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[Special Interview] East Asia could lead a ‘second modernity'

The Hankyoreh | July 14, 2012

German sociologist Ulrich Beck turns his unique risk theory toward South Korea

By Han Sang-jin, Professor Emeritus (Sociology) at Seoul National University

 

Sociologist Ulrich Beck is world-renowned for his risk society theory, and South Korea may be the country where his ideas are most strongly received. Many looked to his works after the collapses of the Seongsu Bridge and Sampoong Department Store in 1994 and 1995. His first visit to South Korea in 2008 was met with strong interest. Coincidentally the period just after his departure saw a tremendous event unfold in which concerns about the risk of mad cow disease brought seven million citizens out into the streets and plazas for candlelight vigils.


 

Beck himself is very interested in South Korea and East Asia in general. While attending a 2010 academic conference in Nagoya, in Japan, he made a startling proposal. "The West has long looked at the world through Western eyes," he said. "Obviously, this is a biased perspective. I hope that the scholars of Korea, Japan, and China chart the modern path trod by East Asia and teach us that the Western experience is not at all universal, but a very particular combination of events."


 

I felt my heart race at this call for open dialogue. A world-renowned scholar like Beck was frankly admitting to being trapped within the Western experience. It was something that could only have come from someone who keenly felt the limits of Western universalism and sought a way of breaking through them. I stopped in Munich on my way to a International Sociological Association meeting in Italy with my wife, Hanyang University professor Shim Young-hee, in order to hear from Beck himself why he is so interested in East Asia.
 I sat down with him in a small Munich cafe on June 25 to hear his thoughts.


 

"What impresses me about East Asia is both the self-destructive tendencies of modernity and the abundant self-reforming energy," he said. "In the West, there's a widespread perception that modernity is spent, that it's gone as far as it can. I disagree with this. There, too, changes to modernity are ushering in a new era. I call this the 'second modernity.' But the strength of change is as intense in East Asia as it is in the West."


 

A good example of the second modernity in the West is the European Union. Much ground remains to be covered, however, before a democratic political union can be achieved in Europe. "As the economic powerhouse of the EU, Germany has become high-handed," Beck said.

 

"We're facing an economic crisis, but instead of listening to the other member countries, it Germany just tries to order them to make certain changes."


 

In answer to this trend, Beck plans to publish a provocative new book in August titled "German Europe." It graphs the transformation of Germany from a country oriented to Europe to one that controls Europe. "I expect some people will be shocked at the book's title, which recalls the language of the Nazis, but I go my own way," Beck said.


 

The thrust of his argument is that the creative destruction of modernity is giving rise to the second modernity, and that the dialectical process of history is proceeding toward the cosmopolitan. Europe is also home to a cosmopolitan tradition that harks back to Greek civilization. Beck said, "The European tradition that I am reconstituting is fundamentally different from the hegemonic globalism centered on the US. We need to respect diversity and coexist with others."

 

The image of second modernity that the West is sketching out is radical, racing along the leading edge. Beck describes this as the radicalization of modernity. But radicalization is inevitably paired with self-destruction.

 

East Asia, however, has followed a different path to development from the West. Its pathway to a second modernity will therefore also be different. The West may have ushered in modernity with its indigenous Enlightenment tradition, but the East modernized by casting aside its own culture and following the Western mold. As such, it is impossible to capture second modernity through such linear models as creative destruction. The relationships between individual and community are far too complex. Before we can look at the leading edge, we need to recover our identity, to establish balance and harmony. What is apparent here is that an unprecedented risk society arose beneath the surface of the tremendous successes of the modernization charge.

 

"Unlike Korea or China, Japan was more active about adopting my individualization theory than my risk society theory," he said. "But that all changed after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. People have become much more sensitive to risk."

 

In this situation, citizens are no longer just observers or objects of policy, but active agents themselves.


 

"Ever since we tore down the world of the gods and modernity was first conceived, we have believed in progress through science and technology," Beck explained. "It was presumed that democracy would increase our welfare. But now we are in a risk era, a period of uncertainty that rattles this belief at its very foundations. The most urgent question is who can build the 'risk governance' to prevent or manage risks, and how."

 

Beck has concluded that the West and East Asia are already in a competition for their second modernity. China in particular is drawing attention with its uncanny ability to manage the global economic crisis. Beck predicts that China will blaze its own development course that differs from the West's. "Even if it's not a liberal democracy, it will be possible to further develop its social consultation system and create a competitive risk management government," he said.

 

Something of a debate ensued as the topic shifted to Beck's individualization theory. "Individualization in the West has developed on the foundation of the welfare state, cultural democracy, and individualism," he said. "Everyone becomes an independent subject who lives their own life as they see fit. The radicalization of freedom manifests itself through a diversification of family forms."

 

Dr. Shim and I countered with examples from Korean and Chinese research. We argued that the idea of family being more accident than destiny and the breakdown of family ties are foreign concepts to East Asians. Chinese individualization is informed by strong family bonds aimed at escaping poverty, while individualization among South Korean young people incorporates a variety of participatory networks. In this framework, the individual and the community change together.

 

Beck offered the internet as an example of a factor that promotes individualization. I pointed to the citizens' community revolution under way in South Korea to suggest that changes in modes of community might provide a more meaningful driving force for the second modernity than individualization. If it was the one-way mass media like newspapers and television that ushered in the first modernity, I suggested, then wouldn't it be more structural and meaningful to view the new, bidirectional media that started with the internet as ushering in the second? Beck said he agreed. In this case, a wired nation would be in a fairly advantageous position in the second modernity competition. It could serve as a model for building a new risk governance based on democracy and citizen engagement.

 

“The government goes on like it can accurately predict and control risk, but it's actually creating risk. It is now time for us to respect the citizen's risk sensitivity. In the age of uncertainty, politics needs to be moving toward risk governance, where citizens take part in risk management and responsibility for its outcome, " Beck said,

 

After meeting Beck during his 2008 visit to South Korea, Dr. Shim and I saw him again in Japan in 2010 with his wife Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. As fellow students of sociology at the same university during the same period of time with similar interests, we had the opportunity to grow even closer. Now it appears the Becks will be coming to Seoul again in spring 2014 for some of the active Eastern-Western dialogue he suggested in Nagoya.


July 14, 2012

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