ABSTRACT
The world-economy in the years after 1945 saw the largest expansion of productive structures in the history of the modern world-system. The ascendance of an international human rights regime and of a large variety of nonstate actors in the international arena signals the expansion of an international civil society. In world risk society the politics and sub-politics of risk definition become extremely important. Risks have become a major force of political mobilization, often replacing references to, for example, inequalities associated with class, race and gender. In the “global age,” the theme of risk unites many otherwise disparate areas of new transnational politics with the question of cosmopolitan democracy: with the new political economy of uncertainty, financial markets, transcultural conflicts over food and other products, emerging “risk communities,” and, last but not least, the anarchy of international relations. Personal biographies as well as world politics are getting “risky” in the global world of manufactured uncertainties.
