A Vision of Europe: Cosmopolitanism. On the Work of Ulrich Beck

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck is one of the leading contemporary thinkers on the question of modernity. Alongside his key studies of “risk society” in the 1980s, he has won acclaim in recent years for his thinking on globalization and its impact on modern societies. As an advocate of a political cosmopolitanism (he favours the creation of supranational institutions such as a world parliament), Beck has campaigned for a very high degree of European integration, which might serve as basis or model for a “cosmopolitan empire”. He asserts this very clearly in his most recent work, co-written with Edgar Grande, which in English bears precisely this title: Cosmopolitan Empire (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). It is reviewed here by Antoine Tillie, who also casts a wider eye over Beck’s earlier works (on globalization, cosmopolitanism, democracy etc.).