Department of Sociology, New York University, USA.
Br J Sociol. 2010 Sep;61(3):597-619. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01328.x.
The work of Ulrich Beck has been important in bringing sociological attention to the ways issues of risk are embedded in contemporary globalization, in developing a theory of 'reflexive modernization', and in calling for social science to transcend 'methodological nationalism'. In recent studies, he and his colleagues help to correct for the Western bias of many accounts of cosmopolitanism and reflexive modernization, and seek to distinguish normative goals from empirical analysis. In this paper I argue that further clarification of this latter distinction is needed but hard to reach within a framework that still embeds the normative account in the idea that empirical change has a clear direction. Similar issues beset the presentation of diverse patterns in recent history as all variants of 'second modernity'. Lastly, I note that ironically, given the declared 'methodological cosmopolitanism' of the authors, the empirical studies here all focus on national cases.
乌尔里希·贝克的工作在将社会学的注意力引向风险问题在当代全球化中的嵌入方式、发展“反思现代化”理论以及呼吁社会科学超越“方法论民族主义”方面具有重要意义。在最近的研究中，他和他的同事们帮助纠正了许多关于世界主义和反思现代化的观点中的西方偏见，并试图将规范目标与经验分析区分开来。在本文中，我认为，需要进一步澄清这后一种区别，但在一个仍然将规范解释嵌入到经验变化具有明确方向的观点中的框架内，很难实现这一目标。类似的问题困扰着最近历史上不同模式的呈现，因为所有变体都是“第二次现代性”。最后，我注意到，具有讽刺意味的是，考虑到作者宣称的“方法论世界主义”，这里的实证研究都集中在国家案例上。
