Distinguished among sociologists, Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist. Ulrich Beck's area of study include modernization, globalization, ecological problems and individualism. Ulrich Beck has been professor for sociology and director of the Institute for Sociology of Munich University and Professor at the London School of Economics. Ulrich Beck delivered new diagnoses to the question: How can social and political thought and action in the face of radical global change be intertwined in a new modernity? According to Beck, all contemporary political thinking emanates from the methodological nationalism of political thought and sociology. According to Beck and Giddens, the traditional industrial class structure of modern society is breaking apart.
Ulrich Beck points out that risks are also socially constructed and some risks are perceived as more dangerous because they are discussed in mass media more frequently, such as terrorism. Ulrich Beck's works include: Risk Society (1986), Counterpoison (1991), Ecological Enlightenment (1992), Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (1994), Democracy without Enemies (1998), with Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash. Ulrich Beck studied modernization, ecological problems, individualization and globalization.
Later in his career, Ulrich Beck embarked on exploring the changing conditions of work in a world of increasing global capitalism, declining influence of unions and flexibilisation of the labour process, a then new theory rooted in the concept of cosmopolitanism. Ulrich Beck also tried to overturn national perspectives that predominated in sociological investigations with a cosmopolitanism that acknowledges the interconnectedness of the modern world.
Ulrich Beck's theory of interdisciplinary reflexive modernization on a basis of a wide range of topics in appropriate research was empirically tested. The theory of reflexive modernization works from the basic idea that the rise of the modern industrial age produces side-effects across the globe that provide the institutional basis and coordinates that modern nation-states question, modify, and open for political action.