates that need to be taken up further in institutional spaces for reflexive anticipatory action and decision-making support ; Peer reviewed