ANTHONY GIDDENS

The Institutional Approach to Modernity

• The transformation of time and space: Time-space
distanciation (the invention of the clock marked
the separation of time and space) This led to:
• Disembedding of social relations from their
specific contexts. (two mechanisms are at work
here: (a) symbolic tokens, (b) expert systems.
• Trust: Trust is related to absence of time and
space; it is necessary when full information is not
available; it is bound up with contingency; we
attribute reliability or probity to whatever we trust.
 Characteristics of Modernity (cont.)

• Reflexivity:While it defines all human activity, it

takes on a specific meaning in the modern world.
• The reflexivity of modern social life consists in
the fact that social practices are constantly
examined in the light of incoming information
about those very practices, thus constitutively
altering their character.
• This is especially true of knowledge produced by
the social sciences.
 Re-embedding
• The necessity to pin down disembedded social
relations in specific times and places.
• ‘face work’ (face-to-face interaction) VS.
‘faceless’ commitments ( to symbolic tokens or
expert systems)
• Why do people trust? A question of ontological
security (basic trust VS. existential Ansgst or
dread) Everyday trust VS. mistrust
 TRUST vs. RISK
• Personal relationships • Dangers in the modern
(sexual or otherwise) world’s capacity for
• Abstract systems which reflexivity
stabilize relationships • The threat of violence
across time and space from the industrialization
• Future-oriented of war
counterfactual thinking • The threat of personal
(future is more important meaninglessness that also
than the past) comes from reflexivity
 ADAPTATIONS TO RISKS
• Pragmatic acceptance (‘surviving’)
• Sustained optimism
• Cynical pessimism
• Radical engagement
 RADICALIZED MODERNITY
• Post-modernity or ‘radicalized modernity’?
• The meaning of ‘radicalized modernity’:
‘the dissolution of evolutionism, the
disappearance of historical teleology, the
recognition of thoroughgoing, constitutive
reflexivity, together with the evaporating of
the privileged position of the West”. p.52
 A PHENOMENOLOGY OF
MODERNITY
• Modernity as a ‘juggernaut’, beyond
control, full of tensions and
contradicitons
• Displacement VS. Re-embedding
• Intimacy VS. Impersonality
• Expertise VS. Re-appropriation
• Privatism VS. Engagement