Customer Reviews

The Consequences of Modernity

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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)!

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.

Ostensively, Giddens offers up Consequences of Modernity as an answer or alternative to Lyotard's version of postmodernism. Thus, even though Giddens only makes direct reference to Lyotard on a few pages, Lyotard's "The Postmodern Condition" is still a prerequisite for reading Gidden's Consequences. In Lyotards postmodern world there are only lesser narratives which cannot be reintegrated. There are no longer any grand narratives to explain life, the universe and everything. The disparate narratives no longer speak the same language; they are no longer part of the same story. The construction and completion of the grand narrative was the mission of Modernity. This was the project that Bacon and the later the Encylopedists believed in. But rifts have formed and there is no longer any unifying theme. The realization of the impossibility of a single unifying grand narrative results in the acceptance of the epistemological fragmentation that is the Postmodern condition.

Giddens disagrees with Lyotard. He considers the contemporary world to be the result of the ongoing unfolding of Modern themes. Instead of pointing to a shift from Modern to Postmodern Giddens points back to the shift from the Traditional to the Modern. The consequences of Modernity are still coming to fruition. We are not entering a new Postmodern Era but rather we are in the process of finally fully leaving behind the Traditional era.

Giddens describes a number of discontinuities between the Traditional and the Modern. There was a shift in our understanding and experience of space and time. In the Modern era time and space became bounded and measured. Space is now meticulously mapped out. Time is now strictly kept track of down to the milisecond. This was not the case in the previous age. Knowledge and value went through a related process of refinement or what Gideens calls "dissembedding". Within the boundaries of their areas of specialization experts map out and perfect their knowledge. Value becomes disembedded with the use of the symbolic tokens that we call money.

In part due to these expert systems and symbolic tokens we see a change from Traditional forms of trust to the Modern forms of trust. In Traditional times trust was more personal and intimate. It was safeguarded by concepts like honor, sin as well as traditional forms of superstition (as opposed to our Modern forms of superstition). In Modern times trust has become abstract and anonymous. We trust now not in people but in abstract systems. We trust that there will be food at the supermarket. We trust that the plane will get us there close to on time. We trust that the house will not fall on us. This trust is based on an interwoven network of experts such as supermarket owners, pilots and architects. We in turn play the some similar impersonal expert role for others as a way of earning money. We trust in the experts because they are being paid. Thus money, as well as a sort of general faith in the overall system of experts is foundational to this Modern form of trust.

These fundamental changes from Tradional to Modern forms are still playing out. We have not yet seen the final consequences of Modernity so we can hardly claim to have reached Postmodernity. Giddens presents us with a paradigm shift that allows us to see Modernity with fresh eyes. It is in effect an attempt to lay the foundations for what Lyotard would call a grand narrative. Giddens to some extent successfully restores our hope in the possibility of a unifying grand narrative but there are places in which the argument begins to dissolve; but then, the same can be said for Lyotard's attempts to convince us to abandon all hope in the possibility of a unifying grand narrative.

When evaluating Anthony Gidden's The Consequences of Modernity, it is useful to recognize that it was first presented as a series of lectures in 1988, when the post-modern perspective was still fairly fresh and influential. It's proponents sought to persuade us that a qualitative change in world view had occurred, with epistemological and practical consequences more dramatic than, say, the transformation from feudalism to capitalism beginning in Fourteenth Century Europe.

Some of the central tenets of the post-modern perspective were not new, including radical anti-foundationalism and thoroughgoing decentering, both of which contributed to putting each of us on his or her own, uncertain of the rectitude of any moral code or ethical standards. We found ourselves alone in a chaotic world where men and women had no special claim to privileged status.

Beyond that, post-modernism made the unsettling judgment that all good-faith truth claims were equally worthy of consideration, meaning that science was just one endeavor among many and should not be granted special credibility. An oft cited concept was discontinuity, meaning not only that history was not teleological, but that efforts to find consistency over time resulted in ill-conceived narratives, sloughing over ruptures and breaks that gave the lie to claims of interpretable unity.

The world was an epistemological mess, and little or nothing could be known with certainty. Insofar as the ambient context provided a social and cultural home for mankind, it was a frighteningly unstable one, where identities were inherently precarious, and there was nothing to grab on to that would introduce even a modicum of knowledge-based security.

Giddens understood that the post-modern point of view was not wholly without merit, but he rejected it in favor an alternative which held that what was mistaken for an epistemological revolution was, in fact, the further elaboration of modernity, making for rapid, compelling, even dizzyingly inexplicable change in the social and cultural world. Post-modernism, thus, was really an extension of themes that had existed in rudimentary form since the beginning of the modern era.

The intensification of modernity, following Giddens, is best understood as a concomitant of globalization, a term we toss around carelessly, but which bears careful examination, especially with regard to the themes of capitalism, industrialization, rationality, and reflexive monitoring.

Capitalism, for example, was once an economic system that occurred in specific forms in distinct social formations. Marx, however, had long since recognized that capitalism had no boundaries, and he spoke of world markets. By the time Giddens wrote The Consequences of Modernity, it was clear that capitalism had become a world system. With the development of large multi-national corporations, their shifting investment patterns brought low-wage employment to Third World countries, while leaving once high-wage workers in the First World unemployed. Unpredictable life-altering events that financed slum life in Mumbai while transforming Detroit and Gary into de-industrialized waste lands were commonplace. Vast expanses of space were no obstacle to rationally calculable profit seeking. As the post-modernists had argued, life had become uncontrollably precarious and unstable, but contrary to their view, no new concepts were needed to account for that transformation.

Globalization was also facilitated by evermore rapid and widespread industrialization, and by production of scientific and technological innovations that reconfigured existing patterns of social relations at work and elsewhere. Industrialization, an ally of capitalism, resulted in wholesale replacement of workers by machines, whether they were powered by diesel or electricity, driven by pistons or microcircuits. Fast-paced industrialization contributed to the uncertainty that accompanies rapid social change, and it demanded substantial expertise on the part of the remaining workers, as well as trust in arcane techniques on the part of those who consumed industrial processes and products. Consumers had to use their layman's knowledge to strike a balance between their trust in science and technology and the risk entailed in the knowledge that accidents happen and nothing is ever perfectly engineered.

Furthermore, the expertise that makes industrialization possible could be brought to bear anywhere in the world. Again, even vast expanses of space were no obstacle, and as with capitalist production and distribution, time was irrelevant. Instantaneous communication, even before the internet, assured that everyone functioned according to the same schedule. The distinctiveness of localities that was once intrinsic to the idea of community was undercut, further exaggerating our sense of uncertainty and social and cultural homelessness.

Both capitalism and industrialization give priority to rational calculability in pursuit of competitive advantage and efficiency, while constantly monitoring the world environment for hitherto unnoticed opportunities and ideas. Rationally calculable pursuit of profits and market share, moreover, easily sweeps aside tradition and established communities, leaving large numbers socially and culturally bereft. Again, constant monitoring and instantaneous communication are merely obvious extensions of ongoing capitalist development and industrialization, including the phenomena that post-modernists had misconstrued as fostering the advent of a qualitatively different world view.

Giddens' argument is persuasive, though he sometimes resorts to gratuitous use of concepts of his own in a way that turns a thematically coherent account into a by-the-numbers treatise that is a bit harder to follow than need be. His reliance on the work of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber makes his book readily accessible to anyone with a background in sociology. Those unaccustomed to reading sociological theorizing may find the book a bit slow going but still manageable. Whether or not The Consequences of Modernity was the last, best word on the decline of post-modernism, it forces us to reflect on the processes and products of social change attendant to globalization, as other reviewers have noted.

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.

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.

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.

The title itself sounds dangerous, however, the time I read this book makes me aware how far humanities came into destroying the human race. This is the reason why I advocate to all students and reader to fight back against globalization because this is part of what the book it says. The main core of the book or Anthony Giddens thought is that reflexivity of modernity is dangerous. Human are becoming distrusted, playing something that is move by self-centered interest. I know there are consequences of modernity, that is when we abuse our knowledge or intellect, when we are using this modern technology in destruction and in wrong way.

Anythony Giddens, book "The consequences of modernity," is excellently phrased and written. However, the book tends to be a bit too concentrated, providing for an interesting night of reading. I was assigned this book for a sociology class and found it a difficult read. I did enjoy his arguements and thesis. I don't reccomend this book for pleasure reading!