Η κοσμοπολίτικη κοινωνία και οι εχθροί της

Abstract

Within the context of the Second Age of Modernity as well as that of an effort to establish a new ‘Cosmpolitan Manifesto’, Ulrich Beck in this lecture commences from the fact that there is a need for a second Enlightenment to understand the shift in global relations and construct new key concepts and hypotheses which go beyond the classical approach to modernity. The aim of his lecture is to discuss three questions: first, what is a cosmpolitan sociology; second, what is a cosmpolitan society and third, who are its enemies? Beck takes as the level of his reference the concepts of globalization and globality; and he will come up with the following conclusion, concerning the first question: an aggregation of three interrelated problems emerges: conceptual, methodological and organizational. He, then, focuses upon the consequences of Methodological Nationalism, but this does not make him miss the point that his aim is to show how an empirical sociology of the global is getting possible, a reflexive as well as a self -critical sociology which brings into the very center of its study the concept of cosmpolitization. In the second part of his lecture, Beck will amplify and update even further the Habermasian post - national constellation withing the context of: the risk of global market and technology, the transcendence of localities, transationality, the relations of deterritorialized economic power and national states. His real aim is to search the theoretical and practical terms for the establishment of a cosmpolitan manifest - project. Consequently, delivering this lecture, Beck takes the opportunity to reconsider the dilemmas and possibilities which are opened within the present conditions for the realization of this project. In the third and final part of his lecture, Beck demonstrates the enemies of cosmopolitization: Postmodern Nationalism, Globalism and the new forms of Democratic Authoritarianism.