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In his small volume, Consequences of Modernity(published 1991) he presents us with important insights into contemporary society.This is an important book because Giddens presents us with a view of ourcontemporary society in all its complexity - from what believe that we are seeing adecline in trust of the very structures that are at the foundations of our society, butalso what the results of this are.Chapter 1: IntroductionThis book is about an institutional analysis of modernity with cultural andepistemological (theory of method or how we gain and learn knowledge) overtones.Modernity refers to modes of social life and organisation that emerged in Europefrom about the 17th century onwards and subsequently have became worldwide(more or less) in their influence.Today, some argue that we stand in a new era that is taking us beyond modernity:post-modernity - but Giddens remains unconvinced.2 3.

In his small volume, Consequences of Modernity(published 1991) he presents us with important insights into contemporary society.This is an important book because Giddens presents us with a view of ourcontemporary society in all its complexity – from what believe that we are seeing adecline in trust of the very structures that are at the foundations of our society, butalso what the results of this are. In so doing, Giddens forces us to reflect on both thestructures that exist and also the relationships that form around them – arguing,when one changes, so do the rest. In this way, we are encouraged to reflect on theway we are in the world – what we think and feel – and how we fit in it.This is a major theoretical statement, and I believe even 20 years on, Giddens offersa new and provocative interpretation of institutional transformations associated withthe many changes that we define as ‘modernity’.Modernity is a word we often throw around without thinking about it – it is a simpleword that refers to the many complex changes in social life or societal organisationthat emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards. Theseinfluences, for better and for worse, are now worldwide in their influence.I wrote this summary and analysis of Gidden’s book because, I believe, he hasdeveloped a fresh understanding of the nature of modernity – which I believe is stillrelevant. This is because he develops on themes such as security, danger, trust andrisk: all aspects that I believe remain under-studied. Giddens reminds us thatmodernity is a double-edged phenomenon: creating great opportunities for us toenjoy but it also has a dark side: from degrading nature to the development of militarythat continues to threaten our existence.What follows is a summary of the first chapter of Gidden’s book – I hope you enjoy itand it helps you with your own research As always, feedback is welcome. James Arvanitakis, 2010Anthony Giddens (1991) The consequences of modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge – James Arvanitakis 1
2. Chapter 1: IntroductionThis book is about an institutional analysis of modernity with cultural andepistemological (theory of method or how we gain and learn knowledge) overtones.Modernity refers to modes of social life and organisation that emerged in Europefrom about the 17th century onwards and subsequently have became worldwide(more or less) in their influence.Today, some argue that we stand in a new era that is taking us beyond modernity:post-modernity – but Giddens remains unconvinced. Much of the discussion herecentres on institutional transformations, whereby we are moving from a systembased on the manufacture of material goods to one concerned centrally withinformation. More common however, these controversies are focussed largely uponissues of philosophy and epistemology (again, the way we take knowledge in.)Post-modernity, which has been attributed to Jean-Francois Lyotard, is a conditiondistinguished by the evaporating of the ‘grand narrative’ (which are the over-reachingstory lines by means of which we have placed history). The post-modern outlooksees a plurality of heterogeneous claims to knowledge. Here, science does not play aprivileged part. It is a shift away from attempts to ground one epistemology as well asa shift away from faith in human engineered progress.A standard response, such as that presented by Jurgen Habermas (1987), is todemonstrate that a coherent epistemology is possible. But Giddens wants to take adifferent track: stating that this push by the post-modernists exists because we arecaught up in things we neither understand nor can control.To explain how this has come about, we need to go beyond inventing new words(such as post-modernity), and instead look at the nature of modernity itself that,Giddens argues, is poorly grasped. Rather than entering a phase of post-modernity,we are moving into one whereby the consequences of modernity are becoming moreradicalised and universalised.He believes that beyond modernity, there are contours of a new and different order,which is post-modern: which he distinguishes from post-modernity. 2
3. The origin of Giddens’ interpretation is a ‘discontinuist’ interpretation of modern socialdevelopment: that is, modern social institutions are unique – and therefore differentfrom the traditional. To understand this we need to review what modernity is. The discontinuities of modernityThe idea that human history is marked by certain ‘discontinuities’ and does not havea smooth developing form is not new: it is stressed in most versions of Marxism.Gidden’s focus is to accentuate and emphasise the discontinuity (or discontinuities)associated with the modern period.Modes of life brought into being by modernity have swept us away from all traditionaltypes of social order in an unprecedented way. In both their extensionality (or theway we are expected to live in the world) and intentionality (or the things we want toachieve), the transformations involved in modernity are more profound than mostsorts of change characteristics of prior periods.On the extensional plane, we have social interconnection globally: That is, we nowno longer are tied to our locality but spread all over the world. We have also seenchanges on intentional terms – the way we have altered some of our intimate day-to-day existence.Giddens then goes on to present us with a vary dense section of his work, statingthat: While there are continuities between the traditional and the modern (andcontrasts can be misleading), the changes of the past 400 years are so vast, that weget limited assistance from our knowledge of prior periods of transition in trying tointerpret them. What I believe he is stating here is that the changes over the last 400years are so incredible, it is different to attempt to understand any previous period –because it is something that we cannot really understand. So while parts of the pre-modern and modern period are continuous, most of it is involves a massive leap –and we should be very careful in interpreting previous periods with our ‘modern’eyes.The long-standing influence of social evolutionism is one reason why thediscontinuity-type character of modernity is not appreciated. We, therefore, need todisplace or deconstruct any evolutionary narrative so we can analyse modernity anddebate the post-modern.Anthony Giddens (1991) The consequences of modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge – James Arvanitakis 3
4. History does not have a ‘totalised’ form attributed to it by evolutionary conceptions.Deconstructing social evolutionism means that we do not have to accept history ashaving a unity, or as reflecting certain unifying principles of organisation andtransformation. Neither does it imply chaos, as there are definite episodes ofhistorical transition.There are several features that separate modern social institutions from thetraditional social orders: 1. The sheer pace of change which the era of modernity sets in motion – most obvious in technology but pervades other spheres; 2. The scope of change, as different areas of the globe are drawn into interconnection with one another, waves of social transformation crash across the earth’s surface; and 3. The intrinsic nature of modern institutions: some modern forms are not found in prior historical periods (such as the state) or only have a specious continuity with pre-existing social orders (such as urban settlements which are only related by location but not order). Security and danger, trust and riskModernity is a double-edged phenomenon: The development of modern socialinstitutions and their worldwide spread has created opportunities but modernity alsohas a sombre side. It is this “opportunity side” that has been stressed by the foundersof sociology: Giddens’ discusses how Marx and Durkheim saw the modern era as atroubled one, but the positive side outweighed its negative characteristics. While MaxWeber, in contrast, was more pessimistic, he never grasped how extensive thedarker side of modernity can turn out.Giddens outlines a number of examples including: While industrial work wasacknowledged as having degrading consequences, the impact on the environmentwas never predicted; The consolidation of political power into totalitarianism wasnever expected, as despotism seemed to be a characteristic of the pre-modern state(totalitarian rule connects political, military and ideological power in a moreconcentrated form than was possible before the emergence of the modern nation-state); and, the industrialisation of war was not given a great deal of attention by the 4
5. founding fathers of sociology (who could never has predicted the development ofnuclear weaponry).The world today is a fraught and dangerous one that has done more than just bluntthe assumption that the emergence of modernity would lead to the formation of ahappier and more secure social order. Giddens’ argues that there is more at stakethan ‘history goes nowhere’, as we have now institutionalised this double-edgednature of modernity. To overcome this, we must look at the limitations of classicalsociological perspectives that limit us. Sociology and modernityGiddens begins this section by noting that sociology is a broad topic andgeneralisations are questionable. There are, however, three widely held conceptionsthat inhibit satisfactory analysis of modern institutions:1. Institutional diagnosis of modernity The most prominent traditions of sociology tend to look to a single overriding dynamic of transformation in interpreting the nature of modernity: for Marx it is capitalism. The restless nature of modernity is explained as an outcome of the investment-profit-investment cycle, which, combined with the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, brings about a constant disposition for the system to expand. Durkheim traced the nature of modern institutions primarily to the impact of industrialism. Durkheim did not see the changing order of modern social life derive essentially from capitalism; rather from the energising impulse of a complex division of labour, harnessing production to human needs through the industrial exploitation of nature. Durkheim argued we live not in a capitalist, but in an industrial order. Weber spoke of capitalism with a view closer to Durkheim. The focus is, however, ‘rationalisation’ as expressed in technology and in the organisation of human activities in the shape of bureaucracy. That is, Weber saw one of the main drivers of change throughout modernity as the emergence of rationalised bureaucracies that implemented a number of rational policies despite the consequences. Examples we can think of here is the implementation of a national language: while this makes rational sense for reasons of commerce and communication, weAnthony Giddens (1991) The consequences of modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge – James Arvanitakis 5
6. also lose many different dialects – something that can have profound consequences on identity. Giddens emphasises that all these are important and should not be seen as mutually exclusive characteristics: modernity is multidimensional on the level of institutions and each level specified here plays a part.2. The prime focus of sociological analysis – ‘society’ The concept of society occupies a focal point in much sociological discourse and Giddens defines it as ‘a distinct system of social relations’ which features in a basic fashion in each of the dominant perspectives. Traditional views state that sociology is the study of (modern) human societies. This is a problem because it is focussed around the nation-state – a type of social community that contrasts in a radical way with pre-modern states – a point that is never fully acknowledged. For Giddens, the second concern is the theoretical interpretation presented by Talcott Parsons, who states that the pre-eminent role of sociology is to resolve the ‘problem of order’. For Parsons, it is a question of integration that holds the system together in the face of divisions of interest that would ‘set all against all’. Giddens believes we should reformulate the question of order as a problem of how it comes about that social systems ‘bind’ time and space. The problem of order is one of ‘time-space distanciation’: that is, the condition under which time and space are organised so as to connect presence and absence. This should be conceptually distinguished from that of the ‘boundededness’ of social systems: that is, modern societies (nation states) in some respects have a clearly defined boundedness while still having connections that go beyond. In contrast, no pre- modern society was as bounded as modern nation-states. The level of time-space distanciation is much greater now than ever before: but it is more than a simple expansion in the ability of social systems to span time and space. We must look at how modern institutions become ‘situated’ in time and space to identify some of the distinctive traits of modernity as a whole. 6
7. 3. The connections between sociological knowledge and the characteristics of modernity to which knowledge refers Often sociology is understood as generating knowledge about social life that can be used for prediction and control – though Giddens argues this is simplistic. Rather, the relation between sociology and its subject matter, which is the actions of human beings in conditions of modernity, must be understood in terms of the ‘double hermeneutic’ (or what Giddens calls intepretation) Giddens then turns to discuss ‘the model of reflexivity’: that is, the way sociological knowledge spirals in and out of the universe of social life, reconstructing both itself and that universe as an integral part of that process. That is, learning about the world shapes us in the world’s image. Sociological concepts and findings are constitutively involved in what modernity is: the concepts actually develop modernity. Sociology, however, does not develop cumulative knowledge as the natural sciences often do. We have learnt that controlling knowledge is not possible. To adequately grasp the nature of modernity, we must ask: what are the sources of the dynamic nature of modernity? Giddens believes that the dynamism of modernity derives from the separation of time and space and their recombination, the disembedding of social systems, and the reflexive ordering and reordering of social relations. So what does this mean I hear you ask? Giddens is saying that we have broken down the relationships between time and space and put then back together in different ways. Think of this example: Melbourne to Sydney is a lot further away than Sydney to Parkes (which is less than half the distance). Now, because of air travel, we think of Melbourne as an hour away, whereas Parkes with mostly think of driving (which is four hours away). Even if you decided to fly, flights to Melbourne leave every 20 minutes or so – whereas there is only one or 2 flights to Parkes per day. The cost is also almost one-third of the price to Melbourne than Parkes. We can also think about how much easier it is to get from Sydney to London compared to getting to the Solomon Islands that are only a quarter of the distance away.Anthony Giddens (1991) The consequences of modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge – James Arvanitakis 7
8. For Giddens, this has profound affects on the way we see the world – and alters many of the relationships and structures around us. Modernity, time and spaceTo understand intimate connections in the transformation of time and space, we mustdraw contrasts with the pre-modern world. All pre-modern cultures possessed modesof calculation of time, but this time was always linked with space – and was usuallyimprecise and variable. The time of day was referenced with other socio-spatialmarkers.