Anthony Giddens: Diagnosis and Prognosis of Modernity

1
Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Outline
• Introduction
• Giddenss intellectual linkage to the classical
  theories
• Structuration theory whats new?
• From theory as such to theory of modernity
• Issues of modernity (a) institutions (b)
  intimacy (c) trust (d) self as project
• Political implications of Giddenss theory
• Criticisms and conclusion

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Suggested Readings
• A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity.
• A. Giddens, Runaway World.
• A. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory.
• A. Giddens, Transformation of Intimacy.
• U. Beck, A. Giddens S. Lash, Reflexive
  Modernization.
• W. Hutton A. Giddens (eds.), On the Edge.
• D. Held J. Thompson (eds.), Social Theory of
  Modern Society Anthony Giddens and his Critics.

Full references could be found in the useful
introductory essay by Lars Bo Kaspersen, in Heine
Andersen and Lars Bo Kaspersen (eds.), Classical
and Modern Social Theory. Blackwell 2000.
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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Suggested Readings, contd
• C.G.A. Bryant D. Jary (eds.), Anthony Giddens
  Critical Assessments (4 volumes) Routledge 1997
  (This is probably the most comprehensive
  collection of reviews, critiques and development
  of Giddenss concerns and theoretical framework.)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• 1. Introduction
• Giddens as a household name prolific writer,
  intellectual powerhouse, travelling lecturer,
  adviser to leading politicians
• Giddens as a contemporary theorist broad-fronted
  and critical response to intellectual traditions
  as well as more contemporary debates i.e.
  offering the basis of a new, and more adequate,
  language/theoretical framework
• Giddens as picking up where the classical masters
  have left off grappling with the issue of
  capitalism, modernity, and globalizaton, viz. the
  broad contours of our society
• Giddens as contributing to critical understanding
  of selected contemporary social issues
• Our approach

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Giddens and the Founders

• G took them all on board particularly critical
  of Marx, while drawing more resources from Weber
• the inadequacies of the Marxist tradition

• at the level of history of human society (or
  philosophy of history), there is no necessary
  overall mechanism of social change, no universal
  motor of history, such as class conflict history
  is not teleology but contingency
• it makes no sense to fit societies into
  universal stages of development (periodization),
  because inter-society conflicts and their
  different abilities in controlling their
  environment (time space) mean that no two
  societies would undergo the same stages of
  development

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity
Inadequacies of the Marxist tradition, contd

• Marx assimilated industrialism and capitalism,
  and mistakenly believed that the transcendence of
  the capitalist society will lead to a fundamental
  change in the organizational and technical
  conditions or requirements of industrial society
  state-socialist societies equally relied on a
  mass of workers controlled on top by the
  technocrats and the party
• Marx is right that class conflict is central in
  capitalist societies, but he is wrong in thinking
  that therefore the working class will emerge in
  all capitalist societies as a revolutionary
  (universal working) class it does not follow
  that class conflict will inevitably lead to an
  emergent class that replaced the dominant class
• G is against the vulgar economic
  reductionism in Marxist theories, which
  stipulates that political activities (state) and
  cultural matters (ideology) are to be explained
  in terms of class domination or economic power
  relations

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• there are forms of domination which pre-dated
  capitalism and which still existed in capitalism,
  i.e. racial domination and sexual exploitation
  they could not be accommodated within or
  explained by class domination alone
• the Marxist orientation is outdated in the
  mid-20th century, where there are great
  differences among both industrial capitalist
  (e.g., Germany vs. Japan) and state-socialist
  societies (Soviet Union vs. Czechoslovakia)

• there are also inadequacies in regard to
  class, power and domination this will be
  revealed when it comes to Giddenss own
  orientation

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Giddenss linkage to Weber

• Gs world view is closer to Weber than to
  Marx history as more an infinitely complex
  reality, in flux, and could only be grasped by
  the use of analytical devices, underlaid by the
  researchers theoretical interests
• G took it from Weber that social sciences
  should not be seen as immature (natural)
  sciences, but should be seen as something
  completely different what is distinctive about
  the social world (and thus the subject matter for
  sociology) and that should serve as the point of
  departure of our thinking is social action (thus
  implying intentions, meanings, purpose,
  reflexivity)
• G also inherited Webers insistence that
  generalizations in sociology are not so much to
  confirm or disconfirm general and overarching
  laws as in the natural sciences this is too
  narrow a conception of empirical research (deep
  and thick description of the forms of life of
  social agents is equally important)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity
Giddenss linkage to Weber, contd

• G is skeptical of any imputed universal trend
  of development, or motor of history thus he is
  equally skeptical of the thesis of
  rationalization, or the iron cage
• Gs concept of power and domination draws
  insights from Weber power is a relational
  concept, in which resources drawn upon by one
  party would be used to overcome the resistance of
  the other party (in securing compliance despite
  the agency of the other party)
• G took seriously Webers conception of
  authority, and saw this as a serious gap or
  inadequacy of Marx, who emphasized the power over
  objects at the expense of the power over persons
  G elaborated this into allocative power vs.
  authoritative power

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Giddenss orientations to the how and what
  for of sociological explanations (Gs response
  to contemporary functionalist theories)

• functionalist theory sees social systems as
  possessing system needs, and social institutions
  (in particular the tasks of socializing each new
  generation of social beings) as fulfilling these
  needs (performing functions)
• functionalist theory often explains by invoking
  the unintended consequences of social phenomena
  (thus social stratification serves the latent
  function of motivating people to take up tasks
  that are often difficult and incurs a lot of
  investments or social deviance as performing a
  more positive function of reaffirming the core
  values of the society)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Giddens is against this mode of
  explanation/research societies do not possess
  needs only individuals do explanation in terms
  of unintended consequences (latent functions)
  does not explain at all (what or where is the
  link or mechanism that connects deviance and the
  bolstering of common values?) ultimately,
  systems functional needs is a fiction, and there
  is no need to make it more plausible by using the
  analogy with biological organisms
• All in all, G is against both the evolutionary
  (e.g, in the Marxist strand) and the
  functionalist modes of sociological explanation
• G proposes a new language (new concepts, or new
  ways of defining concepts), a different way of
  looking at the logic of sociological explanation,
  and a way of doing sociology that would make
  sense to both the observer and the observed (i.e.
  what we learn and impart to the observed may then
  change the behaviour of the latter, as the
  conditions of the social actions are changed by
  our knowledge)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Structuration theory Giddenss new language

• G sees social life as a continuous flow of our
  interventions in the world in our capacity as
  autonomous agents these interventions are social
  actions, which are (following Weber) meaningful,
  purposeful (with clear goals in mind) or at least
  purposive (as we monitor our actions when we
  survey what we are doing)
• This level G called practical consciousness it
  is what we know about our social world, but which
  we cannot articulate (Bourdieus practical
  mastery without symbolic mastery) practical
  consciousness is distinguished from discursive
  consciousness and the two as a whole from
  unconsciousness
• The first two levels of consciousness have no
  fixed boundary the boundary is vague and
  fluctuating the implication being we are
  skilful, knowledgeable actors, and we are not
  just faceless carriers or supports of culture,
  class interests, etc. in other words, agency is
  reinstated clearly and firmly by G

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• The level of unconsciousness belongs to those
  things that form the unacknowledged conditions of
  our action thus repressed desires (as sources of
  our motivation) and the impact of material
  conditions beyond our cognition are examples
• G also retained the functionalist insight that
  social actions have unintended consequences
  (though he would deny that they are latent
  functions), and these consequences could in turn
  become part of the unacknowledged conditions of
  action (e.g., material deprivation leading to
  poor schooling leading to low level employment
  leading to material deprivation (a loop,
  feedback))
• But the unintended consequences become part of
  the conditions of our action more directly by
  helping to reproduce the structure which makes
  further action possible

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Giddenss notion of structure

• First, G emphasizes that structure should not
  be seen as a static, external thing imposed from
  the outside on the social actors (this is his
  gripe with the Durkheimian social fact) rather,
  structure should be seen more as a processual
  concept, thus structuration
• Actor and structure thus should not be seen as
  constituting dualism rather, they should be seen
  as part of a duality of structure social
  structures are both constituted by human agency,
  and yet at the same time are the very medium of
  this constitution
• G likens structure to grammar speech is
  something localized and concretized (specific
  speaker and his object of communication), but
  language is something virtual, existing outside
  time and space, not monopolized by the subject or
  the object (thus subject-less) grammar being
  the rules of language is likened to structure it
  is being activated whenever we use the language
  in our speech, and by using the language (or by
  speaking) we help to reproduce the rules/structure

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Structure thus consists of rules and resources,
  that are implemented in interaction (thus
  structuring interaction), and that are, in that
  very process, reproduced structuration refers to
  this situation and this process

• Here, we may want to consider some problems (to
  be dealt with later in Section 7)

• if structure does not exist in concrete time
  and space, but are simply moments in the
  constitution (implemented, activated by
  knowledgeable actors) of social systems, does
  this diverge too greatly from our more ordinary
  conception of structure (as meaning the distinct
  mode of interactions which compose
  organizations or collectivities)?
• if structure consists of rules and resources,
  are there rules and resources that are more
  determining that others? If so, what is our
  conception of the society that justifies these
  criteria?

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• G suggested three dimensions (modalities) of
  rules and resources, pertaining to three types of
  action systems (the analytical exercise of making
  distinctions, constructing types, etc. is
  reminiscent of Weber)

Interaction Communication Power
Sanction (modality) Interpretive schemes
Facility Norm Structure Signification
Domination Legitimation
(After J. Thompson in Held Thompson (eds.)
The communication action system has rules, at the
level of structure, which are semantic in nature
the power action system has facilities that are
analyzed as resources at the level of structure
and cultural action system has rules that are
moral in nature.
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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Social systems are regularized patterns of
  interaction they are not structures, as G
  defined it rather, they have structures,
  implying that rules and resources are properties
  of the social system
• When the regularized interactions structured by
  rules and resources are sedimented in time and
  space, G talked about institutions and
  institutions could be classified according to the
  primacy of the three action systems cultural,
  communicative or domination (political and
  economic, with power further distinguished into
  allocative and authoritative power
• Thus G has formulated a comprehensive
  framework, a basis for a new social theory, by
  conceptualizing (and sometimes giving quite novel
  meanings to) the key concepts of actor/agency,
  structure, social system and institution

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• From theory of structuration to theory of
  modernity

• Gs insistence that actors are not just
  supports or bearers of social structures rather,
  they are knowledgeable agents invoking rules and
  resources in specific contexts, and by doing so,
  they implicate structure in their action
• G is thus wary of any claim that sees any
  specific context or its factors that determines
  all other contexts and their actions he is
  against any reductionism, especially the Marxian
  economic reductionism, or the functionalist claim
  that social action could be explained by their
  fulfilling certain systemic needs or functions
• next questions are thus (a) what are the
  characteristics or parameters of the contexts of
  action, and (b) what are the decisive rules and
  resources for a specific society

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Gs response to the first question time and
  space as the parameters of social action the
  tremendous changes that happen to time-space
  relations in modern society then lead him to an
  exploration of the nature of modernity
• Gs response to the second question Marx may
  have rightly focused on the material/economic
  conditions of production as the most decisive
  factors shaping modern capitalist society, but
  this argument is weak on two fronts (i) class
  relations are not necessarily prominent in all
  societies (ii) even in capitalist societies,
  economic power is not the only dimension that
  shapes modernity other dimensions of power are
  equally necessary and important
• G thus keeps his distance from a materialist
  account of the emergence of modern society, just
  as he would dissociate himself from any
  universalizing accounts of human history
• For G, modernity is not exhausted by
  capitalism, despite the latters obvious
  significance modernity is as much a
  transformation in the parameters of time-space
  relations, in the way institutions relate to one
  another, in the way people relate to authority,
  etc.

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Gs theory of modernity is thus framed by these
  considerations

• Capitalism competitive, market-regulated,
  price-driven, productive system in search of
  profit a system characterized by private
  ownership of property, and the selling/buying of
  labour on the market
• Industrialism the widespread and inevitable use
  of inanimate sources of energy in production it
  presupposes regularized coordination of a wide
  range of human activities
• Surveillance capacities this is not just
  physical control (schools, mental hospitals,
  etc.), but also the control of information, the
  increase in social supervision in a wide range of
  institutional contexts
• Control of the means of violence the monopoly
  within the nation state of such means, and the
  industrialization of warfare

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• These four dimensions G called the
  institutional dimensions or mechanisms of
  modernity each is closely linked to the others,
  e.g., surveillance is closely tied to the
  expansion and increasing administrative power of
  various key spheres/nodes of industrialized
  society, such as schools, factories or
  industrialism is closely tied to capitalisms
  inherently expansionist tendencies or
  industrialism made it possible for the
  nation-state to industrialize warfare, thus
  making total war both possible and unlikely
• there is both insulation and dependence among
  these four mechanisms (e.g., without the growth
  of surveillance capacities of the nation-state,
  capitalism could not have a supply of docile,
  complying labour force)
• Underlying these considerations, it is the
  transformation in time-space relations that seems
  to be the key driving force in the rise of
  modernity, i.e. that drastically demarcates the
  modern from the pre-modern

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• All of the four institutional mechanisms have
  contributed, or indeed made possible, the
  revolution in time-space relations, as all of
  them made it possible to coordinate a larger
  amount and complexity of activities across time
  and space (transport, communication, modern
  state-to-state connections, the expansion of the
  capitalist logic of production, etc.)
• Gs theory of modernity then orients more to
  the problems and promise of this transformed
  time-space terrain, rather than to the more
  orthodox concern with resources and constraints
  associated with socio-structural changes
• Example Giddenss arguments on class

• G saw power as resting on two kinds of control
  over resources allocative (control over
  distribution of material resources) and
  authoritative (control over the coercive power
  over other people)
• It is in capitalist societies that the
  allocative control becomes dominant by this he
  referred to his conception of class as domination
  created by private ownership of property

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity
Giddens on class, contd

• Class is thus the central basis of power in
  modern capitalist societies in this sense,
  modern societies are class societies
• By contrast, when societies are mainly governed
  by the dominance of the authoritative (coercive)
  control of resources (i.e. political rather than
  narrowly economic), the central basis of power is
  very different but as such power would have
  implications for the access to economic
  resources, G called them class-divided
  societies
• The most important qualitative break is then
  between class-divided societies (e.g., feudal
  societies) and class societies
• This is still very much a classificatory
  exercise when G brought class to the level of
  explaining phenomena, he saw class more
  definitely in Weberian terms

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• G sees the central class problem as the
  translation of an economic category into a
  socio-political group similar to Webers idea of
  social class (or in Marxist terms, the problem
  of class formation)
• Class is thus examined in terms of
  structuration what are the factors that help to
  bring about this socio-political entity?
• Two kinds of structuration mediate
  structuration (market position determined by
  ones assets, occupation and education, with the
  overall regulation governed by the amount of
  social mobility in the society), and proximate
  structuration (localized factors consisting of
  occupation-specific characteristics, authority
  relations at workplace, and other social
  distributive groupings like housing class,
  residential zoning (community) or general
  consumption patterns (life-styles)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• This makes for a great diversity, although G
  thought that it makes sense to distinguish the
  upper, middle and working class the distinction
  between manual and non-manual is to him major and
  is reinforced by e.g., workplace authority,
  consumption patterns, residence, etc.
• However, G argued that the link between these
  positions and class as an actor is not automatic
  there is no mechanism that translates class
  positions into groupings that have
  self-identity/awareness and agenda
• Class awareness vs. class consciousness class
  identity, conflict consciousness and
  revolutionary consciousness all these
  distinctions point to one thing, viz. G did not
  believe that class as a structural constraint is
  as important as the time-space extension of
  allocative and authoritative control/power

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Thus Giddenss theory of modernity places
  emphasis often on the enabling side (rather than
  the constraining side) of this great
  transformation (time-space distanciation)
• The three key features of modern society all
  add to its dynamic nature

• Time-space distanciation or separation unlike
  pre-modern society, where the when of social
  actions are often universally associated with the
  where (sunrise, ploughing in the field..),
  modernity has time and space separated by the
  standardization and globalization of time social
  interactions no longer simply take place at
  localized space (place or locale), but are
  infused with distanciated relations
• Disembedding mechanisms this follows from the
  distanciation these mechanism mean the lifting
  out of social relations from local contexts of
  interaction and their restructuring across
  indefinite spans of time and space two such
  mechanisms are money and the expert systems the
  disembedding capacity is characteristic of modern
  institutions

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Reflexivity this is about the crucial role
  played by knowledge in our activities modern
  society is reflexive because there is a
  continuous and constant application of knowledge
  to our activities, thus monitoring its course,
  adjusting along the way, and thus changing the
  outcome reflexivity is facilitated by
  communications, and is something practiced by
  both institutions and individuals (thus
  governments take census to collect information on
  its people and shape its policies or individuals
  become more health-conscious once they know more
  about the side-effects of medicine, and so on)
  but reflexivity does not necessarily mean greater
  control over our lives, for our knowledge also
  includes the recognition of what we dont know,
  or that what we know is not certain.

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• These three features of modernity point up one
  important lesson in Gs works the transformative
  and reflexive capacity of both institutions and
  individuals have expanded tremendously in modern
  society tradition (religion, custom, faith,
  ideology) could not be taken on faith, but is
  always subject to the scrutiny and approval of
  knowledge nation-states, corporations and
  individuals have social interactions spanning a
  much wider time-space terrain, resulting in more
  goods and more reflexivity the dynamism of
  modernity is more an open and enabling
  environment than an iron cage or class
  conflict-ridden situation
• Gs verdict on modernity is ultimately more on
  the opportunity side rather than on the dark
  side, a distinction he applied to the founding
  fathers

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Specific issues of modernity

• Institutions and trust
• Modern institutions all involve the problem of
  trust, for the reason that they are closely
  connected with the disembedding mechanisms thus
  we place trust in an institutionalized risk
  environment such as the stock-market in our
  everyday life, we trust that our money will be
  honoured by others or in modern travel, we trust
  that the air travel will be safe, because we
  place trust in the expert system, etc. this
  trust is necessary because we are no longer
  living in a familiar, secure, co-presence setting
  as in the traditional community
• Trust is some kind of faith we are not unaware
  of the alternatives, but having weighed them, we
  nevertheless place trust in these modern
  institutions

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Trust is something other than confidence
  confidence often requires some knowledge (as
  derived from past performance, what G called weak
  inductive knowledge) to back up, but trust often
  takes place without any knowledge of whats
  happening in, say, the plumbing system, the train
  system, the stock-market, the way medicine works,
  government administration, etc. in other words,
  we put faith (sometimes even blind faith!) in the
  principles, expertise and practices of modern
  institutions, in regard to what we expect from
  them
• Trust is thus an essential ingredient but
  something that cant be comfortably
  taken-for-granted in modern living
• The vulnerability of modern institutions (i)
  trust in abstract systems must be preceded by and
  sustained by trust in interpersonal interactions
  (in those systems) thus trust in the expert
  system of modern medicine could be sustained or
  undermined by good or bad encounters with ones
  doctors (G called these encounters the access
  points in system trust)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
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Vulnerability of modern institutions, contd
(ii) Trust by nature is needed precisely because
there is no clear or trustworthy knowledge such
ignorance breeds the grounds of skepticism and
ambivalence thus lay persons attitude to experts
is often a mixture of deference and skepticism
trust could thus lapse or subside/reduce into
some passive acceptance of the state of affairs
trust cannot be taken as necessarily a positive
integrating mechanism (leap to commitment) in
modern society it could lapse into passivity and
cynicism

• The sources of trust

(i) socialization (e.g., school curriculum
teaches not so much concrete knowledge as the
respect for and trust in knowledge)
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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
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Sources of trust, contd (ii) sciences
respectability spills over into many spheres of
social life through publicization and
popularization of scientific knowledge (iii) the
experience of mutuality (from childhood, the
close (and consistent, reliable, and routine)
relations between care-provider and children
builds up a sense of trust it is also a basis
for ontological security (confidence in the
continuity of self-identity, and ones
surrounding environment)
Gs psychology of trust is important, because
trust nurtured in this way enables children (and
later, adults) to deal with time-space separation
(children trusting that the mother will return,
that there will always be love to reassure,
etc.), and
A faith in the caretakers love is the essence of
that leap to commitment which basic trust --- and
all forms of trust thereafter presumes.
(Consequences, p. 95)
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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Intimacy and self

• For Giddens, the modern self is a project, a
  reflexive project self is liberated from
  tradition and its taken-for-granted assumptions
• The modern self applies knowledge to both its
  environment and itself the self, like the
  environment, is to be the object of
  knowledge-overseeing and knowledge-guided action
  action for better adapting to circumstances or
  for fulfilling values and goals
• The self in modern society craves for
  sociability, loyalty, etc., and for these to
  happen, it requires a personal trust
• But personal trust in modern society is very
  much overshadowed by system trust (impersonal,
  and consisted of abstract principles and
  expertise)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Abstract systems do not answer our needs for
  interacting with people with human faces and who
  share mutually meaningful relationships with us
  (abstract systems as empty and unmoralized,
  p.120))
• Traditionally, social relationships like
  friendship is institutionalized, embedded in the
  strong institutions of the family, kinship and
  community friend has a clear opposite of
  either enemy or stranger the boundaries are
  re-affirmed by customs, rituals, practices (such
  as marriage patterns)
• In modern society, these relationships are no
  longer institutionalized in that way each self
  is to find the niche for specific others thus
  friend is arrayed alongside acquaintance,
  someone I know, neighbour, etc. it makes for
  a more unstable and fleeting environment for the
  self
• In modern society, the self experiences the
  most intimate and the most distant in the most
  connected and simultaneous way (nursing a child
  in Germany as potentially affected by reactor
  incident in Ukraine)

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• In these circumstances (fleeting, impersonal,
  feeling that things are not within ones
  control), personal trust is something that one
  could not take for granted it has to be won it
  is something that has to be worked at,
  constructed and maintained
• The implication for intimacy in relating
  oneself to intimate others, one needs to see it
  as a project a project of disclosing ones self,
  of entering or maintaining a relationship
• When this is combined with the reflexive
  character of self/modernity, it means intimacy is
  not just gaining intimate, shared experience it
  is also about self-disclosure, self-enquiry and
  self-fulfillment
• The self in modern society is thus as dynamic
  as the system which enables and constrains it
  constrains in the sense that the self is no
  longer given the comfort or reassurance of
  tradition, or that system trust does not meet the
  needs of personal trust

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Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity
constrains in the sense that the self is no
longer given the comfort or reassurance of
tradition, or that system trust does not meet the
needs of personal trust enables in the sense
that reflexivity and the availability of
disembedding mechanisms give the self resources
which tradition could not provide

• For Giddens, there is the tendency for modern
  intimate relationships to become what he called
  pure relationship, i.e., relationship whose
  main or only reason to exist is that it will
  satisfy both parties no other considerations
  (obligations, parents wishes, etc.) are regarded
  as important
• Such pure relationships have an important
  political implication for what they demand, no
  more and no less, is the total opening of ones
  self to the other party openness, respect for
  the other, dialogue, self-reflections,
  adjustment, rights as well as obligations, etc.
  are the key ingredients in such intimate
  relationships, just as they are in public
  political life

37
Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity

• Giddenss theory of modernity thus ends with
  this close intermeshing of the personal and the
  political the democratization of the emotions
  being a prelude and a prerequisite to social
  democracy
• Gs vision for the future is thus, with
  globalization, some kind of cosmopolitan
  citizenship, could appear, based on this ground
  zero matrix of self, intimacy, trust and
  reflexivity, in a world where nation-states are
  too big for the small problems, and too small
  for the big problems, and where our personal
  biographies are inevitably tied up (with all the
  risk, danger, transformative capacity) with
  distanciated people and events

38
Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity
7. Criticisms and Conclusion

• the novelty of seeing social change in terms of
  time-space separations G reinstated important
  components in the emergence of modern industrial
  capitalism
• reasserts the importance of keeping in sight
  the nature of social relationships, and not lose
  ones way in the jungle of structures and macro
  factors
• argued convincingly that there are other forms
  of domination that could not be reduced to
  class/economic domination but the latter could
  and did impose the range of options and
  variations in the former
• the meaning of structure in the theory of
  structuration has seemingly lost sight of the
  ordinary meaning of structural constraint

39
Anthony Giddens Diagnosis and Prognosis of
Modernity
Criticisms and Summary, contd

• the gap between the structuration theory and
  the theory of modernity the theory should have
  led to the examination of modernity in terms of
  the different mixtures of rules and resources
  that actors in different societal/organizational
  contexts invoke or confront with, and what this
  entails for the self, for interpersonal
  relationships and system integration
• theory of modernity proposed tried (through,
  e.g., the discussion of personal trust and system
  trust, or how democratization of emotions is a
  prelude/basis for broader democracy) to forge
  linkages between the personal and the public,
  but during the process, G lost sight of
  structure
• Ultimately, G retained his hope in the future
  of this juggernaut he has faith in the
  reflexivity of modernity is this faith justified?

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