Democracy without Enemies

Up to now, modernization has always been conceived of, in contrast to the worlds of tradition and religion, as a liberation from the constraints of nature. What happens, however, if industrial society becomes a 'tradition' to itself? What if its own necessities, functional principles and fundamental concepts are undermined, broken up and demystified with the same ruthlessness as were the supposedly eternal truths of earlier epochs? These questions are the focus of Ulrich Beck's Democracy without Enemies. The conflict of the future, he argues, will no longer be between East and West, between communism and capitalism, but between the countries, regions and groups involved in primary modernization and those that are attempting to relativize and reform the project of modernity self-critically, based on their experience of it. The conflict of the future will be between the two modernities which will battle over the compatibility of survival and human rights for all citizens of the earth.

1. Freedom's Children. 2. What Comes After Postmodernity: The Conflict of Two Modernities. 3. The Withering Away of Solidarity: Places without Community and Communities without Places. 4. Perspectives on a Cultural Evolution of Work. 5. Capitalism without Work, or the Coming of Civil Society. 6. The Democratization of the Family, or the Unknown Art of Free Association. 7. Misunderstanding Reflexivity: the Controversy on Reflexive Modernization. 8. The Renaissance of Politics in Reflexive Modernity: Politicians Must Make a Response. 9. The Open City: Architecture in Reflexive Modernity. 10. How Neighbours Become Jews: the Political Construction of the Stranger in the Age of Reflexive Modernity. 11. Nation-States without Enemies: the Military and Democracy after the End of the Cold War. 12. Brief Introduction to Environmental Machiavellianism: Green Democracy from Below. 13. Freedom or Survival: the Utopia of Self-Limitation. Notes. References. Index.