Ulrich Beck

(Słupsk, 1944-Munich, 2015)

He was Professor of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Analyst of social change in developed societies generated by the new technological, reflective and individualized modernity. In addition to understanding the world, it sought to transform it, with a new political spirit, cosmopolitanism, a conception whose central value is the recognition of diversity, of the “otherness of the other.” He dedicated special attention to new social movements as spaces for experimentation that could contribute to the emergence of these new scenarios. Ulrich Beck coined classic concepts in sociological reflection, such as “risk society”, “second modernity” or “reflexive modernization”, which he developed in books such as Risk Society (1998), What is Globalization? (1998), Democracy and its enemies (2000), Individualization: the institutionalized individual and its social and political consequences (2003), The cosmopolitan view or war is peace (2005), Reinventing Europe. A cosmopolitan vision (2006), Reflective modernization. Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order (2008) and A brave new world: the precariousness of work in the era of globalization (Paidós, 2009), among others. In one of his last essays, A German Europe (2012), he offered a critical look at the economic crisis and Germany's role in the construction of Europe.