Second modernity is marked by a new awareness of the risks — risks to all forms of life, plant, animal and human — created by the very successes of modernity in tackling the problem of human scarcity.[2] Systems that previously seemed to offer protection from risks both natural and social are increasingly recognised as producing new man-made risks on a global scale as a byproduct of their functioning.[3] Such systems become part of the problem, not the solution. Modernisation and information advances themselves create new social dangers, such ascybercrime,[4] while scientific advances open up new areas, likecloning orgenetic modification, where decisions are necessarily made without adequate capacity to assess longterm consequences.[5]
Recognising the fresh dilemmas created by thisreflexive modernization, Beck has suggested a new "cosmopolitan Realpolitik" to overcome the difficulties of a world in which national interests can no longer be promoted effectively at the national level alone.[6]
Second modernity has also been linked[clarification needed] to the so-calledknowledge society, marked by a pluralisation of different types of knowledge.[7] It is characterised in particular by knowledge-dependent risks — the uncertainties manufactured by the information world itself.[8]
Various forms of resistance to second modernity have emerged, among them, for example,Euroscepticism.[9]
Beck seesal-Qaeda as a by-product of, as well as resistance to, second modernity, not only in its use of information-technology tools, but also in its syncretist ideology.[10]
Carrier, Martin; and Nordmann, Alfred. 2011.Science in the Context of Application. Dordrecht, London, and New York: Springer.ISBN9789048190508.
Harding, Sandra G. 2008.Sciences from Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press.ISBN9780822342595 (cloth);ISBN9780822342823 (pbk).
He, Chuanqi. 2012.Modernization Science: The Principles and Methods of National Advancement. Berlin and New York: Springer Verlag.ISBN9783642254581 (cloth);ISBN9783642254598 (ebook).
Carrier, Martin, Johannes Roggenhofer, Günter Küppers, and Philippe Blanchard (eds.). 2004.Knowledge and the World: Challenges beyond the Science Wars. The Frontiers Collection. Berlin and New York: Springer-Verlag, ;ISBN9783540210092.
Carrier, Martin. 2006.Wissenschaftstheorie zur Einführung. Zur Einführung 317. Hamburg: Junius.ISBN9783885066170 (pbk).
Mahnkopf, Claus-Steffen, Frank Cox, and Wolfram Schurig (eds.). 2008.Facets of the Second Modernity. New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century 6. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag.ISBN9783936000177.
Sørensen, Mads Peter; and Christiensen, Allan. 2012.Ulrich Beck: An Introduction to the Theory of Second Modernity and the Risk Society. New York: Routledge.ISBN9780415693691 (hardback);ISBN9780203107928 (ebook).
