Not knowing, emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis: Embracing the spirit of Ulrich Beck

Abstract

Embracing the spirit of his observation that ‘what was ruled out beforehand as inconceivable is taking place’, this article urges a re-engagement with Ulrich Beck’s work within security studies. In so doing, the article falls into three parts. First, we provide necessary contextual orientation, discussing the magnitude of Beck’s contribution to understandings of risk and security in the social sciences. Second, we discuss the importance of comprehending Beck’s unique methodological approach in order to appreciate the more specific resonances of his work. Third, we endorse the theoretical novelty of Beck’s work, demonstrating the ways in which the tools that he devised might be put to use and extended in future. To this end, we focus on three interconnected conceptual devices developed by Beck in the latter stages of his career: nichtwissen, emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis. We conclude by emphasizing the vital need to grasp the practical as well as the academic ambitions that underpinned Beck’s projective style of social theory.

World Risk Society and Constructing Cosmopolitan Realities: A Bourdieusian Critique of Risk Society

“…The risks escape from conventional institutional practices and policies of regulation and control. Within the risk society, threats ascend as unintended "side effects" of scientific and technological and economic progress (Mythen and Walklate, 2016). In this fashion, the production of "manufactured risks" through industrial society and scientific progress essentially makes the second modernity "a problem for itself " (Beck, 1997).…”

“…In addition, in cosmopolitan understanding, he addresses a limited and unilateral hermeneutical understanding as well as relationships, and finally, he positively attributes a scale for cosmopolitanism between universalism and particularism. This predicament has also led to the dominance of a kind of Eurocentrism in the idea of the second modernity and cosmopolitanism (Mythen and Walklate, 2016;Zhang, 2018). According to Beck' premises, in general, the cosmopolitan empirical-analytical approach takes precedence over other perspectives.…”

“…Highlighting cosmopolitan conditions and moments means that cosmopolitanism is essentially a relational and contingent reality to certain conditions as well as other social realities, a relationality that must also be dominated in cosmopolitan understanding. These predicaments in Beck's theory of risk society and cosmopolitanism have led many researchers to select parts of his theories and notions in relation to their research aims (Mythen and Walklate, 2016;Mythen, 2018).…”

Resilience Policing: An Emerging Response to Shifting Harm Landscapes and Reshaping Community Policing

“…As Molotch and McClain (2003, p. 679) argue, 'the attacks of September 11th indicate a new kind of threat to urban security and imply the need for new urban knowledges or at least fresh ways to apply older understandings'. Likewise, Beck (2003, p. 256) argued that in the light of September 11 we need a new vocabulary to articulate how we manage and govern in an ever-expanding 'risk society': 'we live, think and act in concepts that are historically obsolete but which nonetheless continue to govern our thinking and acting' (see Mythen and Walklate 2016).…”

When risks meet: The dance of experience, professional expertise and science in border security technology development

“…The employment of technology, particularly algorithmic technologies, information systems and biometrics, is now hailed as a ‘magic bullet’, ‘an absolute security provider’ (Ceyhan, 2008: 102; Marx, 2005), an ‘ultimate solution’ to ‘the unknown and risk generated by globalization and reinforced by September 11’ (Ceyhan, 2008: 103). In short, then, technology is supposed to make known and authorize decisions in the face of a radical ‘non-knowing’ (Mythen and Walklate, 2016a: 408). Technology increases the capacity to surveil and control, combining crime control and containment with the possibility of pre-emption (Bowling et al, 2008; Marx, 2005; Wilson, 2006).…”