Ulrich Beck and COVID-19 Pandemics

Adam Tooze identified Ulrich Beck as “the most important intellectual for the pandemic and its aftermath in his 2020 essay “The sociologist who could save us from Coronavirus.” Starting from this assessment, the proposed session invites papers investigating the dynamic relations of the consequences of COVID-19 pandemics from the following Beck’s clear-cut perspective in order to test the extent of the relevance of the above assessment collectively

“Health risks mutate into threats to the national economy (job losses, loss of wealth, etc.), which in turn jeopardize political and civil basic rights, with the result that authoritarian states in particular are able to ‘overhaul’ their precarious authority and legitimacy through the ‘struggle against risk.’” The preoccupation with security and the political exploitation of fear enable states to appeal to global institutions and their requirements to violate individual liberties without any fear of outcry of protest. This leads to an ‘internal globalization’ of national risk policy. Inside and outside, us and them, can no longer be clearly distinguished. This can go hand in hand with an authoritarian policy of renationalization” (World at Risk, 2008, 176).