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Russell Fanelli

A difficult and demanding work that challenges us to answer the question: What world are we actually living in?

Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten 🇺🇸 op 5 juni 2016

Sadly, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck died on January 1, 2015, before he could finish his new book, The Metamorphosis of the World. In the Forward of the book, his wife Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, a noted sociologist in her own right, says that she had enough of her husband's notes and with help from colleagues and editors was able to complete Beck’s important work.

For my readers it is important to note that The Metamorphosis of the World is a scholarly work a general audience will find challenging to read. That is not to say that I don’t recommend it for a general audience, for Beck gives us enough help to understand the complicated problems involved in rethinking change in the modern world, particularly change brought about by climate change. This is a difficult and demanding work that requires close and careful attention.

Beck does not leave us in doubt about his mission and purpose. He tells us immediately that “The world is unhinged…. And it has gone mad.” He asks the question, “What world are we actually living in?” His answer is: “in the metamorphosis of the world.”

When most of my readers think of metamorphosis, the lowly caterpillar turning into the magnificent butterfly is what immediately comes to mind. Perhaps more appropriate for Beck’s book is the transformation of Gregor Samsa from a human being into a bug in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. One thing is certain; we can expect Beck to show us that we can expect changes in our world that will astonish us as much as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly or Gregor Samsa turning into a bug. For example he states that “In fact, in times of climate change, those who just want to breathe local air will suffocate.” He also states that “Those who eat only locally will starve.”

Beck summarizes his ideas nicely for us when he says, “In sum, metamorphosis is not social change, not evolution, not revolution and not crisis. It is a mode of changing the nature of human existence. It signifies the age of side effects. It challenges our way of being in the world.”

This is heady stuff, exciting, but not rash or impetuous. A few chapter titles should give my readers a good idea about what to expect from Beck. In his chapter “Being God,” Beck reminds us how far we have come when we consider test tube babies and “the ever more extensive manufacturability of human life.” Have we already arrived at a Brave New World? I think Beck would argue “Yes.” In the chapter on How Climate Change Might Save the World Beck says that “Climate change is creating existential moments of decision. This happens unintended, unseen, unwanted and is neither goal-oriented nor ideologically driven.” Beck does not believe these changes should signal the apocalypse, but the chance to engineer “future structures, norms, and beginnings.”

The first audience for this book will be scholars at the university who want to understand Ulrich Beck’s last thoughts about the remarkable changes occurring globally in the 21st Century. Ambitious general readers who don’t mind intellectual challenge may also find this book thought provoking and rewarding, although I don’t think we will find it on the best seller list any time soon. Recommended with noted reservations.

3 mensen vonden dit nuttig

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julesinrose

Thought provoking

Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten 🇺🇸 op 7 juli 2016

First, let me preface this with the fact that I am not an academe. I found this book rough going and could only read it in small bits, mulling it over, wondering if I'd missed the point, and going back. And I'm not really done; there's so much food for thought here, and whole swathes of chapters that felt too opaque for this reader.

Yet. . . having never bern exposed to Beck's work before, I was at time nearly thrilled with the ideas. Some of the writing isn't so academic - it's nearly conversational - and it was refreshing in the extreme to read his point of view. We, outside of academia, are comfronted with quite stereotyped visions of this world we are living in. "Left wing," "right wing," "libertarian," etc. . . and nary a real thinker.

I agree with Beck that we are in a metamorphosis of the world. It is happening no matter what our personal opinions are. Though this book is tough for a non-academic, I recommend it to anyone who is not looking for answers, but to make sense of the seemingly senseless age we are living in. I will not synopse the book's ideas as others have and I have nothing to add. Dipping into this book is as refreshing as dipping one's toes into a cool stream in summer. This world needs some great thinkers;too bad they are mostly writing in academic obscurity (to us "regular folk") and/or have passed on.

I will add that I did not entirely agree with Beck's analysis (as I had a decidedly more Marxist point of view) but that did not stop me from finding this book thought provoking.

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sanoe.net

A good unexpectedness

Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten 🇺🇸 op 31 juli 2016

Like many books of the Polity line, Ulrich Beck's "The Metamorphosis of the World" is for a fine tuned audience. One that knows the subject matter and the terminology. I like to take a chance on Polity books because when I do understand it, I feel enlightened; when I don't get it, well, I give myself a pat on the back for trying.

In this case, there were patches that flew past me, but there are stretches where I did sync up on Beck's ideas of a changing world with an interesting focus on how bad can be positive. I didn't expect that and I found it refreshing. On that aspect alone, I liked the book.

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TerraTerrain

I liked this book a lot but found it took me ...

Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten 🇺🇸 op 18 juli 2016

I liked this book a lot but found it took me a while to finish, that being said I would still recommend it to all even if it isn't really written for the general public and can take some time to get into. This is more of an academic text, really an unfinished manuscript that was pieced together after the author's death, which makes it somewhat unique in that regard. I do always wonder if all of this is exactly as Beck would have wanted to publish since ideas do evolve so much before they reach the final work that you want to share with the public. I think he takes an interesting viewpoint on climate change and appreciate the insight this book provided.

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Neal Reynolds

Pretty deep stuff, but worth reading by the more scholarly

Beoordeeld in de Verenigde Staten 🇺🇸 op 14 augustus 2016

I have to admit that this book is over my head, a bit too much for my ;83 year old brain to comprehend. However, I still give this a high rating because I sense enough of what is being said to realize its importance. I do of course recommend it mainly for academics. Collegians studying sociology and philosophy will especially benefit. Many a college paper could be inspired by Ulrich Beck's writing.

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Steve Benner

Making sense of an increasingly unhinged world

Beoordeeld in het Verenigd Koninkrijk 🇬🇧 op 13 juni 2016

Ulrich Beck was Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His sociological text, "The Metamorphosis of the World" was incomplete and in preliminary manuscript form only at the the of his sudden death from a heart attack in early 2015. His partner, Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, has worked with Beck's former colleagues and collaborators, Anders Blok (Copenhagen) and Sabine Selchow (London) to bring the work to publishable form for Polity Press.

The book's main topic is a proposed remodelling of the way sociologists need to think of and analyse the modern world if they are to make sense of the way it now functions; that the mode of change into which the world has now entered should no longer be viewed in conventional sociological terms of transformational, revolutionary or evolutionary but rather as metamorphosis -- the author's suggested term for a world undergoing complicated spontaneous (and irreversible) emergence into something new, unknown and unplanned. This change is not the result of deliberate policy or design anywhere, but rather arises as a consequences of undesirable side-effects of the progress of modernity; side-effects (such as climate change) that operate on a global scale and which render obsolete political action and thinking within traditional national boundaries, creating "risk societies" across national and class boundaries and calling into question the legitimacy of nation-state political decision-making.

The book's main intended audience would appear to be principally sociologists themselves, rather than the general public, for whom many of the finer points of the author's argument will be lost, obscured by the opaque and impenetrably precise technical language which the author employs (and not helped by the fact that much of that language is clearly influenced by Beck's German language heritage). That said, however, there remain many revelatory ideas for the lay reader within this volume's 200 pages and anyone prepared to invest the effort in reading it should be well rewarded with much to ponder, not just with regard to the politics of global climate change, but also with regard to digital communities, the politics of invisibility, empowering of the younger generation, the emerging promise of a world of great equality and the power struggles that are likely to arise, as nation-states lose their legitimacy and world cities emerge to become the principal power-houses for global change in the way people view the world and their relationship with it.

Een iemand vond dit nuttig

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writeallthereviews

I think given a re-read I may understand much of his point better, and I'll also be seeking out his other ...

Beoordeeld in het Verenigd Koninkrijk 🇬🇧 op 19 juni 2016

I found this to be a challenging read. I understand the author died with the script as a draft only, and this was completed by his partner and colleague post-mortem. I couldn't tell this from the text, and so I have to give a nod to them both for that. It is an accomplished and complex text, and as a layman to sociology, I think I went in a bit above my level with Beck's work.

This being said, with careful cross-referencing (and more than a few glances to online resources to check Beck's references) I found this to be an engaging and relevant read. Beck's concepts of climate change as a world metamorphosis were hard for me to both interpret and agree with. I think given a re-read I may understand much of his point better, and I'll also be seeking out his other writings as I found his work to be most interesting.

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Jago Wells

Ulrich Beck's 'The Metamorphosis of the World'

Beoordeeld in het Verenigd Koninkrijk 🇬🇧 op 22 mei 2016

Ulrick Beck's ambitious 'The Metamorphosis of the World' offers a fascinating account of how geo/physical, political and cultural factors relate to a fast changing physical and social shape of our planet. Using the idea of metamorphosis which a popular online dictionary defines as "a complete change of form, structure, or substance, as transformation by magic or witchcraft.Any complete change in appearance, character, circumstances,a form resulting from any such change.'. Ulrick Beck analyses how change and transformation is a constant reoccuring theme within our world which although can often be seen in a negative context; i.e. in the area of Climate Change, can equally offer simply a new model by which to set our compass.
Although the book is short-just 200 pages- Mr Beck packs plenty of thought provoking material into the work.

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