2021/03/14

Ulrich Beck - Wikipedia

Ulrich Beck - Wikipedia

Ulrich Beck

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Ulrich Beck
Beck-St-Gallen-Symposium.png
Ulrich Beck, 2012
Born15 May 1944
Stolp, Germany
(now Słupsk, Poland)
Died1 January 2015 (aged 70)[1]
Munich, Germany
NationalityGerman
OccupationSociologist

Ulrich Beck (15 May 1944 – 1 January 2015) was a well known German sociologist, and one of the most cited social scientists in the world during his lifetime.[citation needed] His work focused on questions of uncontrollability, ignorance and uncertainty in the modern age, and he coined the terms "risk society" and "second modernity" or "reflexive modernization". He also tried to overturn national perspectives that predominated in sociological investigations with a cosmopolitanism that acknowledges the interconnectedness of the modern world. He was a professor at the University of Munich and also held appointments at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) in Paris, and at the London School of Economics.

Life[edit]

Ulrich Beck in his flat in Munich, 1999

Beck was born in the Pomeranian town of Stolp, Germany (now Słupsk in Poland), in 1944, and grew up in Hanover. He began university studies with a focus on law at Freiburg, and from 1966 onwards studied sociology, philosophy, psychology and political science at the University of Munich. Starting in 1972, after earning a doctorate, he was employed at Munich as a sociologist. In 1979 he qualified as a university lecturer with a habilitation thesis. He received appointments as professor at the universities of Münster (1979–1981) and Bamberg (1981–1992). From 1992 until his death, Beck was professor of sociology and director of the Institute for Sociology at the University of Munich. He received numerous international awards and honors, including election to the Council and Executive Board of the German Society for Sociology.

From 1995 to 1997 he was a member of the Kommission für Zukunftsfragen der Freistaaten Bayern und Sachsen (Bavarian and Saxon State Commission for Questions Concerning the Future). Beginning in 1999, he was the speaker of the DFG research programme on reflexive modernity.

From 1999 to 2009 Beck was a spokesman of the Collaborative Reflexive Modernization Research Centre 536, an interdisciplinary consortium of four universities in the Munich area funded and overseen by the German Research Foundation (DFG).[2] Beck's theory of interdisciplinary reflexive modernization on a basis of a wide range of topics in appropriate research was empirically tested. The theory of reflexive modernization works from the basic idea that the rise of the modern industrial age produces side-effects across the globe that provide the institutional basis and coordinates that modern nation-states question, modify, and open for political action.[3]

He was active as sociologist and public intellectual in Germany and throughout the world, regularly intervening in debates on the European Union, climate change and nuclear energy. At the time of his death, he and his international research group were only 1.5 years into the 5-year research project "Methodological Cosmopolitanism – in the Laboratory of Climate Change" (the Cosmo-Climate Research Project), of which Beck was the Principal investigator. For this research project he received the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant, scheduled to terminate in 2018.[4] Along with Beck, sociologists David Tyfield and Anders Blok lead work packages within the overall project.[5] The project also fostered international research collaboration with various research 'hubs' in East Asia through the Europe-Asia Research Network (EARN).[6] In cooperation with EARN, Beck and sociologist Sang-Jin Han had been set to lead a 2-year project for the Seoul Metropolitan Government beginning in 2015.[7]

Beck was a member of the Board of Trustees at the Jewish Center in Munich and a member of the German branch of PEN International.

He was married to the German social scientist Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. He died of a myocardial infarction on 1 January 2015, at the age of 70.[8]

Research contributions[edit]

For 25 years, Beck delivered new diagnoses to the following question: How can social and political thought and action in the face of radical global change (environmental destruction, financial crisis, global warming, the crisis of democracy and the nation-state institutions) be intertwined in a new modernity?[9] A radicalized modernity, for Beck, attacks its own foundations. Institutions such as the nation-state and the family are globalized 'from the inside'.

Beck studied modernization, ecological problems, individualization and globalization. Later in his career, he embarked on exploring the changing conditions of work in a world of increasing global capitalism, declining influence of unions and flexibilisation of the labour process, a then new theory rooted in the concept of cosmopolitanism. Beck also contributed a number of new words to German and anglophone sociology, including "risk society", "second modernity", reflexive modernization and Brazilianization (Brasilianisierung).[citation needed] According to Beck, all contemporary political thinking emanates from the methodological nationalism of political thought and sociology (and other social sciences).[10]

Main article: Risk society

Risk society was coined by Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens during the 1980s. According to Beck and Giddens, the traditional industrial class structure of modern society is breaking apart. Globalization creates risks that concern people from all different classes; for example, radioactivity, pollution, and even unemployment. Affluent households act to insulate themselves from these risks, but cannot do so for some; for example global environmental change. The poor suffer them. He points out that risks are also socially constructed and some risks are perceived as more dangerous because they are discussed in mass media more frequently, such as terrorism. Risk society leads to analysis of risks, causing prejudgment.[11]

Beck was the editor of the sociological journal, Soziale Welt [de] (in German, since 1980), author of some 150 articles, and author or editor of many books.

The Spinelli Group[edit]

On 15 September 2010, Beck supported the European Parliament's Spinelli Group initiative to reinvigorate federalism in the European Union. The Union of European Federalists and its youth organisation Young European Federalists have been promoting the idea of European federalism for over 60 years, with a "belief that only a European Federation, based on the idea of unity in diversity, could overcome the division of the European continent".[12] Prominent supporters of the initiative include Jacques Delors, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt, Andrew Duff and Elmar Brok.[citation needed]

Awards[edit]

  • 1996 City of Munich Cultural Prize of Honour
  • 1999 CICERO speaker price award
  • 1999 German-British Forum Award for outstanding service to German-British relations (together with Anthony Giddens)[13]
  • 2004 Award of DGS for outstanding achievements in the field of public achievement in sociology
  • 2005 Schader Prize, the most prestigious award for social scientists in Germany
  • 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to Future Research of the International Sociological Association[14]
  • In 2013 he received an ERC advanced grant to carry out the Cosmo-Climate Research Project (Methodological Cosmopolitanism: In the Laboratory of Climate Change), with David Tyfield and Anders Blok amongst others.
  • Honorary doctorates (8): University of Jyväskylä, Finland (1996), University of Macerata,Italy (2006), University of Madrid (UNED), Spain (2007), Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (2010), University of Lausanne, Switzerland (2011), Free University of Varna, Bulgaria (2011), University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2013), St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria (2013).[15]

Works[edit]

Among his major works are:

  • Beck, Ulrich (1974) Objectivity and normativity. The theory-practice debate in modern German and American sociology. Reinbek, Rowohlt.
  • Beck, Ulrich with Michael Brater and Hans Jürgen (1980). Home: sociology of work and occupations. Basics, problem areas, research results, Rowohlt paperback Verlag GmbH, Reinbek.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1986) Risikogesellschaft – Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Risk Society)
  • Beck, Ulrich (1988) Gegengifte : die organisierte Unverantwortlichkeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage
  • Beck, Ulrich & Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1994) Riskante Freiheiten – Gesellschaftliche Individualisierungsprozesse in der Moderne
  • Beck, Ulrich & Giddens, Anthony & Lash Scott (1994) Reflexive Modernization.Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Vossenkuhl, Ziegler, photographs by T. Rautert (1995) Eigenes Leben – Ausflüge in die unbekannte Gesellschaft, in der wir leben
  • Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth & Beck, Ulrich (1995) The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1995) Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1996) The Reinvention of Politics.Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1997) Was ist Globalisierung?
  • Beck, Ulrich (1998) Democracy without Enemies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1998) World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (1999) What Is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (2000) The Brave New World of Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Adam, Barbara & Beck, Ulrich & Van Loon, Joost (2000) The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory. London: Sage.
  • Beck, Ulrich & Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (2002) Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences. London: Sage.
  • Beck, Ulrich & Willms, Johannes (2003) Conversations with Ulrich Beck. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (2005) Power in the Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich (2006) Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, U., & Grande, E. (2007). Cosmopolitan Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich. (2009). World at Risk. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Angelika Poferl and Ulrich Beck (eds.) (2010) Große Armut, großer Reichtum. Zur Transnationalisierung sozialer Ungleichheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
  • Beck, Ulrich & Grande, Edgar (2010) "Varieties of second modernity: extra-European and European experiences and perspectives" British Journal of Sociology, Vol 61, Issue 3, pages 406–638.
  • Beck, Ulrich (2012) Das deutsche Europa, Berlin
  • Beck, Ulrich (2013) German Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Beck, Ulrich and Ciaran Cronin (2014) Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Essays[edit]

  • ”World citizens of all countries, unite! Democracy beyond the nation-state: Europe must make a beginning. Theses for a cosmopolitan manifesto”. (World Citizen manifest) in. The Time, 1998 No. 30
  • ”The Society of the Less. The burst dream of the rise in Germany”, ZDF, 17 January 2005
  • ”Gentle world power Europe. Vision of a cosmopolitan empire that no longer relies on national ideas”, in: Frankfurter Rundschau 5 July 2005
  • ”Blind to reality”, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 3 September 2005
  • ”Europe can not be built on the ruins of the nations”, with Anthony Giddens, In: The World, 1 October 2005
  • ”Farewell to the utopia of full employment”, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 4 November 2006
  • ”Tragic individualization”, in: Sheets for German and international politics, 2007, Issue 5, pp 577-584.
  • ”God is dangerous” in Die Zeit, 2007 No. 52.
  • ”The error of the caterpillar”, in: Frankfurt general newspaper 14 June 2011
  • ”Fainting, but legitimate”, in: the daily newspaper (taz) 28 October 2011
  • ”Machiavellis power”, in: Der Spiegel, 8 October 2012
  • ”For a European Spring!”, in: the daily newspaper (taz), 23 November 2012

Interviews[edit]

  • “Freedom or capitalism”. Ulrich Beck in an interview with Johannes Willms, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2000
  • ”Interview, Telepolis”, 28 November 1997
  • "Choice will not save the country," interview in New Window
  • ”An encounter” (Memento of 6 July 2007 at the Internet Archive) with Beck on Lake Starnberg, Der Tagesspiegel 23 September 2005
  • "Unemployment is a victory": Interview with Constantine Sakkas, in: Der Tagesspiegel on 30 November 2006.
  • "Anyone can create their own God," in the Tagesspiegel of 20 July 2008
  • ”Questions of faith. A new enthusiasm”, talk with Arno Widmann, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 15. August 2008
  • ”Action in the state of not knowing”. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society theorists, on the turncoats of the financial crisis and the importance of Europe. in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 5 November 2008
  • ”Merkel engages in the dressing up box in”: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12. February 2010
  • ”A strategically staged mistake”, talk with Andreas Zielcke in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14. March 2011
  • ”In bed with the others”, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim in conversation with Ulrich Gutmair, in: taz: Die Tageszeitung 12 October 2011 at
  • ”The common identity should first be identified”, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim in conversation with Jeanette Villa Chica, in: Tages-Anzeiger, 9 November 2011
  • ”Love across national borders”, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, in: Time Campus 22 November 2011
  • ”About the Merkiavellismus”, talk with Nils Minkmar, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 January 2013
  • ”More Willy Brandt dare Ulrich Beck and Martin Schulz on the future of Europe”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 May 2013

Literature on Beck[edit]

  • Richard Albrecht, Differentiation - pluralization - individualization: make-up process in the German society, in: Trade union Monatshefte, Vol 41 (1990), No. 8, S.503-512 (PDF, 137 kB)
  • Klaus Dörre. Reflexive modernization - a transition theory.
  • For analytical potential of a popular sociological time diagnosis, Ruhr-University Bochum, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, mediocrity and madness. A proposal to goodness, trans, mediocrity and madness.. Collected distractions, SuhrkampFrankfurt am Main 1988, pp 250-276
  • Monika E. Fischer: Space and time. The forms of adult learning of modernization theory point of view, publishing Schneider Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2007 ISBN 978-3-8340-0266-2
  • Ronald Hitzler: Ulrich Beck, in: Current theories of sociology. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt to Postmodernism, Dirk Kaesler, CH Beck editors, Munich, 2005, pp 267-285, ISBN 3-406-52822-8
  • Karl Otto Hondrich. The dialectic of collectivization and individualization - the example of couple relationships, in: From Politics and History, H. 53, 1998 [25 December 1998], pp 3-8
  • Thomas Kron (ed.): Individualization and sociological theory, Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2000 ISBN 3-8100-2505-4
  • Angelika Poferl: Ulrich Beck, in: Stephan Moebius / Dirk Quad Fly ( ed.): Culture. Theories of the present, VS Verlag für Social Sciences, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14519-3
  • Angelika Poferl / Natan Sznaider (ed.): Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan project. On the way to another sociology, Nomos, Baden-Baden 2004
  • Armin Pongs: Ulrich Beck - The Risk Society, trans .: What kind of society are we living in? [1999] dilemma Verlag, Munich 2007, pp 47-66
  • Gisela Riescher: Political Theory in the presence of individual representations of Adorno Young, Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, pp 43–46, ISBN 3-520-34301-0
  • Volker Stork: The "second modernity" - a brand? To Antiquiertheit and negativity of social utopia of Ulrich Beck, UVK Verl.-Ges., Konstanz 2001, ISBN 3-89669-802-8

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Communiqué de la maison d'édition d'Ulrich Beck de son décès". Suhrkamp Verlag. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  2. ^ Collaborative Reflexive Modetnization Research Centre 536
  3. ^ Ulrich Beck and Wolfgang Bonß (ed.): The modernization of modernity. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2001; Ulrich Beck and Christoph Lau (ed.): Delimitation and Decision. Frankfurt 2004 special issue of the journal Social World: theory and empirical reflexive modernization, 2005
  4. ^ "Methodological Cosmopolitanism - In the Laboratory of Climate Change | ERC: European Research Council". web.archive.org. 8 March 2017.
  5. ^ Institut, Webmaster på Sociologisk (15 September 2015). "Project: Greening Cosmopolitan Urbanism". Sociologisk Institut – Københavns Universitet. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  6. ^ "三星堆文物亮相上海，再现古蜀文明5000年的前世今生 | 荐展No.114 - 阳江市搬家客服中心". cosmostudies.com.
  7. ^ "İSA Global Diyalog Projesi". www.isa-global-dialogue.net.
  8. ^ "Ulrich Beck obituary". the Guardian. 6 January 2015.
  9. ^ Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2007
  10. ^ Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande: Beyond methodological nationalism: Non-European and European variations of the second modernity, in: Social World 2010
  11. ^ See also: Joachim Möller, Achim Schmillen: Hohe Konzentration auf wenige – steigendes Risiko für alle (IAB-Kurzbericht 24/2008)
  12. ^ "Union of European Federalists (UEF): History". www.federalists.eu. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  13. ^ German-British Forum Awards Archived 14 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Programm XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 August 2014.
  15. ^ Soziologe Prof. Dr. Ulrich Beck wird neuer Ehrendoktor der Katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Archived 5 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Mitteilung der Katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt vom 8. November 2010; retrieved, 3 January 2015

External links[edit]

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The Politics of Climate Change 2nd Edition, Kindle Edition
by Anthony Giddens  (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars    35 ratings

"A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era. I urge everyone to read it."
Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America

Since it first appeared, this book has achieved a classic status. Reprinted many times since its publication, it remains the only work that looks in detail at the political issues posed by global warming. This new edition has been thoroughly updated and provides a state-of-the-art discussion of the most formidable challenge humanity faces this century.

If climate change goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people and for many policy-makers too, it tends to be a back-of-the-mind issue. We recognize its importance and even its urgency, but for the most part it is swamped by more immediate concerns.

Political action and intervention on local, national and international levels are going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. However, at the moment, argues Giddens, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics-as-usual won't allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. Giddens introduces a range of new concepts and proposals to fill in the gap, and examines in depth the connections between climate change and energy security.




4.6 out of 5 stars 63
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Editorial Reviews
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"Remarkable for its range and scope. Concise, yet comprehensive, it examines the climate problem from a variety of standpoints; historical, scientific, financial and geo-political. Always calm and reasonable in tone, Giddens resists the urge to scapegoat and condemn the most offending countries and industries."
Irish Examiner

"This timely updated reissue of Anthony Giddens' ground breaking book reminds us that the problems he discusses have not gone away."
Diplomat
Acclaim for the first edition:

"One of those rare seminal works that will likely influence policy-makers over the next several generations."
Journal of World Energy Law and Business

"Giddens' is a simple message, argued with great clarity and power, that brings a new dimension to the debate."
Book of the week in the Times Higher Education

"A very useful introduction to the issues, and crucially shifts the focus away from targets and environmentalist frames towards the substance of economic and energy security interests, technology, state intervention and the limitations of the formal international climate negotiations."
Public Policy Research

"As well as providing a useful summary of a number of current debates in climate change policy - from the robustness of carbon markets and green taxes through to the role of government in fostering new technological solutions - Giddens makes a powerful contribution to the emerging debate."
Progress

"The Politics of Climate Change stands out in the crowded terrain of climate change publications by placing politics - rather than science or economics - at the center of the analysis ... there is much to recommend this book. It is up to date, with discussions of the recent global financial crisis and the change of leadership in the US. It takes a multilevel governance perspective on climate change governance and attempts to think about how the various components relate to one another. The book is accessible for the nonspecialist, making it appropriate for use in the classroom."
Environment and Planning C

"How do you create, maintain and renew majorities that encourage people, organisations and institutions to behave responsibly and well, especially when they have become accustomed to behaving irresponsibly and badly? This key question ... underlies everything in Anthony Giddens' important new book, The Politics of Climate Change. Giddens is clear that politicians make things worse by the tactic - much used by Brown in the economic field too - of simultaneously dramatising the threat and then pretending to have the unique measure of it, as the G20 may show."
Martin Kettle, The Guardian

"In challenging the standard criteria used by policy-makers to think about climate change, and by offering an alternative set, Giddens shows how a real national and European debate can finally occupy the political foreground."
Times of Malta

"The prospect of disruptive climate change should be high on the international agenda: it raises issues of politics, economics and equity that are even more complex than the science. This balanced and comprehensive assessment by a distinguished author should be widely read by politicians and policymakers."
Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge

"An incisive and highly original contribution."
Ulrich Beck, University of Munich

--This text refers to the paperback edition.
About the Author
Anthony Giddens is the former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is now a member of the House of Lords. His many books include The Third Way and Europe in the Global Age. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
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ASIN : B00CIRIWIK
Publisher : Polity; 2nd edition (April 22, 2013)

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Biography
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities.

Three notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field, based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971) and The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (1973). In the second stage Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an analysis of agency and structure, in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of that period, such as New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) and The Constitution of Society (1984), brought him international fame on the sociological arena.

The most recent stage concerns modernity, globalisation and politics, especially the impact of modernity on social and personal life. This stage is reflected by his critique of postmodernity, and discussions of a new "utopian-realist" third way in politics, visible in the Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998). Giddens' ambition is both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity.

Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics 1997–2003, where he is now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Szusi [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Bic
4.0 out of 5 stars An Important and Thoughtful Book
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2014
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Giddens has written an important book about climate change. It informs rather than denounces, and it is filled with information and ideas that are not just valuable for policy makers but for any citizen interested in contributing to a better world (or any world at all, as I think of it). Don't look for snazzy prose. Giddens is not a bomb-throwing partisan. But he has convictions, and he combines those with thoughtful analysis.
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Matt Robinson
4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Well Written
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2014
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A well-written insight into what impacts climate change policies around the world. There were some surprises for me as well as clarity around some well-known truths about how people and nation states deal with the realities of a changing environment. I recommend it.
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ANDREA
4.0 out of 5 stars very recommended.
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2016
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Very explanatory. very recommended.
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FictionFan
4.0 out of 5 stars A clear and accessible summary...
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2013
In this book, Giddens firstly urges us to accept the overwhelming consensus of opinion amongst scientists that climate change is real and caused by the actions of humanity, and then goes on to consider what actions will be required if we are to overcome this global threat.

Over the first few chapters, Giddens looks at where we are now. He starts by giving an overview of the scientific evidence and discusses the counter-arguments of sceptics and radicals, concluding that the science strongly supports the position that climate change is happening, is caused by human activity and is likely to have catastrophic consequences if action is not taken quickly. He looks at the availability of oil, gas and coal and how their production and use have shaped and changed international relationships and policy since the Second World War. He goes on to discuss the rise of 'green' politics and whether they offer any real solutions to the problems facing us.

In the next few sections, Giddens lays out his stall for the approaches he thinks are required. He argues strongly for a lead to be taken by governments of nation states individually (rather than waiting for the outcome of lengthy international negotiations) to develop policies that will encourage reductions in emissions - particularly through the use of the tax system and the encouragement of technological innovation. He highlights that climate change questions have, to some degree, become seen to be a 'left-wing' concern and points out that it is essential to success that all-party support is given to measures if they are to be accepted by those who will be affected. He urges strongly the principle of 'polluter pays' and suggests this should be extended to look at the developed world's responsibility to ensure support for developing and undeveloped countries in combatting climate change and in adapting to its effects.

Finally, Giddens looks at how international co-operation has developed to date and how he sees it progressing. He suggests that, as well as the various groupings of countries that are coming into being to tackle the issues regionally, the UN still has a vital role to play in monitoring and holding states to internationally agreed targets.

The book is well written and aimed at a general audience. It is a succinct account of where we are now and provides food for thought on how we might progress. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the on-going climate change debate (and, as this book makes clear, it affects us all). I found it a clear and accessible summary of the main arguments.

NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.
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Lost John
4.0 out of 5 stars "Responding to climate change has to be closely integrated with questions of energy security"
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2011
A second, fully revised edition of The Politics of Climate Change after just two and a half years is good going. But then, Anthony Giddens is a co-founder of Polity, the book's publisher, and the first edition appears to have done well for them. And the book does indeed seem to have been revised throughout, referring not just superficially to 2010 data and to current events of the early months of 2011 such as the Wikileaks revelation of American diplomatic e-mail communications and the acquisition by China of Canadian shale-gas interests.

Before turning to politics, the book provides an overview of the Climate Change situation, relating it closely to world energy sources and supplies. Giddens' view is that it would be a fundamental mistake to consider the politics of the two areas of interest separately. Energy supplies are integrally related to geopolitics. Peak oil, the point at which the flow of oil begins to decline, cannot be far off. If nations revert to burning coal, that will be seriously detrimental for the greenhouse gas, global warming and Climate Change situation. Worse yet if we seek to augment oil supplies from tar sands. Policy decisions on future energy supplies must be made in tandem with, must be part and parcel of, policy decisions relating to Climate Change.

Giddens is wary of terms incorporating the words 'green' or 'sustainable development', and is downright scornful of 'saving the planet'. There is the possibility that in the longer term the earth may experience a runaway greenhouse situation (as per Venus), where water vapor from the oceans is permanently lost to space; and according to James Hansen, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a prominent Climate Change activist, that scenario will become a "dead certainty" if we burn the tar sands. Nevertheless, Giddens insists, the earth itself will survive; our need is to preserve, and if possible enhance, a decent way of life for human beings. He is keen to move and keep that objective within the sphere of mainstream politics, and not allow it to become or remain the preserve of readily ignored special interest groups.

Whilst promoting and further developing renewable forms of energy derived from sunlight, wind and water, and biomass energy that does not compete with food supplies, he sees no alternative in the short to medium term to reversing the present downward trend in energy derived from nuclear fission. And of course there is still much to be done in terms of reduction of consumption and wastage of energy.

Certain countries have been particularly tardy in addressing Climate Change problems; the United States being one of them, Russia a perhaps even more recalcitrant case, and China essentially non-cooperative until quite recently, but now showing signs of change. The politics of the issue are especially relevant both to why these and other countries have been slow in their responses, and to the global movement - particularly through the United Nations' annual Climate Summits - to galvanize all into concerted and effective action. As the outcome of Summit after Summit is initially hailed as a serious disappointment (the latest being Durban, December 2011), it is heartening to note Giddens' summary of a progression of real achievement (even in Copenhagen in 2009), often apparent only after some months of quiet diplomatic follow-up.

But, whilst progress is being made, for Giddens we are still doing too little, and in some respects already too late. He has coined this 'Paradox': "Since the dangers posed by global warming aren't tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day to day life, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them. Yet waiting until such dangers become visible and acute - in the shape of catastrophes - that are irrefutably the result of climate change before being stirred to serious action will be too late. For we know of no way of getting the greenhouse gases out again once they are there and most will be in the atmosphere for centuries."
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Atif Iqbal
5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Book
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Anthony Giddens book is fantastic. He presents a lot of credible evidence, to prove that human endured climate change is rapidly threatening the world and our species.
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Thomas A. Regelski
4.0 out of 5 stars A little dated
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Adds little to what is already known. The writing is stiff and academic. But a reliable source of the information and ideas it covers.
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3.0 out of 5 stars and a little counter intuitive to some - nuclear is bad for us
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Ignoring the fact that it's a bit of a dry read, the primary critique of this book, I have found, is its espousal of the use of nuclear energy as a deterrent to climate change. Although anti-nuclear camps will argue that it is irresponsible of Giddens to suggest nuclear, it is important to keep in mind that he is dealing with the argument not in an attempt to save the planet - which will undoubtedly continue on without us - but in an attempt to ensure the survival of the human race. This seems grandiose in scale, and a little counter intuitive to some - nuclear is bad for us, we say. However, considering the fate of the humankind, to Giddens, is to burn up in global heating, a few patches of radiation is small potatoes. It is important to keep this in mind, whether you are pro or anti nuclear (or even a fence sitter).
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5.0 out of 5 stars Must read
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The Transformation of Intimacy by Anthony Giddens | Goodreads

The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies by Anthony Giddens | Goodreads

The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies
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The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies
by Anthony Giddens
 3.73  ·   Rating details ·  383 ratings  ·  19 reviews
The sexual revolution: an evocative term, but what meaning can be given to it today? How does “sexuality” come into being, and what connections does it have with the changes that have affected personal life more generally? In answering these questions, the author disputes many of the dominant interpretations of the role of sexuality in modern culture.

The author suggests that the revolutionary changes in which sexuality has become cauth up are more long-term than generally conceded. He sees them as intrinsic to the development of modern societies as a whole and to the broad characteristics of that development. Sexuality as we know it today is a creation of modernity, a terrain upon which the contradictory tendencies of modern social life play themselves out in full. Emancipation and oppression, opportunity and risk—these have become a part of a heady mix that irresistably ties our individual lives to global outcomes and the transformation of intimacy.

We live today in a social order in which, for the first time in histroy, women are becoming equal to men—or at least have lodged a claim to such equality as their right. The author does not attempt to analyze the gender inequalities that persist in the economic or political domains, but instead concentrates on a more hisdden personal area in which women—ordinary women, in the course of their day-to-day lives, quite apart from any political agenda—have pioneered changes of greate, and generalizable, importance. These changes essentially concern an exploration of the potentialities of the “pure relationship,” a relaitonship that presumes sexual and emotional equality, and is explosive in its connotations for pre-existing relations of power.

The author analyzes the emergence of what he calls plastic sexuality—sexuality freed from its intrinsic relation to reproduction—in terms of the emotional emancipation implicit in the pure relationship, as well as women’s claim to sexual pleasure. Plastic sexuality is decentered sexuality, freed from both reproduction and subservience to a fixed object. It can be molded as a trait of personality, and thus become bound up with the reflexivity of the self. Premised on plastic sexuality, the pure relationship is not exclusively heterosexual; it is neutral in terms of sexual orientation.

The author speculates that the transformaion of intimacy might be a subversive influence on modern institutions as a whole, for a social world in which the dominant ideal was to achieve intinsic rewards from the company of others might be vastly different from that which we know at the present. (less)
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Paperback, 216 pages
Published October 1st 1993 by Stanford University Press (first published 1992)
Original TitleThe Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies
ISBN0804722145 (ISBN13: 9780804722148)
Edition LanguageEnglish
Other Editions (26)
Mahremiyetin Dönüşümü: Modern Toplumlarda Cinsellik, Aşk ve Erotizm 
La transformación de la intimidad: sexualidad, amor y erotismo en las Sociedades Modernas 
Transformation of Intimacy: Seksualitas, Cinta dan Erotisme dalam Masyarakat Modern 
A Transformação da Intimidade: Sexualidade, Amor e Erotismo nas Sociedades Modernas 
La trasformazione dell'intimità: Sessualità, amore ed erotismo nelle società moderne
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 Average rating3.73  ·  Rating details ·  383 ratings  ·  19 reviews

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Therese
Jul 07, 2020Therese rated it really liked it
Shelves: research-authoritarianism, dating-and-relationships, politics-and-society, philosophy, psychology, womens-issues
This is a sociologist's perspective on how concepts of intimacy and relationships have changed since the sexual revolution of the 1960s. I was interested in it because I'm trying to understand authoritarianism at both the political and personal level, and part of my thinking is that there is a relationship between authoritarian attitudes and intimacy, since authoritarianism revolves around control, and controlling another person is arguably a form of intimacy, in which there's a breaking down of barriers between two wills to enable the intrusion of one will into another.

I think it was Giddens who first introduced the concept of "pure relationships" in sociology. This refers to consensual relationships people have just for the sake of their own happiness and fulfillment, which they can leave at will. Giddens idea is that such relationships have become more common and more of an ideal since the sexual revolution, particularly for women and GLBTQ folks. The idea of the pure relationship differs from e.g. traditional marriage, which was more of a practical economic arrangement, or the notion of romantic love or sexual license that was driven by emotional or physical compulsion. A lot of people have struggled with this shift, for example, straight men and women in cases where the women have moved away from ideals of chastity and see sex as a prelude to an egalitarian relationship, but where the men don't want commitment and just want sex.

I mostly skimmed the chapters in the beginning and middle, because even though Giddens was doing important work by putting into words a lot of the changes that had been wrought by modernity, viewed from today's perspective it didn't feel very new or surprising to me. Where things got interesting was the last two chapters, where he discusses ideas from the philosopher Wilhelm Reich about repression and from Herbert Marcuse about "eros and civilization." (I haven't read Reich or Marcuse, so can't judge how accurately Giddens represents their thinking, but found the ideas interesting.) Reich was against bourgeois marriage as a repressive, authoritarian institution. He believed that traditional monogamous marriage served to develop authoritarian traits of character, which in turn supported an exploitative social system. Despite Reich's reputation as a wackadoodle crackpot, there's clearly some truth to this.

Marcuse's idea was that sexual emancipation should not be considered the same thing as just hedonism. Sexual love becomes liberating in combination with respect for the other as an equal, which disrupts the old traditional patriarchalist (authoritarian) family structure and also paves the way for broader egalitarian social citizenship. However, when sexual permissiveness turns into objectifying others as commodities of pleasure, it becomes just another form of oppressiveness.

In the last chapter of the book, Giddens expands on these ideas to talk about how egalitarian relationships between people can both follow a model of democracy at the personal level and reinforce egalitarian democracy at the political level. For me, this all goes toward showing how humanist ethics is foundational for democracy and how healthy interpersonal relationships based on mutual respect model healthy democracy as a system of governance. This contrasts with domestic abuse and violence, which models authoritarian governance - a point also made in a book I read about the mindset of domestic abusers, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. The latter book was written by a clinical psychologist who had spent decades working with abusers, and has an insightful chapter where the author argues that the mindset of abusers is also reflected in systems of social and political oppression.

Giddens's book can also be considered in combination with another book I panned in a review a while back, Mark Regnerus's Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy. Regnerus, as I pointed out, reveals himself as anti-individualist and authoritarian in his thinking, and his book revolves around contrasting Giddens's idea of the pure relationship with the "exchange" model of relationships - the more traditional idea of marriage as economic exchange. Regnerus loves the exchange model, is clearly nostalgic for the days when people could be said to "own" each other, and can't seem to get out of the dehumanizing idea of human beings as useful goods; Regnerus argues (obliquely, not directly) that the pure relationship model inevitably devolves into this commoditization of sex as consumption, and that the exchange model at least has the dignity of focusing on sexual exchange from a producer perspective instead of the consumer perspective.

I find Regnerus's views horrible, as I think real feminist emancipation is to treat women as human beings, not as objects, and it doesn't help to consider intimate relationships through the lens of economic production instead of as a consumer activity - the goal should be to go beyond such a limited view. Even while we recognize and concede that human beings will always see each other to some degree as useful means to various practical ends, there's also a humanist, ethical imperative to see each other as more than merely this, as ends in ourselves. Without this humanist respect for the sacredness of others' autonomy, it is all too easy to fall into authoritarian forms of relationship and governance in both the public and private spheres. (less)
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Sophia
Oct 28, 2014Sophia rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, psychology
The Transformation of Intimacy provides a comprehensive account of modern relationship dynamics. Giddens thought provoking offerings are always well justified. However his organization of the chapters, and content, isn't immediately evident. (less)
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Paz
Jan 31, 2013Paz rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition
Ehm. Sorry Antonio: mejor el título que el contenido.
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Nicole
Jul 20, 2012Nicole rated it it was ok
too many generalisations for my taste
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Guilherme Smee
Oct 23, 2017Guilherme Smee rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
Shelves: sociologia
1727 / 5000
Translation results
Unlike most books in the field of sociology, Anthony Giddens' theoretical prose is quite pleasant to read. This book could be a historical overview of how sexuality, love and eroticism - or, in short, intimacy - were viewed. But the author asks us the pressing questions first and then traces possible causes. Thus, he explains among many things how autonomy ended up damaging intimacy, especially in the case of men, who must prove to be "selfmade men" and not depend on anyone's help. A survey caught me saying that many men had no friends to share their intimacies with, and when they did, those friends were women. This says a lot about our culture, which is self-centered, which values ​​independence above anything, and which offers no chance for empathy and feelings. They treat them as if that were a sign of weakness, feelings proper to an inferior and abject being who, according to our culture, would be women. The "proclamation of independence" by men took place before women (the 30s and 40s compared to the 70s and 80s of women) and, therefore, they still need to assert themselves as free beings. The funny thing is that many women find it beautiful to be just like men, apathetic and without feelings, capable of everything to guarantee their individuality and independence. Would this be an inversion of values ​​or just a way of underlining "penis envy", since, as feminist Luce Irigaray says, women have a "hole" in their body and heart? A very disturbing question, but one that I leave with you ... I do not dare to answer. I'm just here to bother your life! Bjokas! =* (less)
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Monic
Jul 07, 2007Monic rated it it was amazing

Changing social conditions are the basis of all forms of personal relations. Human civilization towards modernity has changed the social system, social institutions and social values, and has an impact on changing human intimate relations. Giddens looks specifically at how intimacy goes hand in hand with social change. Especially gender equality which has space in the realities of social life. Without realizing it, this kind of daily development gave birth to a sexuality revolution. This does not merely change equality in the economic and political sphere, but also sexual and emotional equality. This kind of fracture of sexuality can certainly bring about a contestation between the sociological dimension and the psychological dimension of the individual, opening up emotional gaps between the two sexes and trying to change the form of human relations. Relations move in a round of adjustments between self-democratization in accordance with public democratization. Giddens gave rise to the concept of sincere relationships (less)
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Renato M.
Mar 20, 2012Renato M. rated it it was amazing
Anthony Giddens, LA TRASFORMAZIONE DELL'INTIMITA'. Sessualità, amore ed erotismo nelle società moderne (il Mulino. p.216):

"Too often dreams of romantic love have pushed women into domestic submission. Convergent love presupposes equality in the accounts of affective give and take, all the more so as the love relationship approaches the model of the pure relationship. it grows only as the degree of intimacy increases and each partner appears willing not only to reveal their concerns and needs to the other, but also to be vulnerable to them. their availability and their ability to be vulnerable "8p.72) A fundamental reading to understand the deep motivations of our relationship, coexistence and couple crises and to understand the great changes in our intimacy. Clear and simple reflections. Excellent translation by Delia Tasso: a special thanks to her. (less)
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Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age - Kindle edition by Giddens, Anthony. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age - Kindle edition by Giddens, Anthony. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Look inside this book.Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age by [Anthony Giddens]
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Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age Kindle Edition
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This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity.
In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.



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From the Back Cover
The author argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post-traditional order characterized by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalizing tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
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'This book supplies the missing psychological link in Anthony Giddens' ever more substantial body of work on the sociology of modernity ... rich and measured ... His dialectical approach, moreover, affords many insights into the interconnection between the invasive and disorienting effects of commercial and technical imperatives.' New Statesman and Society
From the Inside Flap
Modernity differs from all preceding forms of social order because of its dynamism, its deep undercutting of traditional habits and customs, and its global impact. It also radicallly alters the general nature of daily life and the most personal aspects of human activity. In fact, one of the most distinctive features of modernity is the increasing interconnection between globalizing influences and personal dispositions. The author analyzes the nature of this interconnection and provides a conceptual vocabulary for it, in the process providing a major rethinking of the nature of modernity and a reworking of basic premises of sociological analysis.
Building on the ideas set out in the authors The Consequences of Modernity
, this book focuses on the self and the emergence of new mechanisms of self-identity that are shaped by—yet also shape—the institutions of modernity. The author argues that the self is not a passive entity, determined by external influences. Rather, in forging their self-identities, no matter how local their contexts of action, individuals contribute to and directly promote social influences that are global in their consequences and implications.
The author sketches the contours of the he calls “high modernity”—the world of our day—and considers its ramifications for the self and self-identity. In this context, he analyzes the meaning to the self of such concepts as trust, fate, risk, and security and goes on the examine the “sequestration of experience,” the process by which high modernity separates day-to-day social life from a variety of experiences and broad issues of morality. The author demonstrates how personal meaninglessness—the feeling that life has nothing worthwhile to offer—becomes a fundamental psychic problem in circumstances of high modernity. The book concludes with a discussion of “life politics,” a politics of selfactualization operating on both the individual and collective levels.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Product details
ASIN : B00DSLHOGG
Publisher : Polity; 1st edition (April 29, 2013)
Publication date : April 29, 2013
Language : English
File size : 834 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 268 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 0804719446
Lending : Not Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #735,116 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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#20,955 in Sociology (Books)
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Biography
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities.

Three notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field, based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971) and The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (1973). In the second stage Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an analysis of agency and structure, in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of that period, such as New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) and The Constitution of Society (1984), brought him international fame on the sociological arena.

The most recent stage concerns modernity, globalisation and politics, especially the impact of modernity on social and personal life. This stage is reflected by his critique of postmodernity, and discussions of a new "utopian-realist" third way in politics, visible in the Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998). Giddens' ambition is both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity.

Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics 1997–2003, where he is now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Szusi [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Purchased for a college course
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I had to purchase this for a introductory sociology course. Although the substance of the book is interesting, it was a rather difficult read. I had to look things over several times and ask for clarifications from the professor before I really understood. I believe that taking a sociology course provided me with the knowledge to appreciate the material that I otherwise would not have fully grasped on my own.
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There were some makings from the previous owner but it actually helped me. I received the product like new.
The texts are easily readable and even though it didn't have pictures, it's an attractive book.
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4.0 out of 5 stars it's fine
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2013
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The book is what I wanted and I arrived very quickly, but only after the arrival I saw it has some marks and notes inside (it was also written the in book description - I guess I didn't check carefully). can't complain, but it bothered me anyway.
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5.0 out of 5 stars gr8
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This was a great read. A good story. Yay. Gr8. I just need this for my soc. class. Yes. Ok.
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Andrew D. Oram
4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful analysis with a moral and call to action
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2009
I found this very useful to my own understanding of trends and potential in modern times, and I recommend the book for its positive-minded, constructive approach to today's problems. Giddens accepts many of the commonly understand aspects of life today--our reliance of large, abstract systems we don't understand, our risk of losing our individual identities in these systems, the expanded role of the state in our lives, and so on--which is why I assign only four stars to this book instead of five.

Giddens is an optimist, as well as a very capable writer. His book proceeds in a well-planned series of steps from basic principles of modern life to the power we can still exert as individuals and as social movements. (The text becomes easier to read as you go along, I've found.)

The threat of global warming hangs over the text, and its relevance is even clearer now, 18 years after the book was published. Furthermore, I think Giddens assumes that certain movements, such as therapy and woman's liberation, have gone further and reached more of the population than they really have. But the book's message of possibilities persists, and goads us on to moral action.
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Henri Edward Dongieux
5.0 out of 5 stars A lucid and engaging synthesis
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2001
This book is indeed a work of social science, and not a work of formal logic, dialectic, or philosophy. And as such, it seeks to avoid the subject-object aporias and non-explanatory vocabulary of "postmodernism" so fashionable in some academic circles in favor of an integrated model of the self and society that not only makes sense, but resonates with the modern reader and social scientist in a way not easily dismissable by concerns of validity claims. Phenomenology, it must be noted, is less than a water-tight system of defendable truth-claims; postmodernism in its extreme denies the notion of objective knowledge altogether. This book has different aims.

The strength of Giddens' work has always been his identification of reflexivity as the central mechanism behind social and psychological transformations - the nested critique of society that sets up progressively complex turnovers in psyche and structure, one on the heels of the other, institutionalizing doubt as a central feature of existential and social life. Giddens makes clear that "postmodernity" is a meaningless term for his purposes; instead he takes the more sensible route (alongside contemporaries such as the brilliant Scott Lash) and employs the term "high modernity" to describe the present times as of the same conceputal order (albeit much more "intense" in critical ways) than preceding centuries. He compares and contrasts the self and the other, the mechanics of disembedding and reimbedding, the dynamics of intensionality and extensionality, and the twin states of trust and risk in a way that convincingly demonstrates that modernity is a game whose time is not yet up - and whose textures social science is capable of elegantly describing, and possibly even explaining. Giddens' theory of the "pure relationship" and his related analyses of self-society relationships are extremely important theoretically to many areas of the social sciences, including nation-state theory, globalization, development ethnography, refugee studies, and cultural studies. His work is even beginning to exert an influence on parallel disciplines as well, for example discourse analysis.

So, while the philosopher might dismiss this work as dependent on the truth-claims of modern psychology, the sociologist (at whatever level of expertise) will find this to be an engaging, challenging, and clearly written work with far-ranging application to empirical social-scientific material.
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Jo Cursley
5.0 out of 5 stars invaluable reference book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2014
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This book with its exploration of identity was clearly written and was very useful as reference for my thesis. It arrived promptly and in very good condition.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
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Joy
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 8, 2015
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Item was as described :)
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Isadora
5.0 out of 5 stars This book made sense of my life! (& helped me to get a great grade in my Masters)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2011
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I couldn't be more surprised by the other review. Giddens is at his absolute best in this book. It is packed full of amazing theories which make sense of your whole life. I used it for my Masters and found it not just informative but one of the most enjoyable books I have read. I still quote from it in all kinds of different contexts.
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Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Modernity and Send identity
Reviewed in Canada on February 19, 2017
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Eccellent academic source book
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Michael
Sep 14, 2019Michael rated it it was ok
I found this book extremely annoying.

We can start with some good points. Giddens states, forcefully and clearly, a set of propositions about the 'modern self'. It is a familiar picture for anyone familiar with the literature. If you've read Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self, Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity, or Nancy Armstrong's Desire and Domestic Fiction, for example, you will already have encountered the notion that individuality, personality, privacy etc. are hallmarks of modern culture. What Giddens adds to this tradition is a focus on everyday life in Westernised countries today. His approach is systematic. He tries to list all the 'tribulations of the self' we regularly encounter, all the factors that lead to 'existential anxiety', all the systems that lead to the 'sequestration of experience'.

What he does not do, it is sad to say, is defend his conception of 'modernity'. The book is full of extremely frustrating arguments about how 'modern' differs from 'pre-modern' life, where Giddens describes the 'pre-modern' way of doing things in a single sentence, and provides neither evidence nor argument to justify his interpretation of the first 400,000 years of human existence. He expresses absolute certainty that 'modern' life is fundamentally different in character from all the 'pre-modern' life that preceded it, and yet makes no attempt at all to deal with the extreme diversity of 'pre-modern' ways of doing things. How can gardeners from the highlands of New Guinea, herdsmen of the Serengeti, the urbanised farmers of ancient Mesopotamia and the igloo-builders of Siberia seriously all be dumped into the single bucket of the 'pre-modern'?

Perhaps I am overly harsh. Giddens does occasionally reference a famous ethnographer or historian, and there may be a great deal of erudition lurking behind the self-confident prose. But one does suspect that his viewpoint is irremediably Eurocentric. On the odd occasion when he does indulge in some historical detail to substantiate his points, his examples are all European, and they are either quite superficial or just plain wrong. It is not the case, for example, that 'most historians agree that autobiographies (as well as biographies) only developed during the modern period'. What was St Augustine doing when he wrote his Confessions in 397AD, if not writing his autobiography? If the Buddhacharita is not a biography of the Buddha, then what exactly is it? Perhaps there are answers to such questions. Perhaps what Giddens really meant is the a new kind of 'modern' biography emerged in Europe over the last 200-300 years. But if this is what he meant, he should have said so, and he should have explained it.

Now if Giddens' understanding of European history is superficial, his knowledge of Asian, African, American and Oceanic history is apparently non-existent. If he had engaged with world history in the book, he would have had to revise several of his claims. One of his crucial claims, for instance, is that modernity is characterised by the 'pure relationship'. In modernity, our sexual relations are determined by free choice. We select a partner because we want to live with them, not because it fulfills some social obligation to marry someone of a particular kin-group or because an authority-figure has instructed us to do so. (In this we differ greatly from our poor 'pre-modern' forebears.) This kind of 'pure relationship' changes the meaning of sex. Sex is now a pure form of 'intimacy'. In fact, there really was no such thing as 'intimacy' before modernity, because sex always had a public and social character.

What rot.

Anyone who has read a single sūfī devotional poem or a classic of Sanskrit erotic verse who know full well that 'intimacy', privacy and the joys of sex have been valued for their own sake in many times and places. In fact, 'intimacy' was so valued by sūfī and Sanskrit poets of antiquity and the middle ages that it came to symbolise the individual's relationship with God. Now to give Giddens his due, it is probably fair to say that St Augustine inaugurated 1,500 years of prudery in Western culture, and that in the modern West intimacy has been revalued. But if he wanted to make this argument he should have done so.

It could be objected that I have focused on the wrong aspect of the book. The book is really a book about what it is like to be an individual today in the West, not a world history explaining the development of 'modernity'. Taken this way, it has a lot of merits, primarily as a kind of textbook that summarises the common sense of Anglo-American liberalism in the 1990s. But on the very first page, Giddens claims that it is not only a few societies he wishes to examine, nor will he focus only on one historical moment. It is 'modernity' as a whole that he sets out to describe, and unfortunately he makes very few of the comparisons necessary to distinguish what is 'modern' from what is not.

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Benediktas
Jul 16, 2013Benediktas rated it really liked it
Some vague chapters without clear purpose or meaning but an impressive work in general, emphasizing and analyzing moral and political issues of late-modernity/neocapitalist society in a convincing, positive manner. Sociology, psychology and philosophy are combined in a search for an understanding of various aspects of self-identity (risk, mediation, reflexivity...) specific to our times - that leads to quite a complex vocabulary but also rewards with insights into possibilities of fruitful transdisciplinary research. For those who don't have the time or patience to read through the whole book, I would recommend the parts on pure relationship, narcissism and sequestration which I found to be the most original and thought-provoking. (less)
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loafingcactus
Aug 31, 2014loafingcactus rated it really liked it
Shelves: available-at-unc, checked-out-2014, read-2014, sociology
The author has a brilliant concept of society, this I will not argue. In life one is offered many solutions to modern life with little analysis or background, such as the solution of spending more time in nature. And I have heard a counter-argument to that solution which suggests that because nature is amoral it decreases the moral good of those exposed to it rather than increases it. Without directly addressing that argument, the author makes an exceptionally good argument in this book for why connections with nature are a good counterpoint to the difficulties of modernity. Essentially, modernity turns everything inward such that it is only self-referential. Nature, in its inability to be controlled, cannot be pulled into those reflexive structures. Consequently exposure to nature can present a non-reflexive reality to a person who has been trained to only exist reflexively. And there’s more where that came from.

So that’s the good. It is considerable and you would be better off for having read the book. I took 25 pages of notes. Now for the bad: The author is known for churning out book after book and if this book is any example of the self-indulgence involved then one need not wonder how he does it. The shortcomings in scholarship are particularly irksome in the present environment where publishers claim to have a purpose as quality control. If this is all they can do, Stanford University Press has no purpose in being. By far the most egregious example of poor scholarship is a citation of Kafka which is a secondary citation. This is an author who surely can assign a grad student to go find the proper citation for him but he just doesn’t even bother, and the publisher let him get away with it.

But wait, there’s more. The author cites hardly any other works or facts. It’s simply him and his wisdom having a little solipsistic party. Two entire chapters of the book are written as analysis of other books which were picked just because. One chapter is on the genre of self-actualization self-help books, written as an analysis of a randomly selected book. Again, given the availability of unlimited grad students one would expect the author to select some particular book for some particular reason. Raffle off a Twinkie for the best reason. Having some reason is just not that hard.

Leaving that behind, I do have a couple of quibbles with his arguments. The main one is that at the end of the book he gives humanity an assignment which he believes will lead out of the impossible morass of modernity, but the author has not answered two fundamental questions: Why would humanity come together to respond to his assignment? (This is making me laugh a lot- really, why? Have you ever tried to tell a group of people to do something? Let alone every last person on the planet. LMAO.) And, does free will (agency, if you must) exist such that the assignment has any meaning?

The book reminds me quite a bit of The Technological Society, where Ellul also explains an impossible-to-counter direction of society and after explaining all the possibilities at considerable length provides an unsatisfactory way out. But Ellul at least has a reason, even if it is not a very good one, for making the argument in the context of free will. This author is silent on the matter.

And a last matter of irksomeness is that the author uses the term “morality” without any particular meaning. Near the end of the book the author presents a chart attempting to show an analysis of moral questions as they emerge from existential realities, but it is as haphazard as the books the author selected to respond to and therefore does not answer the question of what he means by morality. In fact, if what the author means is direct existential questions, then how the author uses the term in the book as a solution is problematic.

Misc review footnote: The issues discussed in this book map very well to the novels of Thomas Hardy. (less)
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Milad Jahani
Oct 14, 2015Milad Jahani rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
آنتونی گیدنز نویسنده کتاب"تجددو تشخص" به دنبال بررسی و ارتباط بین تجدد در عصر کنونی-اخیر- و هویت شخصی است که رویکردی جامعه شناختی و روانشناختی را زیر بنای صحبت خود قرار می دهد. گیدنز هریک از بخش های موضوعی خود را با توجه به متغییر های در بردارنده اش مورد ارزیابی قرار می دهد.
در ابتدا تجدد در عصر کنونی را ادامه نوعی نظم ما بَعد سنتی می داند و جهانی شدن را جزء سازوکارهای این عصر برمی شمارد. به اعتقاد وی سه اصل را که تحت عنوان پویایی و تحرک اجتماعی یعنی جدایی زمان و فضا ، ساختکارهای تکه برداری و با ...more
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Andy Oram
Dec 03, 2009Andy Oram rated it really liked it
Shelves: politics
I found this very useful to my own understanding of trends and potential in modern times, and I recommend the book for its positive-minded, constructive approach to today's problems. Giddens accepts many of the commonly understand aspects of life today--our reliance of large, abstract systems we don't understand, our risk of losing our individual identities in these systems, the expanded role of the state in our lives, and so on--which is why I assign only four stars to this book instead of five.

Giddens is an optimist, as well as a very capable writer. His book proceeds in a well-planned series of steps from basic principles of modern life to the power we can still exert as individuals and as social movements. (The text becomes easier to read as you go along, I've found.)

The threat of global warming hangs over the text, and its relevance is even clearer now, 18 years after the book was published. Furthermore, I think Giddens assumes that certain movements, such as therapy and woman's liberation, have gone further and reached more of the population than they really have. But the book's message of possibilities persists, and goads us on to moral action.

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Kmorgenstern
May 12, 2018Kmorgenstern rated it it was amazing
In this book, Anthony Giddens offers a very detailed and comprehensive analysis of the existential problems concerning every individual is facing in this late modern age in forging an identity for the self-project. This is by no means an easy task given the confusions of choice we are all confronted with now. This book brilliantly bridges psychology with social science. It is an incredibly dense read, though, forcing one to chew on each sentence to really comprehend the significance of it. Very coherently argued and laid out, it shed a huge light on both my psychology and my sociological studies - and it provided the missing link. Some might be disappointed that in the end, he does not come up with an easy answer, but to me, that is what makes the book even more valuable as it stimulates the reader to really engage and think about the questions and issues asked and find their own answers. I already know, I will be revisiting this book down the road. Right now I am still digesting the first round. (less)
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Burcu
May 25, 2017Burcu added it
The introduction is helpful, yet as the author himself acknowledges, there are many references to earlier works, particularly The Consequences of Modernity. There is some exploration into psychoanalysis as well in the earlier chapters. The main text is essentially a veering of the questions he raised in "The Consequences" toward the idea of the self in relation to the social. In a way, the self is "embedded" into the earlier framework. (less)
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Farid Kamyab
Jun 09, 2017Farid Kamyab rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition
خیلی دقیق و کوتاه بگم: منحصر به فرد و دنباله ی کتاب «پیامد های مدرنیت» که اینبار نه جامعه شناسی، بلکه بیشتر یک اثر در زمینه روان شناسی اجتماعی است.
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Tanya
Aug 08, 2012Tanya rated it it was amazing
Shelves: misc-academic, globalization
Excellent book on the "modern project" of the self. Fascinating given it was written over a decade ago. (less)
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Nicholas
Sep 08, 2018Nicholas rated it really liked it
Written by one of the greatest thinkers of modernity, one can’t help but see why this book gives birth to many theoretical spinoffs in fields outside of sociology, such as political science and IR. Never eager to lament about lost innocence or to launch into a tirade against capitalism, Modernity and Self Identity is a meditation that considers both in equal nuance and finesse. That doesn’t mean its diagnosis isn’t piercingly unsettling.

Yet, by ditching Foucauldian and Marxist perspectives that in Gidden’s reckoning is too fast in laying the blame on power and domination, the book offers us no easy way out of the contradiction between a self-referential system and its underlying meaningless. And being reflexive about it doesn’t make it better. Such is the genius yet terrifying indictment of Giddens. (less)
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KimNica
Dec 28, 2019KimNica rated it liked it
Shelves: politics-economics-society
Many points Giddens makes with regards to living under conditions of high modernity resonate and don't ring less true thirty years after they were first written. However, Giddens technical language and sparse use of examples makes many of them difficult to follow - I had to read many sections and even chapters multiple times to really understand them which is a bit annoying. Also, let's not forget that the perspective of this book is extremely Eurocentric and that many observations are probably less applicable if you are not from a Western First World country.
Nonetheless, there is a lot in here for anyone remotely interested in the social sciences and contemporary life. (less)
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