Beck, Ulrich - Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent.pdf

Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan
Intent
Ulrich Beck
In this article I want to outline an argument for a New Critical Theory with a
cosmopolitan intent. Its main purpose is to undermine one of the most powerful
beliefs of our time concerning society and politics. This belief is the notion that
“modern society” and “modern politics” are to be understood as society and politics
organized around the nation-state, equating society with the national imagination
of society. There are two aspects to this body of beliefs: what I call the “national
perspective”(or “national gaze”) of social actors, and the “methodological nationalism”
of scientific observers. The distinction between these two perspectives is important
because there is no logical co-implication between them, only an interconnected
genesis and history.
1. Methodological Nationalism and its Critique
Methodological nationalism takes the following premises for granted: it equates
societies with nation-state societies, and sees states and their governments as the
cornerstones of social-scientific analysis. It assumes that humanity is naturally divided
into a limited number of nations, which anize themselves as nation-states
and externally set boundaries to distinguish themselves from other nation-states.
And it goes further: this outer delimitation as well as petition between
nation-states represent the most fundamental categories of anization.
Much social science assumes the coincidence of social boundaries with state
boundaries, believing that social action occurs primarily within, and only second-
arily across, these divisions:
[Like] stamp collecting. . . social scientists collected distinctive national social forms.
Japanese industrial relations, German national character, the American constitution, the
British class system – not to mention the more exotic institutions of tribal societies –
were the currency of social research. The core disciplines of the soci