The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World 1st Edition, Kindle Edition
by Ulrich Beck (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
We live in a world that is increasingly difficult to understand. It is not just changing: it is metamorphosing. Change implies that some things change but other things remain the same capitalism changes, but some aspects of capitalism remain as they always were. Metamorphosis implies a much more radical transformation in which the old certainties of modern society are falling away and something quite new is emerging. To grasp this metamorphosis of the world it is necessary to explore the new beginnings, to focus on what is emerging from the old and seek to grasp future structures and norms in the turmoil of the present.
Take climate change: much of the debate about climate change has focused on whether or not it is really happening, and if it is, what we can do to stop or contain it. But this emphasis on solutions blinds us to the fact that climate change is an agent of metamorphosis. It has already altered our way of being in the world the way we live in the world, think about the world and seek to act upon the world through our actions and politics. Rising sea levels are creating new landscapes of inequality drawing new world maps whose key lines are not traditional boundaries between nation-states but elevations above sea level. It is creating an entirely different way of conceptualizing the world and our chances of survival within it.
The theory of metamorphosis goes beyond theory of world risk society: it is not about the negative side effects of goods but the positive side effects of bads. They produce normative horizons of common goods and propel us beyond the national frame towards a cosmopolitan outlook.
Editorial Reviews
Review
'This book, which its author, one of the most original and perceptive thinkers of our time, was prevented from completing by a sudden catastrophe, reads as a most thorough and exhaustive – indeed complete – description of our world: a world defined by its endemic incompleteness and dedicated to resisting completion.'
―Zygmunt Bauman
'This brilliant manifesto is in good part Ulrich Beck having a debate with himself. He comes out winning, because whatever doubts or disagreements he may have with himself, he moves on, never losing sight of the foundational distinction he is after – transformation vs metamorphosis. The text oscillates between deeply engaging philosophical reflections and decisive interpretive outcomes. And there is no need to worry about the unresolved doubts Beck puts on the table: they are certain to become a great research project for future generations.'
―Saskia Sassen, Columbia University
'Amid crises, challenges, and startling innovations the world is taking on a new shape and character. Quantitative change gives way to qualitative on dimensions from inequality through climate change. The new reality is by definition not completely knowable, but we can know the path to it better by reading Ulrich Beck's sadly but somehow also aptly unfinished book, The Metamorphosis of the World.'
―Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science --This text refers to the paperback edition.
About the Author
Ulrich Beck 1944-2015) was Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich and the LSE and one of the greatest sociologists of the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Product details
ASIN : B01FVBM6W2
Publisher : Polity; 1st edition (May 17, 2016)
Publication date : May 17, 2016
Language : English
File size : 393 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 231 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 0745690211
Lending : Not Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #1,121,015 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
#2,345 in Climatology
#5,328 in Environmental Science (Books)
#5,826 in Sociology (Kindle Store)
Customer Reviews: 4.2 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
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climate change ulrich beck metamorphosis of the world thought provoking new world beck summarizes his ideas public general risk academic audience class german sociologist sense sociology clearly colleagues creating finish
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Claude Forthomme
4.0 out of 5 stars How a Major Thinker Sees Our World
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2019
Verified Purchase
Not an easy read but an important one. This is how a major thinker sees our world - metamorphosed by climate change into something else, a new world whose contours we can barely fathom out. I am taking a star off simply because this is a specialized work not intended for the average reader. The arguments could have been made more accessible, but there was no attempt to do so. The book is clearly intended for specialists and sociology students.
This said, there's much to be learned from it - and as an economist, I found it a very interesting read, showing how (by what analytical means) sociology as a science is moving to address the planetary issue that many have called the 6th Extinction.
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Clarissa's Blog
5.0 out of 5 stars Beck’s Last Book
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2016
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The great German philosopher📃 Ulrich Beck died before completing this book. His wife and colleagues had to finish it based on the author’s notes and conversations. As a result, the book ended up being very repetitive. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though. If I had to choose a book by Beck to introduce students to his thinking, I’d pick this one because its repetitiveness will help Beck’s ideas really to get across.
Since the collapse of the nation-state model is inevitable, should we drag it out in order to soften the impact or should we accept the inevitable and move on? Ulrich Beck insists that we have no time to waste because the longer we hang on to the illusion that the nation-state is salvageable, the more time we waste instead of solving the problems of the new world order. The most pressing problems of today – climate change, for instance- will only begin to be addressed when we relinquish the nation-state illusions.
Ulrich Beck’s posthumously published volume is an impassioned plea for us to stop hiding from the erosion of the nation-state model behind right-wing fundamentalism, ultra nationalism or vapid fantasies about bringing back the good old times and to start creating structures of action and collaboration that will transcend the porous national borders just as easily as floods, hurricanes, radioactive clouds, viruses and terrorists do. We can’t allow the agents of our risk to travel faster and lighter than we do.
[📃In Europe, Beck is known as a sociologist, just like Zygmunt Bauman. But a sociologist in Europe is nothing like the useless idiots who call themselves sociologists in the US. Beck and Bauman are the world’s leading thinkers, philosophers, theorists of the nation-state and not the kind of pseudo scholars you can find in American departments of social sciences.]
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Steve Benner
4.0 out of 5 stars Making sense of an increasingly unhinged world
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2016
Ulrich Beck was Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His sociological text, "The Metamorphosis of the World" was incomplete and in preliminary manuscript form only at the the of his sudden death from a heart attack in early 2015. His partner, Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, has worked with Beck's former colleagues and collaborators, Anders Blok (Copenhagen) and Sabine Selchow (London) to bring the work to publishable form for Polity Press.
The book's main topic is a proposed remodelling of the way sociologists need to think of and analyse the modern world if they are to make sense of the way it now functions; that the mode of change into which the world has now entered should no longer be viewed in conventional sociological terms of transformational, revolutionary or evolutionary but rather as metamorphosis -- the author's suggested term for a world undergoing complicated spontaneous (and irreversible) emergence into something new, unknown and unplanned. This change is not the result of deliberate policy or design anywhere, but rather arises as a consequences of undesirable side-effects of the progress of modernity; side-effects (such as climate change) that operate on a global scale and which render obsolete political action and thinking within traditional national boundaries, creating "risk societies" across national and class boundaries and calling into question the legitimacy of nation-state political decision-making.
The book's main intended audience would appear to be principally sociologists themselves, rather than the general public, for whom many of the finer points of the author's argument will be lost, obscured by the opaque and impenetrably precise technical language which the author employs (and not helped by the fact that much of that language is clearly influenced by Beck's German language heritage). That said, however, there remain many revelatory ideas for the lay reader within this volume's 200 pages and anyone prepared to invest the effort in reading it should be well rewarded with much to ponder, not just with regard to the politics of global climate change, but also with regard to digital communities, the politics of invisibility, empowering of the younger generation, the emerging promise of a world of great equality and the power struggles that are likely to arise, as nation-states lose their legitimacy and world cities emerge to become the principal power-houses for global change in the way people view the world and their relationship with it.
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Gary J.
5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary perspective on the place of environmental destruction in ...
Reviewed in Canada on January 16, 2017
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An extraordinary perspective on the place of environmental destruction in post-modern society. Beck says it is here and a necessary ingredient in the neo-liberal economic paradigm - Environmental destruction is part of our way of doing business, eg oil. What then are we to do?
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Steve Benner
4.0 out of 5 stars Making sense of an increasingly unhinged world
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2016
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Ulrich Beck was Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His sociological text, "The Metamorphosis of the World" was incomplete and in preliminary manuscript form only at the the of his sudden death from a heart attack in early 2015. His partner, Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, has worked with Beck's former colleagues and collaborators, Anders Blok (Copenhagen) and Sabine Selchow (London) to bring the work to publishable form for Polity Press.
The book's main topic is a proposed remodelling of the way sociologists need to think of and analyse the modern world if they are to make sense of the way it now functions; that the mode of change into which the world has now entered should no longer be viewed in conventional sociological terms of transformational, revolutionary or evolutionary but rather as metamorphosis -- the author's suggested term for a world undergoing complicated spontaneous (and irreversible) emergence into something new, unknown and unplanned. This change is not the result of deliberate policy or design anywhere, but rather arises as a consequences of undesirable side-effects of the progress of modernity; side-effects (such as climate change) that operate on a global scale and which render obsolete political action and thinking within traditional national boundaries, creating "risk societies" across national and class boundaries and calling into question the legitimacy of nation-state political decision-making.
The book's main intended audience would appear to be principally sociologists themselves, rather than the general public, for whom many of the finer points of the author's argument will be lost, obscured by the opaque and impenetrably precise technical language which the author employs (and not helped by the fact that much of that language is clearly influenced by Beck's German language heritage). That said, however, there remain many revelatory ideas for the lay reader within this volume's 200 pages and anyone prepared to invest the effort in reading it should be well rewarded with much to ponder, not just with regard to the politics of global climate change, but also with regard to digital communities, the politics of invisibility, empowering of the younger generation, the emerging promise of a world of great equality and the power struggles that are likely to arise, as nation-states lose their legitimacy and world cities emerge to become the principal power-houses for global change in the way people view the world and their relationship with it.
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Emily - London
3.0 out of 5 stars There are theoretical nuggets here
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2016
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This book opens with drama - the author collapses dead in front of his partner, and his colleague and partner complete what had only been a first draft.
Beck is someone who naturally takes a European theoretical and rhetorical approach in his writing rather than the traditional English empirical and factual style - so it is pretty heavy going. As one reviewer put it, Beck is 'having a debate with himself'. Nevertheless there are nuggets here - striking visual and conceptual metaphors that help you think about the world.
Focusing on his discussion of climate change as one example of metamorphosis, he sees our changing perception of the world as a 'Copernican Turn 2' - the world picture which claimed that the sun was turning round the world always was false, but our perceptions are completely transformed when this becomes our new reality. The realisation of the extent of climate change and what is causing it, completely alters our perception of what is driving history and what is happening around us. "The world is not circulating round the nation, but the nations are circulating around the new fixed stars: 'world' and 'humanity'." The world view growing out of the imperialist Victorian era - that we are masters of the world is reversed, and international action becomes a matter of survival in the world.
He also usefully distinguishes between 'doctrines' and 'spaces of action' - what people think and what they actually do. "Doctrines can be particular and minority-oriented eg anti-cosmopolitan, anti-European, religiously fundamental, ethnic, racist; paces of action on the contrary, are inevitably constituted in a cosmopolitan way. The anti-Europeans actually sit in the European Parliament (otherwise they don't matter at all). The religious anti-modernist fundamentalists celebrate the beheadings of their western hostages on .... digital media platforms ..." Even immobile people are cosmopolitanised because increasingly they have access to knowledge through their mobile phones. result - some of them migrate.
"In sum, metamorphosis is not social change, not transformation, not evolution, not revolution and not crisis. It is a mode of changing the nature of human existence. It signifies the age of side effects. "It shifts us from 'methodological nationalism' to 'methodological cosmopolitanism' because of our interconnectedness and changed awareness of our interconnected dependency on nature.
But after this good start, on climate change the author lapses into a disguised optimism - that the metamorphosis of the world will in the end force international action or catastrophe.
He sees rising sea levels and shifting climate patterns as creating "new world maps whose key lines are not traditional boundaries between nation states and social classes but elevations above sea or river. This is a totally different way of conceptualising the world and our chances of survival within it."
He says "climate change produces a basis sense of ethical and existential violation that creates new norms". It is as dramatic as the catastrophe of the second world war and of Nazism - which produced a never-again reaction and the human rights movement.
"The insight that no nation state can cope alone with the global risk of climate change has become common sense." But he underplays the extent to which the climate inequalities mirror the old inequalities - that drought will affect sub Saharan Africa more than it will affect Europe, that richer nations have greater ability to protect themselves against flooding.
"Climate change could be made into an antidote to war" but economic collapse and mass migration could also precipitate war.
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Noah
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for thinkers or for your sociological research
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2016
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This handsome grey hardback with red boards inside is presented in a highly contrasting white sleeve. Text is a readable size business font on a wonderfully white background.
I am so pleased that this book was written because is stands as a testament to the mind and work of Ulrich Beck. An unfinished and unedited version was sent to the publishers a few days before he died unexpectedly of a heart attack, whereupon colleagues have polished it into what it is now - an excellent memorial and a brilliant stand alone discussion of the idea of metamorphosis. It is a world we don't understand anymore, a world that is changing so substantially that we can no longer refer to it as change or even transformation but rather metamorphosis - because what it is becoming is nothing like what it was! he talks of the risks felt by society, the politics of visibility and invisibility, inequality and the good side effects of bad things. This work denotes the thinking of a great mind, discussions between sociologists and it will stretch your own thinking to consider potential outcomes.
This book ends with a really good bibliography which will stimulate further reading or perhaps a little research of your own
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mr_ska
5.0 out of 5 stars Does what some of the very best sociological works do, it makes you see the world afresh from a new perspective.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2016
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Let's split the audience for this book into two. We have the sociologists, and we have the general public. The two audiences will get different but overlapping things from the book.
The general public don't read all that many books written by sociologists. There are many reasons for that, but not least is that a significant proportion of sociological works are written in convoluted language. Language that makes the work hard to follow and less than enjoyable to read. The Metamorphosis of the World scores well here in that nearly all of it is written in very accessible plain English, and the way it is structured (e.g. split into parts and subdivided) makes it quite easy to read. Where the book also scores highly is in creating those moments that delight the reader by revealing a totally different way of looking at the world than they are used to. For that if nothing else the book is worth the full five stars.
For the sociology audience there is much to sink the teeth into. Many moments of chains of semiosis being fired off. Many models checked through and compared to what Beck presents. Many questions raised. We get to ponder (and perhaps raise a smile) at the thought of reconfiguring Marx and Hegel from economic determinism and the role of ideas in shaping history (dialectics as shaped by human activity) to the effects of climate change on the environment shaping history. A bold and grand step by Beck. We get to compare and contrast the likes of Bauman's notions on (liquid) modernity with Beck's model of complete transformation. Much to keep us busy. Assuming many of us read it and then engage in conversation with the ghost of Beck... The Metamorphosis of The World is a splending farewell to Ulrich Beck.
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From other countries
Gary J.
5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary perspective on the place of environmental destruction in ...
Reviewed in Canada on 17 January 2017
Verified Purchase
An extraordinary perspective on the place of environmental destruction in post-modern society. Beck says it is here and a necessary ingredient in the neo-liberal economic paradigm - Environmental destruction is part of our way of doing business, eg oil. What then are we to do?
One person found this helpful
Report abuse
Steve Benner
4.0 out of 5 stars Making sense of an increasingly unhinged world
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2016
Ulrich Beck was Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His sociological text, "The Metamorphosis of the World" was incomplete and in preliminary manuscript form only at the the of his sudden death from a heart attack in early 2015. His partner, Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, has worked with Beck's former colleagues and collaborators, Anders Blok (Copenhagen) and Sabine Selchow (London) to bring the work to publishable form for Polity Press.
The book's main topic is a proposed remodelling of the way sociologists need to think of and analyse the modern world if they are to make sense of the way it now functions; that the mode of change into which the world has now entered should no longer be viewed in conventional sociological terms of transformational, revolutionary or evolutionary but rather as metamorphosis -- the author's suggested term for a world undergoing complicated spontaneous (and irreversible) emergence into something new, unknown and unplanned. This change is not the result of deliberate policy or design anywhere, but rather arises as a consequences of undesirable side-effects of the progress of modernity; side-effects (such as climate change) that operate on a global scale and which render obsolete political action and thinking within traditional national boundaries, creating "risk societies" across national and class boundaries and calling into question the legitimacy of nation-state political decision-making.
The book's main intended audience would appear to be principally sociologists themselves, rather than the general public, for whom many of the finer points of the author's argument will be lost, obscured by the opaque and impenetrably precise technical language which the author employs (and not helped by the fact that much of that language is clearly influenced by Beck's German language heritage). That said, however, there remain many revelatory ideas for the lay reader within this volume's 200 pages and anyone prepared to invest the effort in reading it should be well rewarded with much to ponder, not just with regard to the politics of global climate change, but also with regard to digital communities, the politics of invisibility, empowering of the younger generation, the emerging promise of a world of great equality and the power struggles that are likely to arise, as nation-states lose their legitimacy and world cities emerge to become the principal power-houses for global change in the way people view the world and their relationship with it.
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Emily - London
3.0 out of 5 stars There are theoretical nuggets here
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 May 2016
This book opens with drama - the author collapses dead in front of his partner, and his colleague and partner complete what had only been a first draft.
Beck is someone who naturally takes a European theoretical and rhetorical approach in his writing rather than the traditional English empirical and factual style - so it is pretty heavy going. As one reviewer put it, Beck is 'having a debate with himself'. Nevertheless there are nuggets here - striking visual and conceptual metaphors that help you think about the world.
Focusing on his discussion of climate change as one example of metamorphosis, he sees our changing perception of the world as a 'Copernican Turn 2' - the world picture which claimed that the sun was turning round the world always was false, but our perceptions are completely transformed when this becomes our new reality. The realisation of the extent of climate change and what is causing it, completely alters our perception of what is driving history and what is happening around us. "The world is not circulating round the nation, but the nations are circulating around the new fixed stars: 'world' and 'humanity'." The world view growing out of the imperialist Victorian era - that we are masters of the world is reversed, and international action becomes a matter of survival in the world.
He also usefully distinguishes between 'doctrines' and 'spaces of action' - what people think and what they actually do. "Doctrines can be particular and minority-oriented eg anti-cosmopolitan, anti-European, religiously fundamental, ethnic, racist; paces of action on the contrary, are inevitably constituted in a cosmopolitan way. The anti-Europeans actually sit in the European Parliament (otherwise they don't matter at all). The religious anti-modernist fundamentalists celebrate the beheadings of their western hostages on .... digital media platforms ..." Even immobile people are cosmopolitanised because increasingly they have access to knowledge through their mobile phones. result - some of them migrate.
"In sum, metamorphosis is not social change, not transformation, not evolution, not revolution and not crisis. It is a mode of changing the nature of human existence. It signifies the age of side effects. "It shifts us from 'methodological nationalism' to 'methodological cosmopolitanism' because of our interconnectedness and changed awareness of our interconnected dependency on nature.
But after this good start, on climate change the author lapses into a disguised optimism - that the metamorphosis of the world will in the end force international action or catastrophe.
He sees rising sea levels and shifting climate patterns as creating "new world maps whose key lines are not traditional boundaries between nation states and social classes but elevations above sea or river. This is a totally different way of conceptualising the world and our chances of survival within it."
He says "climate change produces a basis sense of ethical and existential violation that creates new norms". It is as dramatic as the catastrophe of the second world war and of Nazism - which produced a never-again reaction and the human rights movement.
"The insight that no nation state can cope alone with the global risk of climate change has become common sense." But he underplays the extent to which the climate inequalities mirror the old inequalities - that drought will affect sub Saharan Africa more than it will affect Europe, that richer nations have greater ability to protect themselves against flooding.
"Climate change could be made into an antidote to war" but economic collapse and mass migration could also precipitate war.
One person found this helpful
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Noah
5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for thinkers or for your sociological research
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 June 2016
This handsome grey hardback with red boards inside is presented in a highly contrasting white sleeve. Text is a readable size business font on a wonderfully white background.
I am so pleased that this book was written because is stands as a testament to the mind and work of Ulrich Beck. An unfinished and unedited version was sent to the publishers a few days before he died unexpectedly of a heart attack, whereupon colleagues have polished it into what it is now - an excellent memorial and a brilliant stand alone discussion of the idea of metamorphosis. It is a world we don't understand anymore, a world that is changing so substantially that we can no longer refer to it as change or even transformation but rather metamorphosis - because what it is becoming is nothing like what it was! he talks of the risks felt by society, the politics of visibility and invisibility, inequality and the good side effects of bad things. This work denotes the thinking of a great mind, discussions between sociologists and it will stretch your own thinking to consider potential outcomes.
This book ends with a really good bibliography which will stimulate further reading or perhaps a little research of your own
One person found this helpful
Report abuse
mr_ska
5.0 out of 5 stars Does what some of the very best sociological works do, it makes you see the world afresh from a new perspective.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2016
Let's split the audience for this book into two. We have the sociologists, and we have the general public. The two audiences will get different but overlapping things from the book.
The general public don't read all that many books written by sociologists. There are many reasons for that, but not least is that a significant proportion of sociological works are written in convoluted language. Language that makes the work hard to follow and less than enjoyable to read. The Metamorphosis of the World scores well here in that nearly all of it is written in very accessible plain English, and the way it is structured (e.g. split into parts and subdivided) makes it quite easy to read. Where the book also scores highly is in creating those moments that delight the reader by revealing a totally different way of looking at the world than they are used to. For that if nothing else the book is worth the full five stars.
For the sociology audience there is much to sink the teeth into. Many moments of chains of semiosis being fired off. Many models checked through and compared to what Beck presents. Many questions raised. We get to ponder (and perhaps raise a smile) at the thought of reconfiguring Marx and Hegel from economic determinism and the role of ideas in shaping history (dialectics as shaped by human activity) to the effects of climate change on the environment shaping history. A bold and grand step by Beck. We get to compare and contrast the likes of Bauman's notions on (liquid) modernity with Beck's model of complete transformation. Much to keep us busy. Assuming many of us read it and then engage in conversation with the ghost of Beck... The Metamorphosis of The World is a splending farewell to Ulrich Beck.
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Fallen
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but questionable focus
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 June 2016
Very interesting no doubt but I'm just not wholly covinced by a lot of the 'Brave new world' type assertions. By the time some of the more apocolyptic effects of irrerversable climate change are felt there wont be, I suspect,much rational space left for adapting to change, geographical and cultural redrawing of boundaries etc.
It's an argument that somehow climate change is an inevitable and predictable consequence of human existance and therefore one that should be accepted and worked with. However another school of thought revolves around preventing and minimising this occurrence and that it is and should not be an inevitability. This book raises many interesting questions around this debate but it is also heavily Western centric and to those ends doesn't examine enough the differing problems in a global sense; problems which will impact on all of us.
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Zipster Zeus
5.0 out of 5 stars There is much to enjoy and chew over here
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 June 2016
Beck's untimely death came as a bit of a shock to the European Intelligentsia and his loss is a critical one in the development of 21st century socio-political thought. His work has always been accessible and thought-provoking and the editors of this work- picking up a first draft and knocking it into publishable shape- have done a grand job at maintaining the tone and quality of thought Beck's other works have always entailed.
There is much to enjoy and chew over here as Beck considers social, economic and political change and charts how the globalised world of liberal capitalism is metamorphising and there are strong, underlying currents of change that even our leaders, increasingly ensconcing themselves as they are in Ivory Towers, are either unaware of, or, critically, unaware of but neither engaging themselves with the issues of change or worse, ignoring them.
If you either an established appreciator of Beck or new to his writing, you will not be disappointed by this fine, final work of his.
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Jago Wells
4.0 out of 5 stars Ulrich Beck's 'The Metamorphosis of the World'
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2016
Ulrick Beck's ambitious 'The Metamorphosis of the World' offers a fascinating account of how geo/physical, political and cultural factors relate to a fast changing physical and social shape of our planet. Using the idea of metamorphosis which a popular online dictionary defines as "a complete change of form, structure, or substance, as transformation by magic or witchcraft.Any complete change in appearance, character, circumstances,a form resulting from any such change.'. Ulrick Beck analyses how change and transformation is a constant reoccuring theme within our world which although can often be seen in a negative context; i.e. in the area of Climate Change, can equally offer simply a new model by which to set our compass.
Although the book is short-just 200 pages- Mr Beck packs plenty of thought provoking material into the work.
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writeallthereviews
4.0 out of 5 stars I think given a re-read I may understand much of his point better, and I'll also be seeking out his other ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 June 2016
I found this to be a challenging read. I understand the author died with the script as a draft only, and this was completed by his partner and colleague post-mortem. I couldn't tell this from the text, and so I have to give a nod to them both for that. It is an accomplished and complex text, and as a layman to sociology, I think I went in a bit above my level with Beck's work.
This being said, with careful cross-referencing (and more than a few glances to online resources to check Beck's references) I found this to be an engaging and relevant read. Beck's concepts of climate change as a world metamorphosis were hard for me to both interpret and agree with. I think given a re-read I may understand much of his point better, and I'll also be seeking out his other writings as I found his work to be most interesting.
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Justin Thyme
3.0 out of 5 stars Metamorphosis
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 June 2016
To begin with, this book is possibly not what you imagine it to be. Beck was a sociologist before his sudden death, so any 'metamorphosis' discussed is in relation to sociological change.
Let's start at the beginning, the book existed as a series of notes, and loose jottings, and the work was then finished by his partner and a former colleague.
Beck's particular talent was in seeing things in a different way to others. There are therefore things that will delight the sociologists, but it will also be of interest to non-sociologists if they can ignore the sometimes convoluted language.
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Claude Forthomme
4.0 out of 5 stars How a Major Thinker Sees Our World
Reviewed in the United States on 1 October 2019
Verified Purchase
Not an easy read but an important one. This is how a major thinker sees our world - metamorphosed by climate change into something else, a new world whose contours we can barely fathom out. I am taking a star off simply because this is a specialized work not intended for the average reader. The arguments could have been made more accessible, but there was no attempt to do so. The book is clearly intended for specialists and sociology students.
This said, there's much to be learned from it - and as an economist, I found it a very interesting read, showing how (by what analytical means) sociology as a science is moving to address the planetary issue that many have called the 6th Extinction.
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Clarissa's Blog
5.0 out of 5 stars Beck’s Last Book
Reviewed in the United States on 7 July 2016
The great German philosopher📃 Ulrich Beck died before completing this book. His wife and colleagues had to finish it based on the author’s notes and conversations. As a result, the book ended up being very repetitive. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though. If I had to choose a book by Beck to introduce students to his thinking, I’d pick this one because its repetitiveness will help Beck’s ideas really to get across.
Since the collapse of the nation-state model is inevitable, should we drag it out in order to soften the impact or should we accept the inevitable and move on? Ulrich Beck insists that we have no time to waste because the longer we hang on to the illusion that the nation-state is salvageable, the more time we waste instead of solving the problems of the new world order. The most pressing problems of today – climate change, for instance- will only begin to be addressed when we relinquish the nation-state illusions.
Ulrich Beck’s posthumously published volume is an impassioned plea for us to stop hiding from the erosion of the nation-state model behind right-wing fundamentalism, ultra nationalism or vapid fantasies about bringing back the good old times and to start creating structures of action and collaboration that will transcend the porous national borders just as easily as floods, hurricanes, radioactive clouds, viruses and terrorists do. We can’t allow the agents of our risk to travel faster and lighter than we do.
[📃In Europe, Beck is known as a sociologist, just like Zygmunt Bauman. But a sociologist in Europe is nothing like the useless idiots who call themselves sociologists in the US. Beck and Bauman are the world’s leading thinkers, philosophers, theorists of the nation-state and not the kind of pseudo scholars you can find in American departments of social sciences.]
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Russell Fanelli
4.0 out of 5 stars A difficult and demanding work that challenges us to answer the question: What world are we actually living in?
Reviewed in the United States on 6 June 2016
Sadly, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck died on January 1, 2015, before he could finish his new book, The Metamorphosis of the World. In the Forward of the book, his wife Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, a noted sociologist in her own right, says that she had enough of her husband's notes and with help from colleagues and editors was able to complete Beck’s important work.
For my readers it is important to note that The Metamorphosis of the World is a scholarly work a general audience will find challenging to read. That is not to say that I don’t recommend it for a general audience, for Beck gives us enough help to understand the complicated problems involved in rethinking change in the modern world, particularly change brought about by climate change. This is a difficult and demanding work that requires close and careful attention.
Beck does not leave us in doubt about his mission and purpose. He tells us immediately that “The world is unhinged…. And it has gone mad.” He asks the question, “What world are we actually living in?” His answer is: “in the metamorphosis of the world.”
When most of my readers think of metamorphosis, the lowly caterpillar turning into the magnificent butterfly is what immediately comes to mind. Perhaps more appropriate for Beck’s book is the transformation of Gregor Samsa from a human being into a bug in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. One thing is certain; we can expect Beck to show us that we can expect changes in our world that will astonish us as much as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly or Gregor Samsa turning into a bug. For example he states that “In fact, in times of climate change, those who just want to breathe local air will suffocate.” He also states that “Those who eat only locally will starve.”
Beck summarizes his ideas nicely for us when he says, “In sum, metamorphosis is not social change, not evolution, not revolution and not crisis. It is a mode of changing the nature of human existence. It signifies the age of side effects. It challenges our way of being in the world.”
This is heady stuff, exciting, but not rash or impetuous. A few chapter titles should give my readers a good idea about what to expect from Beck. In his chapter “Being God,” Beck reminds us how far we have come when we consider test tube babies and “the ever more extensive manufacturability of human life.” Have we already arrived at a Brave New World? I think Beck would argue “Yes.” In the chapter on How Climate Change Might Save the World Beck says that “Climate change is creating existential moments of decision. This happens unintended, unseen, unwanted and is neither goal-oriented nor ideologically driven.” Beck does not believe these changes should signal the apocalypse, but the chance to engineer “future structures, norms, and beginnings.”
The first audience for this book will be scholars at the university who want to understand Ulrich Beck’s last thoughts about the remarkable changes occurring globally in the 21st Century. Ambitious general readers who don’t mind intellectual challenge may also find this book thought provoking and rewarding, although I don’t think we will find it on the best seller list any time soon. Recommended with noted reservations.
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julesinrose
4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking
Reviewed in the United States on 7 July 2016
First, let me preface this with the fact that I am not an academe. I found this book rough going and could only read it in small bits, mulling it over, wondering if I'd missed the point, and going back. And I'm not really done; there's so much food for thought here, and whole swathes of chapters that felt too opaque for this reader.
Yet. . . having never bern exposed to Beck's work before, I was at time nearly thrilled with the ideas. Some of the writing isn't so academic - it's nearly conversational - and it was refreshing in the extreme to read his point of view. We, outside of academia, are comfronted with quite stereotyped visions of this world we are living in. "Left wing," "right wing," "libertarian," etc. . . and nary a real thinker.
I agree with Beck that we are in a metamorphosis of the world. It is happening no matter what our personal opinions are. Though this book is tough for a non-academic, I recommend it to anyone who is not looking for answers, but to make sense of the seemingly senseless age we are living in. I will not synopse the book's ideas as others have and I have nothing to add. Dipping into this book is as refreshing as dipping one's toes into a cool stream in summer. This world needs some great thinkers;too bad they are mostly writing in academic obscurity (to us "regular folk") and/or have passed on.
I will add that I did not entirely agree with Beck's analysis (as I had a decidedly more Marxist point of view) but that did not stop me from finding this book thought provoking.
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Sierra Gentleheart
3.0 out of 5 stars Metamorphosis is the easy part
Reviewed in the United States on 27 July 2016
This difficult book was written for a specialized audience. It is not for a general reader, no matter how motivated that reader is to understand Ulrich Beck's ideas. The language is opaque and convoluted. While Beck was a highly regarded German sociologist, it seems that the editors who prepared the volume for publication could have done much more to make the ideas comprehensible. And about those ideas. They are creative, innovative, and wildly forward-looking. But they are not easy to grasp. I felt from start to end that I had entered a society that knew the secret handshake whereas I not only did not know it, but could not grasp it. Oddly labeled concepts like "risk society," "second modernity," and "reflexive modernization" are just the beginning. I got those. I grasped the central idea of metamorphosis. But I'm still wrestling with the challenge of the murkiness of the communication. I will read it again as soon as I get time, but at this point this general reader cannot award it more than three stars.
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TerraTerrain
4.0 out of 5 stars I liked this book a lot but found it took me ...
Reviewed in the United States on 19 July 2016
I liked this book a lot but found it took me a while to finish, that being said I would still recommend it to all even if it isn't really written for the general public and can take some time to get into. This is more of an academic text, really an unfinished manuscript that was pieced together after the author's death, which makes it somewhat unique in that regard. I do always wonder if all of this is exactly as Beck would have wanted to publish since ideas do evolve so much before they reach the final work that you want to share with the public. I think he takes an interesting viewpoint on climate change and appreciate the insight this book provided.
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Bryan Newman
5.0 out of 5 stars A lot deeper than I was hoping to get into the subject
Reviewed in the United States on 28 July 2016
This is a posthumous book from a German academic. It is dense, pedantic and rich in mind challenging philosophy. Basically everything I was not looking for in this book. I was looking for a far more mainstream book describing the changes of our world through climate change. I slogged through the first 30% of the book and had to abandon it, which is something I rarely do. I appreciate the level of thought and some of the passages. I often enjoy thought provoking books but just couldn't get into this.
The book is impressive, but beyond what I am looking for. Putting this review out there to make sure potential buyers know that they are getting into a deep and challenging read.
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sanoe.net
4.0 out of 5 stars A good unexpectedness
Reviewed in the United States on 31 July 2016
Like many books of the Polity line, Ulrich Beck's "The Metamorphosis of the World" is for a fine tuned audience. One that knows the subject matter and the terminology. I like to take a chance on Polity books because when I do understand it, I feel enlightened; when I don't get it, well, I give myself a pat on the back for trying.
In this case, there were patches that flew past me, but there are stretches where I did sync up on Beck's ideas of a changing world with an interesting focus on how bad can be positive. I didn't expect that and I found it refreshing. On that aspect alone, I liked the book.
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Neal Reynolds
4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty deep stuff, but worth reading by the more scholarly
Reviewed in the United States on 15 August 2016
I have to admit that this book is over my head, a bit too much for my ;83 year old brain to comprehend. However, I still give this a high rating because I sense enough of what is being said to realize its importance. I do of course recommend it mainly for academics. Collegians studying sociology and philosophy will especially benefit. Many a college paper could be inspired by Ulrich Beck's writing.
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R. A. Barricklow(Scaramouche)
2.0 out of 5 stars I Found My Reading of The Metamorphosis of the World In Near Total Diagreement With The Author's.
Reviewed in the United States on 6 July 2016
This was a preliminary, unedited, and unfinished manuscript that was put together. From the very beginning of reading the current edition I found myself criticizing it left and right. The author declaring himself bankrupt from deriving meaning of the global events unfolding before his eyes on television. One, the television is an idiot box and the news derived from it is propaganda at best. Two, bankrupt is the key word because the banking system worldwide is bankrupt and is currently being kept afloat by fraud. Three, climate change is not due to CO2 but is the result of cyclical change of our sun at the center of the solar system. And finally, the metaphor of metamorphosis is being used as bearing all the hallmarks of a foreign body[actual words used by author].
Metamorphosis is actually close to being an excellent metaphor. The reason being is, that inherent in civilization are two different body plans/body blueprints: public power/political power versus private power/economic power. Ideally they check each other in ways that benefit both. In democracy the political power can establish the building of infrastructure: in roads and bridges; communications systems; public heath system; utilizes of power; and more - at near cost. The businesses would use these without having to pay for roads, health care, high interest[public banking], and more. These businesses would be more competitive as those costs were already born by the public. Public power would be like an Aladdin's Lamp holding the financial genie within the lamp/nation state[borders]. The financial wizards would be regulated[Glass-Steagall Act Banking Act of 1933]. But Clinton released the financial genie by deregulating economic power and the subsequent corruption skyrocketed.
I kept reading and trying to follow the author's reasoning but found myself totally disagreeing and/or at loss to his meaning. For instance, in describing our mass media he introduced the concept of landscapes of communications and public bads. He stated that the mass media has long been, and today is still largely, a world of nations. Again I disagree. President Clinton and Robert Rubin both quipped about how quaint the concept of Nation States were. That the economic powers had basically captured the nation states and defanged them[reregulated and/or bought off those in charge of enforcing what's left of financial regulations/laws]. There are no public airwaves; the airwaves/media is privately owned. In fact,. what's going on is the economic power is privatizing anything and everything publically owned. Your governments are being corporatized. Your public water sources - privatized. Your public education- privatized. Your highways & byways - privatized. Your public heath systems - privatized. That's what happening.
A similar sea change happened when capitalism replaced feudalism. Now that financial capitalism is eating industrial capitalism's lunch - we are going back to the future/electronic-computerized feudalism. In this dystopian future there are digitized platform monopolies[like google] and this digitization is putting the world's growing inequality gaps on steroids.
Economic Power is waging a class war - and the 99.99%'ers are loosing.
In my reading of The Metamorphosis of the World I found my disagreements with the author's world viewpoints at crosswords.
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