REFLEXIVE MODERNISATION AND LATE MODERNITY

Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens & Scott Lash

The book, 'Reflexive Modernisation: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order', was not in fact published until 1994, some two years after Beck's, 'Risk Society'; and some four years after Giddens', 'The Consequences of Modernity' and Lash's 'confrontation' with postmodernism ('The Sociology of Postmodernism'). Reflexive Modernisation is both the culmination and product of these earlier texts.

The book takes the form of single separate essays by each author as well as a section 'Responses & Replies' in which each of the three authors evaluates the position of the other two. The book offers an alternative to postmodern thinking on social changes since the 1960s: 'I prefer the terms "high modernity" or "late modernity" to refer to these institutional transitions'. (Lash on page 197).

The thesis of reflexive modernisation is meant to integrate the themes and concepts established by the three authors in their previous works. Reflexive modernisation' is defined by Lash as: '..having as its core assumption the progressive freeing of agency from structure.' (p.119) Lash goes so far as to place 'reflexivity' into the (3) historical contexts of its various forms (see the Table on pages 158-9).

Beck for his part alerts the reader to avoid the 'fundamental misunderstanding' (p.5) that the concept of reflexive modernity: '..does not imply (as the adjective 'reflexive' might suggest) reflection but first self-confrontation.' (italics in the original) (ibid). Bifurcating modernity into an 'early-industrial' and a 'later-risk' period, Beck argues that we did not have a 'choice' as to whether we entered the stage, rather: 'Risk society is not an option....It arises out of the continuity of autonomized modernised processes which are blind and deaf to their own effects and threats.' (ibid)

Lash posits the idea that 'reflexive modernisation' is something of a 'third way'. It offers, he argues, an alternative to the 'Enlightenment utopia of metanarratives of radical change' and to the postmodern 'dystopic evolutionism' of Michel Foucault. For here 'modernity takes itself as an object of reflection' (p.128)