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reflection from the Third World Oct 24, 2000 (15 of 17 found this helpful)
In dealing the "consequences of modernity" (especially the sombre side, the dangers and risks), I am sure Giddens himself belongs to the "radical engagement" kind he describes. Not only trying to have some impact through his analysis of the situation to date, but practically participate in the "power arena" -as we know he is an important "mastermind" for the British ruling Labor Party. Thus his argument about getting into power to "make thing done" has its trail. And I can't agree more on this standpoint. However, I think he could have paid more attention to the uneven relationship between Western and Non-Western countries within modernity or globalization.
Modernity is a western project in terms of the ways of life fostered by the transformative agencies of nation-state and capitalism, according to Giddens. This is "because of the power they(the West) have generated"(p174). On the other hand, modernity is NOT particularly Western from the standpoint of its globalising tendencies because "there are no others"(p175). Hence, it seems clear that the Non-Western world can only "accept" what introduced to them by a "powerful brother". The helplessness is just identical to the situation of lay population facing the expert systems-but only the latter is detailed analyzed in this book.
Furthermore, I don't really understand why Giddens makes such an effort to discuss the unique of "trust" in modern era. I mean of course we have to "trust" the abstract systems. But it is the "abstract systems" not "trust" that results our difference from the pre-modern world. A per-modern person had to trust the rules of the society and something he didn't know as well (there were doctors and fortunetellers)!
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A good primer Mar 13, 2008 (4 of 4 found this helpful)
This is a lucid introduction to some of the key sociological themes of Giddens's theory of modernity. He outlines his case for why the so-called "postmodern" world is really just an intensification of the features of modernity (rather than a distinctive regime that has broken from modernity). But as another reviewer suggested, interest in this debate was already ebbing by 1990, and the more interesting ideas have to do with the way Giddens links modernity and globalization. For Giddens, modernity is less a kind of society or a stage of development than a set of processes that reorder social relations. In one of his oft-quoted formulas, modernity is "a 'lifting out' of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across time and space." He offers clear and useful examples that make this abstract description easy to grasp.
The book doesn't wade very far into the politically charged debates about modernity--Is modernity just a Western concept that pretends to merely describe what is actually being imposed as an ideological project? Does it make sense to talk about "multiple modernities," alternatives to Western patterns of modernity that can or should develop in different parts of the world? In _Consequences_ Giddens doesn't do more than glance at counter arguments to his own; but he didn't intend to. Serious readers will eventually want to get a bigger picture, but this introduction is a good place to start.
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The persuasive micro-foundation of modernity Mar 23, 2002 (7 of 10 found this helpful)
The persuasive framework to grasp modernity
This is the most popular title among Giddens¡¯s books. There are several reasons for the attractiveness.
1. It was the lecture held in Stanford. So the writing style is easy enough to grip the whole line. It¡¯s hard to say his earlier theoretical books like ¡®Central Problems of Social Theory¡¯, ¡®The Constitution of Society¡¯ are easy to read through, though it¡¯s the nature of theoretical works of sociology, unfortunately.
2. Timing: This book was published in 1990 when the chats of postmodernism or postmodernity waned for its unproductivity, while the discussion of globalization was about to wax. Giddens¡¯s countering of postmodernity and theoretical founding of globalization is so persuasive. The framing of modernity in terms of ¡®time-space distanciation which surfaced first in this book, still dominates the talk of globalization.
3. He founded the seemingly macro-matter of globalization on the micro-level with the concept of trust. A set of ancillary concepts are accompanied to support this foundation like ontological security, risk, reflexivity, and abstract system. His linking between micro- and macro-level seems so convincing.
The overall outline of his framework in this book based on the concept of trust. Trust came from Erickson. So it has the psychological connotation. It¡¯s not hard to capture the gist. But I prefer more friendly version to social sciences. Let¡¯s consider it with the concept of ¡®expectation¡¯. We impose some expectation on every object we encounter; mother, friend, colleague, mug, pen, computer. We expect what my friend would talk or behave before his action or what this mug would like before buying it. What we expect for something is called the expectation. In other word, we assign the identity to those object. Object is everything we can allot name. My self-identity is no exception. Myself is also object which should have some expectation. Everything including myself on the time-space has identity. Trust is the name given to this process. Let¡¯s suppose the nature of time-space changed (time-space distanciation). Then our trust should change accordingly. This is the nub of Giddens¡¯s micro-foundation of modernity in this book.
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Were these pre-moderns really so dumb? Jan 17, 2006 (6 of 9 found this helpful)
Giddens is a serious thinker, and his ideas are bold and provocative as one would expect from a respected theorist. What you will get from this book is a fairly comprehensive--albeit unreferenced (this is a collection of transcriptions of lectures delivered at Stanford University)--look at many key topics in the 'modernity' debate.
However, as one working mainly with "pre-modern" cultures I cannot help noticing that what social theorists' definitions of modernity too often amount to are despairingly infantile caricatures of the past, with no attempt made to document claims or to specify a historical context. Two examples from this book:
(1)"All pre-modern cultures possessed modes of the calculation of time. ,,,,,, But the time reckoning.....always linked time with place-and usually was imprecise and variable. No one could tell the time of day without reference to other socio-spatial markers...." (p. 17) ???Who-what-where-when is he talking about???
(2)"In pre-modern societies, space and place largely coincide, since the spatial dimensions of social life are, for most of the population, and in most respects, dominated by "presence"-by localised activities." (p. 18) What of the distant and/or imaginary places of religious and mythical discourse? What of early proto trans-national contacts? Are these 'spaces' not sufficiently modern to claim that there was 'de-localised social activity' in earlier cultures?
Three stars.
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consequences of modernity Apr 28, 2000 (4 of 9 found this helpful)
this book discusses the dimensions and dynamism of modernity. modernity is multi dimensional at the institutional level. there are four basic institutional dimensions 1. capitalism -where is insulation of economic from political. 2. surveillance is fundamental to all types of organisation. 3. militaryb power - control of means of violence in the context of industrialisation of war. 4. industrialism modern industry with the alliance of science and technology transfers the world of nature and develop created environment. there are three sources of dynamism of modernity each connected with each other.1. separation of time and space .it provides means of precise temporal spacial zoning.2. development of disembedding mechanisms."liftout" social activity from localised context,reorganising social relations across large time space distances.3. reflexive appropriation of knowledge book also covers the topic of globalisation of modernity.it shows the difference in environment of trust and risk in premodern and moderrn culture.it concentrates on the themes of risk and danger in modern life and deskilling and reskilling in everyday life.