Ulrich Beck
German sociologist (1944–2015)
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Through Sociology, Uncertainty and Modern era
Life
Beck was born in the Pomeranian town of Stolp, Germany (now Słupsk in Poland), in 1944, and grew up in Hanover. He began university studies with a focus on law at the University of Freiburg, and from 1966 onwards studied sociology, philosophy, psychology and political science at LMU Munich. Starting in 1972, after earning a doctorate, he was employed at LMU Munich as a sociologist. In 1979, he qualified as a university lecturer with a habilitation thesis. He received appointments as professor at the University of Münster (1979–1981) and the University of Bamberg (1981–1992). From 1992 until his death, Beck was professor of sociology and director of the Institute for Sociology at LMU Munich. He received numerous international awards and honors, including election to the Council and Executive Board of the German Society for Sociology.
From 1995 to 1997, he was a member of the Kommission für Zukunftsfragen der Freistaaten Bayern und Sachsen (Bavarian and Saxon State Commission for Questions Concerning the Future). Beginning in 1999, he was the speaker of the DFG research programme on reflexive modernity.
From 1999 to 2009, Beck was a spokesman of the Collaborative Reflexive Modernization Research Centre 536, an interdisciplinary consortium of four universities in the Munich area funded and overseen by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Beck's theory of interdisciplinary reflexive modernization on a basis of a wide range of topics in appropriate research was empirically tested. The theory of reflexive modernization works from the basic idea that the rise of the modern industrial age produces side-effects across the globe that provide the institutional basis and coordinates that modern nation-states question, modify, and open for political action.
He was active as sociologist and public intellectual in Germany and throughout the world, regularly intervening in debates on the European Union, climate change and nuclear energy. At the time of his death, he and his international research group were only 1.5 years into the 5-year research project "Methodological Cosmopolitanism – in the Laboratory of Climate Change" (the Cosmo-Climate Research Project), of which Beck was the Principal investigator. For this research project he received the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant, scheduled to terminate in 2018. Along with Beck, sociologists David Tyfield and Anders Blok lead work packages within the overall project. The project also fostered international research collaboration with various research 'hubs' in East Asia through the Europe-Asia Research Network (EARN). In cooperation with EARN, Beck and sociologist Sang-Jin Han had been set to lead a 2-year project for the Seoul Metropolitan Government beginning in 2015.
Beck was a member of the Board of Trustees at the Jewish Center in Munich and a member of the German branch of PEN International.
He was married to the German social scientist Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1946–2025). He died of a myocardial infarction on 1 January 2015, at the age of 70.
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Research contributions
For 25 years, Beck delivered new diagnoses to the following question: How can social and political thought and action in the face of radical global change (environmental destruction, financial crisis, global warming, the crisis of democracy and the nation-state institutions) be intertwined in a new modernity? A radicalized modernity, for Beck, attacks its own foundations. Institutions such as the nation-state and the family are globalized 'from the inside'.
Beck studied modernization, ecological problems, individualization and globalization. Later in his career, he embarked on exploring the changing conditions of work in a world of increasing global capitalism, declining influence of unions and flexibilisation of the labour process, a then new theory rooted in the concept of cosmopolitanism. Beck also contributed a number of new words to German and anglophone sociology, including "risk society", "second modernity", reflexive modernization and Brazilianization (Brasilianisierung). According to Beck, all contemporary political thinking emanates from the methodological nationalism of political thought and sociology (and other social sciences).
Risk society was coined by Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens during the 1980s. According to Beck and Giddens, the traditional industrial class structure of modern society is breaking apart. Globalization creates risks that concern people from all different classes; for example, radioactivity, pollution, and even unemployment. Affluent households act to insulate themselves from these risks, but cannot do so for some; for example global environmental change. The poor suffer them. He points out that risks are also socially constructed and some risks are perceived as more dangerous because they are discussed in mass media more frequently, such as terrorism. Risk society leads to analysis of risks, causing prejudgment.
Beck was the editor of the sociological journal, Soziale Welt (in German, since 1980), author of some 150 articles, and author or editor of many books.
The Spinelli Group
On 15 September 2010, Beck supported the European Parliament's Spinelli Group initiative to reinvigorate federalism in the European Union. The Union of European Federalists and its youth organisation Young European Federalists promoted the idea of European federalism for over 60 years, with a "belief that only a European Federation, based on the idea of unity in diversity, could overcome the division of the European continent". Prominent supporters of the initiative have included Jacques Delors, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt, Andrew Duff and Elmar Brok.
Awards
- 1996 Cultural Honor Prize of the City of Munich
- 1999 CICERO speaker price award
- 1999 German-British Forum Award for outstanding service to German-British relations (together with Anthony Giddens)
- 2004 Award of DGS for outstanding achievements in the field of public achievement in sociology
- 2005 Schader Prize, the most prestigious award for social scientists in Germany
- 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to Future Research of the International Sociological Association
- In 2013 he received an ERC advanced grant to carry out the Cosmo-Climate Research Project (Methodological Cosmopolitanism: In the Laboratory of Climate Change), with David Tyfield and Anders Blok amongst others.
- Honorary doctorates (8): University of Jyväskylä, Finland (1996), University of Macerata, Italy (2006), University of Madrid (UNED), Spain (2007), Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (2010), University of Lausanne, Switzerland (2011), Free University of Varna, Bulgaria (2011), University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013), St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria (2013).