Giddens, Anthony (1938-)

Anthony Giddens is an internationally renowned British social theorist who has pioneered new theories of social practice, politics, modernity, and the self. Born in Edmonton, North London, Giddens was professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge before he became director of the London School of Economics in 1997. Having been adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Giddens was given a life peerage in 2001. He cofounded Polity Press in 1985. Currently, he is a Life Fellow at King's College, Cambridge. Although the scope of Giddens's writing on social theory is too vast to cover in a short space, a clear theoretical thread runs through his work, namely that social theory should be the study of “duality of [Page 280]structure,” that agency and structure are two inseparable faces of the same social coin. His overarching theoretical program is perhaps best outlined in his 1984 book titled The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration.

In the same book, Giddens spelled out a social ontology of social practice, a perspective that is different from agent-centered and structure-centered theories that focus on the role of individuals in the study of social conduct and patterned processes, respectively, believed to have an independent influence on the individual. The way out of this dualist predicament is not adopting an approach that merely recognizes the interfacing of agency and structure, for such perspective ultimately is forced to privilege one over the other. Instead, Giddens insists on a social ontology that has two advantages over previous theories. First, it allows us to have a dialectical perception of structure according to which structure is both the medium through which action is made possible and its reproduction is created through social practice itself. Second, social structure not only has a constraining capacity; it also enables members of society in their dealings with one another. Consistent with this view, Giddens elucidated a theory of power that is markedly different from previous theories. According to Giddens, because any social dynamics involves power relations, social inquiry cannot relegate the study of power to a secondary status, nor should it disregard the “dialectics of control” wherein both the powerful and the powerless influence one another.

Despite his novel theory, Giddens does not believe that his new perspective is intended to address issues of a social order that is radically different from the modern age. He does not think that ours is the postmodern era, although it is not wise to stick to the classical formulations of modernity suggested by Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Instead, Giddens asserted that the contemporary world is engulfed in the process of “radicalized modernity,” a condition that has lasting and universal consequences without engendering a sweeping rupture from a modern way of life that had begun in the 17th century. This view is based on an important distinction that Giddens makes between traditional and modern societies. The latter are characterized by reflexive social practices in which institutional and personal activities are constantly monitored, ultimately resulting in both “the end of nature and tradition.” Modernity has marked the end of nature, for currently there is literally nothing natural that falls outside the province of human intervention. Tradition has ended because modernity is a future-oriented epoch characterized by a never-ending technological transformation and a social-political paradigm premised on an open-ended social change that has prompted constant alteration of democratic institutions. This transformation, among other things, forces the social theorist to explicate a new theory of self and sexuality. In the face of new prospects and stakes engendered as a result of modern developments, modern individuals have no choice but to take their sexual lives seriously. This is even more important as radicalized modernity is the age of “plastic sexuality,” wherein gender relations are less constrained by the dictums of the heterosexual matrix and the needs of reproduction.

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