Introduction: Thinking Society Anew (John Urry). 1. Post modernity or the second modernity. 2. Individualisation. 3. Global risk society. 4. Labour society and regime of risk. 5. Cosmopolitan society and its enemies. 6. The prospects for a second enlightenment. Recommended literature for further reading. Selected Works by Authors Cited in the Text. Books by the Authors in English. About the Authors. Index.

In this new book, Ulrich Beck and the journalist Johannes Willms engage in a series of accessible conversations that reveal and explore the key elements in Beck’s thought. Ulrich Beck is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential contemporary social thinkers. His work on risk society and his more recent writings on globalization and individualization have put him at the forefront of contemporary debates. These conversations succeed in shedding new light on these major themes as well as providing an insight into some of the commitments and beliefs that underlie them. This new book presents Beck’s ideas in an extremely clear and lucid manner, and is thus ideal for anyone seeking to come to grips with Beck’s work.

"Every now and then a new way of thinking about the social world occurs. And once that happens it is difficult to imagine how sociology had managed without that new way of thinking. ….Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk society …was a kind of revelation. It provided for sociology a way of speaking of the physical world and of its risks that brought in a striking array of new topics. In effect it enabled people to speak of things, indeed in a way to “see” things, that they had been trying to speak of and to see, but the where the concepts had been chronically lacking." John Urry, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University