Sociologist

(1944-2015)  Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Considered to be one of the contemporary world’s most outstanding sociologists, he studied the pernicious consequences of the processes of modernisation and globalisation, including environmental problems. He coined concepts which have now become classics in sociological thinking, for example “risk society” and “reflexive modernisation”.

Last years,  he was studying the changing conditions of work in the context of globalised capitalism and also the concept of cosmopolitanism. One of his last essays, Das deutsche Europa (2012), offers a critical approach to the economic crisis and the role of Germany in the construction of Europe. He was an internationally recognised intellectual and wrote regularly for newspapers such as El País and The Guardian.

Notable among his last works are:

• Das deutsche Europa, 2012 (published in English as German Europe).
• Reinventing Europe: A Cosmopolitan Vision, 2006 (Breus CCCB).
• Der kosmopolitische Blick oder: Krieg ist Frieden, 2004 (published in English as Cosmopolitan Vision).
• Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences, 2001, with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim.
• La democracia y sus enemigos: textos escogidos, 2000.
• The Brave New World of Work, 1999.
• World Risk Society, 1999.
• What Is Globalization? 1999.
• Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, 1994, with Anthony Giddens.

 

[Last update: January 2015].