The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory - Softcover

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck.

My primary expertise is in the area of social and socio-environmental time. I have developed this perspective over the last three decades during which I have worked the time dimension into the following areas of conceptual and empirical social science research: culture, education, environment, environmental economics, food, globalisation, gender, health, international relations, management, media, risk, technological innovation, transport and work.

Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich. He is the author of Counterpoison (1991) and Ecological Enlightenment (1992).