Video: Cosmopolitan Sociology and Confucian Worldview: Beck’s Theory in East Asia

21 Nov

Sang-Jin Han introduces the TCS article ‘Cosmopolitan Sociology and Confucian Worldview: Beck’s Theory in East Asia‘, co-authored with Young-Hee Shim and Young-Do Park

Abstract

This article aims at an active dialogue between Ulrich Beck and East Asia with respect to cosmopolitan imagination. Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology requires a reflective cosmopolitan publicness to cope with various kinds of global risks. We therefore extract three different layers of publicness from neo-Confucianism – survival-oriented, deliberative, and ecological – and argue that Beck’s cosmopolitan vision can be better conceptualized when properly linked to, or founded upon, the Tianxiaweigong normative potentials of neo-Confucianism. In so doing our intention is to make Beck’s implicit (Asian) sensibilities and the implicit Asian (cosmopolitan) orientations explicit, as a double process of cosmopolitan self-reflection and dialogue. We also draw attention to the analysis of the cosmopolitan actor in East Asia. Finally, we note that the cosmopolitan future of East Asia still remains uncertain and that reconciling global risk politics, national interests and cosmopolitan morality presents a big challenge to second modern transformation.

This article is part of the TCS Special Section: Ulrich Beck in Asia: In Commemoration, edited by Sang Jin-Han. This special section was published in our Annual Review 2016.