Second modernity is a phrase coined by the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
sociologist Ulrich Beck, and is his word for the period after
modernity
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reas ...
.
Where modernity broke down
agricultural society in favour of
industrial society, second modernity transforms industrial society into a new and more reflexive
network society Network society is the expression coined in 1991 related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. The intellectual origins of the idea can be trac ...
or information society .
Risk society
Second modernity is marked by a new awareness of the risks — risks to all forms of life, plant, animal and human — created by the very successes of modernity in tackling the problem of human scarcity . Systems that previously seemed to offer protection from risks both natural and social are increasingly recognised as producing new man-made risks on a global scale as a byproduct of their functioning . Such systems become part of the problem, not the solution. Modernisation and information advances themselves create new social dangers, such as
cybercrime
A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network.Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. The computer may have been used in committing th ...
(He 2012, 69), while scientific advances open up new areas, like
cloning
Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical or virtually identical DNA, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. In the field of biotechnology, c ...
or
genetic modification
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including t ...
, where decisions are necessarily made without adequate capacity to assess longterm consequences .
Recognising the fresh dilemmas created by this
reflexive modernization, Beck has suggested a new "cosmopolitan Realpolitik" to overcome the difficulties of a world in which national interests can no longer be promoted effectively at the national level alone .
Knowledge society
Second modernity has also been linked to the so-called
knowledge society A knowledge society generates, shares and makes available to all members of the society knowledge that may be used to improve the human condition. A knowledge society differs from an information society in that the former serves to transform informa ...
, marked by a pluralisation of different types of knowledge . It is characterised in particular by knowledge-dependent risks — the uncertainties manufactured by the information world itself .
Resistance
Various forms of resistance to second modernity have emerged, among them, for example,
Euroscepticism
Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies, and seek refor ...
.
Beck sees
al-Qaeda as a by-product of, as well as resistance to, second modernity, not only in its use of information-technology tools, but also in its syncretist ideology .
See also
Sources
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Further reading
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* {{wikicite, ref={{harvid, Sǿrensen and Christensen, 2012, reference=Sǿrensen, Mads Peter, and Allan Christiensen. 2012. ''Ulrich Beck: An Introduction to the Theory of Second Modernity and the Risk Society''. New York: Routledge. {{ISBN, 9780415693691 (hardback); {{ISBN, 9780203107928 (ebook).
External links
Ulrich Beck, 'World Risk Society'U. Beck, 'Varieties of Second Modernity'
Historiography
Postmodern theory
Modernity