Democracy Without Enemies

by Beck, Ulrich

• ISBN13: 9780745618227
• ISBN10: 0745618227
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-08-06
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

Up to now, modernization has always been conceived of, in contrast to the worlds of tradition and religion, as a liberation from the constraints of nature. What happens, however, if industrial society becomes a 'tradition' to itself? What if its own necessities, functional principles and fundamental concepts are undermined, broken up and demystified with the same ruthlessness as were the supposedly eternal truths of earlier epochs? These questions are the focus of Ulrich Beck's Democracy without Enemies. The conflict of the future, he argues, will no longer be between East and West, between communism and capitalism, but between the countries, regions and groups involved in primary modernization and those that are attempting to relativize and reform the project of modernity self-critically, based on their experience of it. The conflict of the future will be between the two modernities which will battle over the compatibility of survival and human rights for all citizens of the earth.

Author Biography

Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich

Table of Contents

Freedom's Children

What Comes After Postmodernity: The Conflict of Two Modernities

The Withering Away of Solidarity: Places without Community and Communities without Places

Perspectives on a Cultural Evolution of Work

Capitalism without Work, or the Coming of Civil Society

The Democratization of the Family, or the Unknown Art of Free Association

Misunderstanding Reflexivity: the Controversy on Reflexive Modernization

The Renaissance of Politics in Reflexive Modernity: Politicians Must Make a Response

The Open City: Architecture in Reflexive Modernity

How Neighbours Become Jews: the Political Construction of the Stranger in the Age of Reflexive Modernity

Nation-States without Enemies: the Military and Democracy after the End of the Cold War

Brief Introduction to Environmental Machiavellianism: Green Democracy from Below

Freedom or Survival: the Utopia of Self-Limitation

Notes

References

Index

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