Abstract
Ulrich Beck never published in Work, employment and society (WES ). However, the work of this prolific sociologist, in particular his engagement with the second, or reflexive, modernity and the inherent risks that the successes of the modern world entail, had a significant influence on the discussion of work, employment and society. While few articles published in WES have adopted an explicitly ‘Beck- ian’ perspective, Ulrich Beck’s thinking is reflected in a range of contributions in the journal. Beck’s work is referenced in around 60 WES articles, with Risk Society (30+ hits) and The Brave New World of Work (20+ hits) featuring most prominently. His influence on WES may be summarized in four themes: class and employment; employment insecurity; social exclusion; and youth transitions and employment. In the following reviews, Atkinson outlines the contentious and ambiguous nature of Beck’s writing on class and individualization; Chan and Tweedie highlight his contribution to identifying the scale and structure of employment insecurity; Curran discusses the importance but also the weaknesses of risk and the risk society to debates on social exclusion; and Evans explores the implications of these concepts for youths’ transition into the labour market as well as for the structure-agency debate. Within and between these broad thematic areas, Beck’s concepts, such as the risk society, individualization and cosmopolitanization, bring to bear his broader vision and the problems he identified both in the real world and in what he called the ‘zombie categories’ utilized within sociology. His work, and in particular books such as Risk Society (1992), The Brave New World of Work (2000), and World at Risk (2009) are thus, if not classics, at least important texts that underpin our sociologically driven discourses. As Woodman et al. (2015) argue, Beck leaves an important legacy, even if it also contains the ambivalences and contradictions of the social metamorphosis that he discussed.