Der hssliche Brger ist berall auf dem Vormarsch. Die Erosion des Nationalstaates erzeugt einen sehr bedrohlichen historischen Moment. Machtgebilde sind gefhrlich, wenn sie entstehen und wenn sie zerfallen.

Im vorliegenden Band werden die konkreten, das Leben jedes einzelnen betreffenden Formen der Individualisierung beschrieben. Es geht um das Widerspiel von neuer Freiheit und neuen Risiken in allen Lebensbereichen: um Kindheit und Jugend, um Frauen, um Liebe und Scheidung, Sozialpolitik und Armut.

Trotz des Elends der Welt, dessen Bilder jeden Tag in die Wohnzimmer gelangen, enden unsere Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen in der Regel an der Landesgrenze. Selbst Sozialpolitiker, die für Existenzgeld und Umverteilung eintreten, fordern im selben Atemzug Auffanglager für Flüchtlinge in Nordafrika. Doch mit den Kapital- und Bilderströmen gelangen auch die westlichen Ideale sozialer Gleichheit in alle Winkel der Erde, was absehbar zu neuen Konflikten führen wird. Wir sind daher gut beraten, unsere nationalstaatlich begrenzte Perspektive aufzugeben, um globalen Problemen und den weltweit...

Love and family life in the global age: grandparents in Salonika and their grandson in London speak together every evening via Skype. A U.S. citizen and her Swiss husband fret over large telephone bills and high travel costs. A European couple can finally have a baby with the help of an Indian surrogate mother.

In their new book, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim investigate all types of long-distance relationships, marriages and families that stretch across countries, continents and cultures. These long-distance relationships comprise so many different forms of what they...

Love and family life in the global age: grandparents in Salonika and their grandson in London speak together every evening via Skype. A U.S. citizen and her Swiss husband fret over large telephone bills and high travel costs. A European couple can finally have a baby with the help of an Indian surrogate mother.

In their new book, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim investigate all types of long-distance relationships, marriages and families that stretch across countries, continents and cultures. These long-distance relationships comprise so many different forms of what they...

This book presents Ulrich Beck, one of the world's leading sociologists and social thinkers, as a Pioneer in Cosmopolitan Sociology and Risk Society. His world risk society theory has been confirmed by recent disasters - events that have shaken modern society to the core, signaling the end of an era in which comprehensive insurance could keep us safe. Due to its own successes, modern society now faces failure: while in the past experiments were conducted in a lab, now the whole world is a test bed. Whether nuclear plants, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology - if any of these...