Giddens, Anthony (1938-)

Anthony Giddens is one of the most influential social theorists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and the inventor and most prominent proponent of the theory of structuration. He was also a leading figure in British “third-way” politics in the 1990s. He has published at least 35 books, which have been translated into 30 languages, and more than 200 articles. Within human geography, he played a key role in debates about the “new regional geography,” the emergence of critical human geography, and theoretical developments in European social geography.

Giddens was born in Edmonton, a working-class area in northeast London. From the mid 1950s onward, he studied, at the University of Hull, Yorkshire, philosophy and sociology under Peter Worsley, an active member of the Socialist ...