The Terrorist Threat

TLDR

The article identifies three axes of global conflict—ecological, financial, and transnational terrorism—highlighting how the post‑9/11 terror threat reshapes world risk society and shifts trust toward fear as a unifying force. The study aims to transcend methodological nationalism in sociology by proposing a methodological cosmopolitism.

Abstract

This article differentiates between three different axes of conflict in world risk society. The first axis is that of ecological conflicts, which are by their very essence global. The second is global financial crises, which, in a first stage, can be individualized and nationalized. And the third, which suddenly broke upon us on September 11th, is the threat of transnational terror networks, which empowers governments and states. Two sets of implications are drawn: first, there are the political dynamics of world risk society. In an age where trust and faith in God, class and progress have largely disappeared, humanity's common fear has proved the last - ambivalent - resource for making new bonds. Second, the methodological nationalism that preoccupies the sociological imagination has to be overcome and a `methodological cosmopolitism' has to be created.