Giddens, Anthony (1938–)

AS AUTHOR OR EDITOR of 30 books, and as director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, Anthony Giddens's interests and influence have been broad. Two features of his work are most pertinent here. First, there is his effort to rethink the theory of social sciences, what he terms structuration theory, and second, his efforts as the prominent theorist of the so-called Third Way.

Structuration theory is an extended gloss on the famous remark of Karl Marx that we make history, but not with materials of our own choosing. It attempts to overcome all the troublesome dualisms in social theory, but prominently agency/structure, micro/macro, and subjective/objective. Giddens argues that social structure presupposes action and vice versa. Social structure is both “enabling and constraining,” and has but “virtual reality” as both medium and concrete product of action. When we speak we use language and reproduce it, and it “exists” only insofar as it is spoken or written. One can buy a hot dog with a $5 bill only because people have beliefs about what it is and what it can do. These are “objective” facts even if unlike (say) salt's solubility, they are facts only because of what we believe and do. And this is true of all our actions.

In contrast to Durkheimian accounts of structure as causal, persons working with materials at hand are the causal agents of society and history. Other consequences follow: ethnography will be an essential first step, followed by an effort to understand why members believe what they do, and indeed, whether what they believe about their “world” is true. As with Marx, a good deal of social life is sustained only because members have false beliefs, uncritically taken for granted.

Consider poverty. One side holds that it is explained by the culture of poverty: beliefs held by poor people, which cause their poverty. In this view, society needs to change the poor's beliefs. The other side argues that it is explained by objective circumstances of the social position the poor find themselves in, their lack of resources given the objective conditions of the labor market. But this bifurcates structure and culture. Of course, the poor act on their beliefs, but the alternatives available to them depend upon features of the world that require human institutions for their reality. Of course, those lacking skills encounter external constraints on action. There is inequality of opportunity and there are no jobs. But these facts are not external to the activities of persons; they are a consequence of the actions of capitalists, government actors, consumers, etc., each of whom are acting with materials at hand.

An essay in The New Yorker, “The Two Tonys,” identified Giddens's close association with Tony Blair's Third Way politics. But this Third Way is certainly not the traditional social democratic way between communism and liberal capitalism. Indeed, it is not easy to characterize it, except perhaps to say that it seeks to join the values of social democracy with market liberalism. This can be illustrated by considering poverty.

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