Distant Love

Personal Life in the Global Age

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Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (Peking UP), Italy (Laterza), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Iwanami Shoten)

Ulrich Beck , Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Distant Love / Fernliebe

Personal Life in the Global Age

New forms of intimacy, love and family form the centre of this new book by Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Ulrich Beck.

Family and love in the times of globalisation: The grandparents in Thessaloniki and their grandchildren in Cambridge speak to each other every night – via Skype. A woman in the US woman and her Swiss husband are annoyed with their high telephone bills and travel expenses. A married couple in Europe fulfil their desire to have children with thehelp of an Indian surrogate mother.

The authors of the bestselling book Das ganz normale Chaos der Liebe (The...

The authors of the bestselling book Das ganz normale Chaos der Liebe (The everyday chaos of love) investigate all types of long-distance relationships in their new positive and argumentative bookfrommarriagesthat connect continents and cultures to relationships supported by skype, chat room tragedies, globalised maids, prostitutes from Sri Lanka, Indian surrogate mothers, Ethiopian work migrants – and much more. Their most important finding: Families are no longer territorial but global. World society has found its way into »normal« relationships and »normal« families; it?causes disturbances, confusion, surprise, desire, happiness, breakdowns and hatred. Because in the endwe live in a world in which our loved ones are far away, while those close to us are the most remote.

Despite laying out the problems of Love at a Distance, the authors have a rather optimistic perspective onthe currentand future chaos of globalized relationships between individuals and their. They wonder if it is possible »that those things at which globalization has failed in the world at large, have, in fact, sometimes worked out in these new types of family relationshipsthe art of an in-between space, the art of living together with and beyond boundaries«

»Rich and wide-ranging... will rightly provoke further theorizing and extend the nature of research conducted in the future.« Sociology

»Distant Love is a rich and provocative book, and continues the unique contributions made by its authors to the analysis of globalisation and the culture of late modernity. There are some very big ideas here, and the huge themes and issues are brought on from the wings to take a bow – this is from beginning to end an invitation to open up research into the plethora of issues and areas it brings into the light.« Les Gofton, Times Higher Education Supplement

»The intimate and personal dimensions of globalization have not received as much attention as finance, environment, and conflict. They are also important, however, and exert a shaping influence on both individual lives and sociocultural change. It is a pleasure to see full-length attention from Beck and Beck-Gernsheim who bring both sociological insight and personal sensitivity to this timely account of Love at a Distance.« Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science

»Just as there are global firms, so there are global families, the authors observe. A German man marries a Chinese woman. An American couple adopts a Guatemalan baby. A Korean farmer takes a Filipina mail order bride. A child is born of a Spanish ovum, a Danish sperm and an Indian womb. Do such families bring home conflicts between East and West, rich and poor nations, or are they pioneers in cosmopolitanism? In this wide-ranging book and original book, the authors explore a key truth increasingly unfolding in our own living rooms.« Arlie Russell Hochschild, University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Outsourced Self and So How's the Family?

»This path-breaking overview of ›distant love‹ traces the ways globalization is embodied and interiorized within the domains of personal affect and desire. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim demonstrate that contemporary marriage, family, kinship and reproduction are not contained by national systems of law, state borders, or inequalities of wealth, power, gender, and racialization.« Nina Glick Schiller, University of Manchester

Book Review of the English edition by Times Higher Education >>

2011, 280 pages

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Ulrich Beck

Author

Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) was professor of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1992 to 2009 and Principal Investigator of the ERC project »Methodological Cosmopolitanism – In the Laboratory of Climate Change«. He was British Journal of Sociology Visiting Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and a professor at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris. Among numerous other accolades and honours, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Distinguished Contribution to Futures Research of the International Sociological Association at the 2017 World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama.

Ulrich Beck

Author

Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) was professor of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1992 to 2009 and Principal Investigator of...

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Author

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim is professor of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Author

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim is professor of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.

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Those who advocate ideas about "postmodernity" and "post-industrialism" offer radical critiques of existing social and political institutions. But they provide very little in place of those...

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English world rights (Polity), Turkey (Ithaki)

Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Fondo De Cultura Economica), Chinese simplex rights (Xue Lin Press), Italy (Asterios Editore), Sweden (Bokförlaget Daidalos), Korea (Keorum Publishing), Czech Republic (Slon Publishers), Croatia (Jesenski i Turk), Greece (Livani Publishing House),

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In his famous speech in Hamburg in 1953, Thomas Mann warned the Germans never again to strive for a »German Europe«. As a result of the Euro crisis, however, that is exactly what has happened: the...

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English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Paidos), Chinese simplex rights (Tongji UP), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Paz e Terra), Arabic world rights (Al Kamel), France (Autrement), Italy (Laterza), Norway (Abstrakt), Korea (Dolbegae), Japan (Iwanami), Poland (PWN), Czech Republic (Filosofia), Hungary (Belvedere Meridoniale), Bulgaria (K&X), Serbia (Megatrend University), Greece (Patakis)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Portugal (Ediçoes 70)

Twenty Observations on a World in Turmoil

Year of Publication: 2010

Ulrich BeckYear of Publication: 2010

Twenty Observations on a World in Turmoil

The world is a state of turmoil. From the financial crisis to the chaos in the eurozone, from the Arab uprisings to protests in Athens, Barcelona, New York and elsewhere, many of the familiar...

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English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Korea (Dodo), Japan (Hosei UP), Albania (Asdreni)

Year of Publication: 2008

Ulrich BeckYear of Publication: 2008

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English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Translation Publishing House), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Tempo Brasileiro), Italy (Laterza), Korea (Ghil), Japan (Iwanami Shoten), Czech Republic (Karolinum Press), Slovenia (Studentska Zalozba)

Year of Publication: 2007

Ulrich BeckYear of Publication: 2007

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This book introduces the impassabilites of the debate on globalisation in a trenchant and explanatory way – its polyvalence, its ambiguity, its (rarely differentiated) dimensions; it...

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English world rights (Polity Press), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Catalan rights (Llibres de l'Index), Chinese complex rights (Commercial Press), Arabic world rights (Al Kamel), Italy (Carocci), Japan (Kokubunsha)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (East China Normal UP), Russia (Progress Traditija), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Paz e Terra), Sweden (Daidalos), Norway (Abstrakt), Finnland (Vastapaino), Czech Republic (CDK Brno), Slovakia (Vydavatelstvo SSS), Hungary (Belvedere Meridionale), Bulgaria (Critique & Humanism), Romania (Editura Trei), Croatia (Vizura), Slovenia (Krtina), Greece (Kastaniotis), Macedonia (Terra Magika), Georgia (Elf)

Year of Publication: 2007

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World Risk Society

In 1986, the year of the Chernobyl reactor disaster, Suhrkamp Verlag published Risk Society by Ulrich Beck, a classic of sociological diagnostic, translated into over thirty...

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Portuguese rights (Edicoes 70), Italy (Mondadori), Korea (Ghil), Turkey (Sakarya)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Arabic world rights (National Centre for Translation), Poland (Scholar), Hungary (Belvedere Meridionale), Albania (Asdreni), Serbia (Akademska Knjiga)

Year of Publication: 2005

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This is a brilliant study of the nature of love in modern society. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim argue that the nature of love is changing fundamentally, creating opportunities for...

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English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (Folio), Chinese complex rights (New Century), Brazil (Vozes), Italy (Mondadori), Korea (Saemulgyul), Poland (Lower Silesia Press), Slovenia (Ljubljana UP), Greece (Pedio)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Turkey (Imge)

The Cosmopolitan Perspective or: War is Peace

Year of Publication: 2004

Ulrich BeckYear of Publication: 2004

The Cosmopolitan Perspective or: War is Peace

In his book Power and Countervailing Power in the Global Age, Ulrich Beck analysed the question and the dilemma of the legitimity of power in the global era. In his new publication, he...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity Press), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (East China Normal UP), Russia (Centre for Post-Industrial Studies), France (Flammarion), Italy (Carocci), Sweden (Daidalos), Serbia (Megatrend University)

Year of Publication: 2004

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Cosmopolitan Europe

Rethinking Europe – that is the theme of this book. The cosmopolitan view on Europe, conceived in notions, could well be the starting point for new action opportunities.

This book...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Sweden (Daidalos), Poland (Scholar), Serbia (Megatrend UP), Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (East China Normal UP), France (Flamarion), Croatia (Skolska Knjiga)

Year of Publication: 2002

Ulrich BeckYear of Publication: 2002

Power in the Global Age

This brilliant [...] book by one of Europe's leading social thinkers throws light on the global power games being played out between global business, nation states and movements rooted in civil...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity Press), Denmark (Reitzels)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (Beijing BBT), Russia (Progress Traditija), Arabic world rights (Librairie Orientale), France (Flammarion), Italy (Laterza), Korea (Ghil), Japan (NTT Shuppan), Poland (Scholar), Czech Republic (Slon), Croatia (Skolska Knjiga), Ukraine (Nika Center)

Year of Publication: 1986

Ulrich BeckYear of Publication: 1986

Risk Society

This panoramic analysis of the condition of Western societies has been hailed as a classic.

Underpinning the analysis is the notion of the »risk society«. The changing nature of...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Sage), Spanish world rights (Paidós Ibérica), Chinese simplex rights (Yilin), Chinese complex rights (Chu Liu), Russia (Progress), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Editora 34), Arabic world rights (Librairie Orientale), France (Flammarion), Italy (Carocci), Denmark (Reitzels), Sweden (Daidalos), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei UP), Poland (Scholar), Czech Republic (Slon), Hungary (Szazadveg), Bulgaria (Critique&Humanism), Estonia (Tartu UP), Serbia (Filip Visnjic), Slovenia (Krtina), Turkey (Ithaki), Greece (Pedio)