The Brave New World of Work by Ulrich Beck, Oxford: Polity Press, 2000, 202 pp., ISBN 0-7456-2398-0.

Whereas industrial relations (IR) has long been associated with labour economics in the Anglo-Saxon countries, it has been much more closely linked to the discipline of sociology in Germany. Ulrich Beck’s The Brave New World of Work is therefore a more sociological contribution to the debate over the future of work, though one that is situated in the German tradition of positivist sociology rather than in the more familiar critical theory tradition of the Frankfurt School. In this new book, Beck builds on his previous work on globalization, modernization and, especially, the concept of risk developed in his World Risk Society (1999). The concept of risk can be seen as a perfect ideological tool for what German social philosopher and major contributor to the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer (1974), has termed the “eclipse of reason,” a camouflage for class conflict. In brief, Beck’s concept of risk (or the “risk regime”) transcends any conflict between capital and labour. Beck writes that “dancing on the edge of the volcano is the finest metaphor I know of risk” and that “risk means a creeping or galloping threat to human civilization and civil spirit, a catastrophic possibility that progress will swing round into barbarism.” Hence, new lines of conflicts are drawn in relation to exposure to risk and the avoidance of it. For Beck there is no longer any class conflict. Capitalist and workers alike are all exposed to the risk of a catastrophic possibility of barbarism. Consequently, his earlier notion of risk and his solution set the scene for his new book on the world of work. Beck starts The Brave New World of Work with an accurate critique of almost everything ever written in the field of industrial relations. He argues that “investigations of late work societies here rest, strictly speaking, upon an unexpressed More-of-the-Same dogma that fails to confront alternative scenarios either empirically, theoretically, or politically.” In place of this “more-of-the-same” approach, Beck develops an intelligent and well-written alternative scenario to current models of work. The English title is a faithful translation of the original German title; however, it misses the second part of that title: “Vision of a World-Citizen-Society” (Weltbürgergesellschaft). This is Beck’s alternative scenario and the main aim of the book. In the book’s introduction, Beck portrays the old theme of barbarism versus socialism. Brazil, and to some extent the U.S.A., stand for barbarism. A better society—originally envisioned in socialism by Marx, Engels, and Luxemburg or anarchism by Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin and seen in present day anti-globalization protests in Seattle and Geneva—is downgraded to Giddens’ theme and Tony Blair’s conservative application of The Third Way. Beck’s objective is to propose an alternative vision of, firstly, “civil labour” and, ultimately, of a “Post-national Civil Society.” Beck sees the future of “the neo-liberal free-market utopia in a Brazilianization of the West with a redistribution of risks away from the state and the economy towards the individual.” In chapter 2, “The Antithesis to the Work Society,” Beck discusses three historical stages of work. Greece and Rome saw “freedom from work” while the modern work-democracy locates work at the centre. The third stage is characterized by “the possibility of freedom and politics beyond the work society.” In Chapter 3, “The Transition from the First to the Second Modernity,” Beck explains the transition from a “tamed capitalism in Europe by the post-war welfare state” under nation-states and the emergence of “an open, risk-filled modernity characterized by general insecurity.” Chapter 4, “The Future of Work and Its Scenarios,” summarizes popular future models of work currently being debated. These range from the …