From Risk Society to The Metamorphosis of the World: Global Environmental Threats in the Sociological Analysis of Ulrich Beck

Objectives This article is set to analyze the main concepts and arguments proposed by the late German sociologist Ulrich Beck in more than thirty years of research on the evolution of environmental and social risks and threats in the broader frame of “reflexive modernization”, from the publication of Risk Society (1986) to The Metamorphosis of the World (2016), a posthumous book dealing with climate change. Results Through an accurate analysis of the texts, the main theoretical aspects of his research development are here described and discussed. Among them, the article focuses on the characteristics of (manufactured) risks and the transformation of politics in postmodern society, in a change that implies the adoption of new concepts to identify and understand the ongoing processes. In its political dimension, the contemporary age registers a role for nation-states different form the past, the unleashing of “subpolitics” and the proposal of new forms of a cosmopolitan democracy. Conclusions After having compared current events against different theoretical positions on globalization and environmental threats, our conclusion is that, even if the most of them have a global dimension, international relations are nowadays evolving towards a direction still emphasizing the role of nation-states rather than towards a cosmopolitan democracy, even if some forms of restructuration of the power of national governments are recognizable and sovereignty is very often shared with other institutions.