One globalisation or many? Risk society in the age of the Anthropocene

Abstract

My goal in this article is to reconsider current ideas of globalisation, and of the relations between nature and society, by looking at two theoretical programmes of the past four decades. I start by reconsidering Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society and highlight some of its core strengths and weaknesses. I then revisit more recent debates on the Anthropocene and unpack some key dimensions. There, I contend that arguments on the Anthropocene allow us to develop a more robust concept of globalisation than those currently available: an idea of globalisation that is the inescapable condition of what humans are as a species. Finally, I offer some preliminary reflections on the new stage of globalisation that seems to have started with the Covid-19 pandemic.