Ulrich Beck

Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist best known for developing the concept of the risk society in his 1986 book of the same name, arguing that advanced industrial modernity had produced a new kind of society organized around the management and distribution of manufactured risks, such as nuclear, chemical, and ecological hazards, that are global in scope and not confined by class or national boundaries the way earlier forms of inequality were. Beck's related theory of reflexive modernization held that modern society had begun to turn its own methods of rational calculation and risk assessment back upon itself, generating a second, more uncertain and self-critical stage of modernity. His work became a central reference point in debates over globalization, environmental politics, and individualization.