{"id":25,"date":"2017-06-09T17:28:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T17:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ub.csm-design.de\/?page_id=25"},"modified":"2022-02-18T15:25:16","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T15:25:16","slug":"projekte","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/webarchiv-ulrich-beck.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de\/en\/projekte\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflexive Modernization"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Research Program \u2018Reflexive Modernization\u2019 (Research Center 536, funded by the German Research Foundation<\/em>)<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The research center 536, which was first approved on July 1, 1999 and lasted until June 30, 2009, was an inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional research union involving research teams from Munich and Augsburg, with sociological, social-psychological, political-scientific, historical and philosophical competencies. At the center of this joint special research program, of which Ulrich Beck was the speaker, stood the question whether societies in the 21st<\/sup> century could still be grasped with the concepts dating back to the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> century. Especially when considering how the accelerated structural changes of societies with all its consequences and side-effects are eroding thought and action patterns that were deemed as the \u2018natural\u2019 foundations of modernity. Put differently: the basic principles, essential differences and key institutions of modern societies are dissolving from the inside in the course of radical modernization.<\/p>\n

Basic understandings in modern societies<\/h3>\n

Among others, these \u2018basic understandings\u2019 in modern societies are the conviction of endless domination of nature and the attendant conceptions of technical and social progress. Plus, the fixation on the nation-state by modern societies and not least ideas of how labor is being socialized, and the modern boundary delineations of nature and society or individual and group. Observable changes in the sciences, politics, economics and society can be interpreted as a \u2018structural break\u2019 within modernity. The research program SFB 536 thematized this break in terms of a transition from \u2018first\u2019 to \u2018second\u2019 modernity or from \u2018simple\u2019 to \u2018reflexive\u2019 modernization.<\/p>\n

Thesis of a structural break<\/h3>\n

The thesis of a \u2018structural break\u2019 within modernity was addressed by three analytical moves: (a) For one, the objective was to expose selected examples indicative of efficiency losses and changes to the basic institutions of \u2018simple\u2019 modernity since the second half of the 20th<\/sup> century. (b) Second, the aim was then to explore the extent to which new concepts, structures, configurations and institutions were emerging that could only be grasped and described outside the inscribed categories and demarcations of \u2018simple\u2019 modernity. (c) Lastly, the implications of this institutional transformation of basic principles on the character of domination of modern society were analyzed.<\/p>\n

Concept of methodological cosmopolitanism<\/h3>\n

The exploration of this broad spectrum of structural changes, which are pointing to the erosion of the basic institutions of first modernity, did not only require an encompassing empirical research program, but also new frames of reference and categories of observation, in order to operationalize the question of the \u2018novelty\u2019 of this social change and make it suitable for empirical analysis. The concept of \u2018methodological cosmopolitanism\u2019 did open the social-scientific view for new historical realities, interdependencies and problems, which lie outside the myopic perspectives that inhere in the \u2018methodological nationalism\u2019 of the social sciences and throughout the internal differentiations of cognate fields. The working program of the SFB paid particular attention to two central dimensions of cosmopolitanism:<\/p>\n