The Consequences of Modernity Kindle Edition
by Anthony Giddens (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
In this major theoretical statement, the author offers a new and provocative interpretation of the institutional transformations associated with modernity. We do not as yet, he argues, live in a post-modern world. Rather the distinctive characteristics of our major social institutions in the closing period of the twentieth century express the emergence of a period of 'high modernity,' in which prior trends are radicalised rather than undermined. A post-modern social universe may eventually come into being, but this as yet lies 'on the other side' of the forms of social and cultural organization which currently dominate world history.
In developing an account of the nature of modernity, Giddens concentrates upon analyzing the intersections between trust and risk, and security and danger, in the modern world. Both the trust mechanisms associated with modernity and the distinctive 'risk profile' it produces, he argues, are distinctively different from those characteristic of pre-modern social orders.
This book build upon the author's previous theoretical writings, and will be of fundamental interest to anyone concerned with Gidden's overall project. However, the work covers issues which the author has not previously analyzed and extends the scope of his work into areas of pressing practical concern. This book will be essential reading for second year undergraduates and above in sociology, politics, philosophy, and cultural studies.
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Helge Loebler
5.0 out of 5 stars trust isn't a personal matter anymore
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2013
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Everybody knows trust as a property of personal relationships. However Giddens shows how trust has lost its original reference which was based in personal relationships. Trust is demanded in the case of ignorance. Division of labor has created abstract systems which Giddens distinguishes into expert systems and symbolic tokens. Lawyers, medical doctors, Pilots etc. are expert systems which layman either have to trust in or to avoid. Symbolic tokens are media of interchange which can be passed around independent from their references. Examples are money, ratings and gradings. An A at school doesn't need any further explanation. Everybody knows what it means without knowing the school, the teachers etc. Abstract system dis-embed from face-to-face situations. This is one of the fundamental changes in modernity as compared to premordern societies. Giddens book goes much further than just describing and explaining abstract systems. He describes and explains how other areas of day to day live are fundamentally influenced by modernity. For me the Value of this book is that Giddens gives us the concepts and words to describe and understand a world we live in; a complex world we are experiencing in most parts intuitively.
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The Consequences of Modernity
by Anthony Giddens
3.79 · Rating details · 799 ratings · 35 reviews
In this major theoretical statement, the author offers a new and provocative interpretation of institutional transformations associated with modernity. What is modernity? The author suggests, "As a first approximation, let us simply say the following: 'modernity' refers to modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence."
We do not as yet, the author argues, live in a post-modern world. The distinctive characteristics of our major social institutions in the closing years of the twentieth century suggest that, rather than entering into a period of post-modernity, we are moving into a period of "high modernity" in which the consequences of modernity are becoming more radicalized and universalized than before. A post-modern social universe may eventually come into being, but this as yet lies on the other side of the forms of social and cultural organization that currently dominate world history.
In developing a fresh characterization of the nature of modernity, the author concentrates on the themes of security versus danger and o trust versus risk. Modernity is a double-edged phenomenon. The development of modern social institutions has created vastly greater opportunities for human beings to enjoy a secure and rewarding existence than in any type of pre-modern system. But modernity also has a somber side that has become very important in the present century, such as the frequently degrading nature of modern industrial work, the growth of totalitarianism, the threat of environmental destruction, and the alarming development of military power and weaponry.
The book builds upon the author's previous theoretical writings and will be of great interest to those who have followed his work through the years. However, this book covers issues the author has not previously analyzed and extends the scope of his work into areas of pressing practical concern.
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Paperback, 188 pages
Published 1991 by Stanford University Press (first published 1988)
Original TitleThe Consequences of Modernity
ISBN0804718911 (ISBN13: 9780804718912)
Edition LanguageEnglish
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Modernliğin Sonuçları
پیامدهای مدرنیت
As Conseqüências da Modernidade
The Consequences of Modernity
Le conseguenze della modernità: fiducia e rischio, sicurezza e pericolo
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Trevor
Jun 02, 2014Trevor rated it it was amazing
Shelves: social-theory
This guy has been loitering in a series of other books I’ve been reading over the last few years. I’ve been meaning to read him, and now I have. Most notably, he has quite a role in Beck’s Risk Society – which is fairly obvious why, when you have read both books.
In some ways this book probably should be called ‘The Consequences of Post-Modernity’ – except that people have connotations about what post-modern means and these connotations would distract from what the author is really trying to do. This guy isn’t really a post-modernist – you know, if that term is taken to mean post-structuralist – but he does think we live in a time that is after the modern, in that the Enlightenment project needs to be abandoned if by that we think we can 'understand' and control society.
One of the things I often do in these reviews is explain people’s views with reference to Marx. In this case, this guy does much the same, so I feel more justified. Marx basically said that Capitalism was trouble. He said this for many of the reasons that Capitalism has ended up being trouble – crisis prone, unequal, savage to the poor, those sorts of things. But Marx believed in a kind of teleology, that if you got rid of the bad bits of Capitalism you could have a pretty nice society. Socialism – Communism – something directed at human needs, anyway – you know, Marx was never terribly specific about any of this. The point was that overthrowing Capitalism was meant to bring about good times. The point of this book is to look at ideas like risk and mistrust, not as categories that are by-products of the evils of Capitalism, but as products of post-modernity. That risks and issues of trust are not really by-products of Capitalism that can be wished away with the glorious victory of Socialism – but that they are fundamental to the modern condition and not likely to go away under any conceivable set of circumstances.
A lot of this book looks at the problem of trust. The simplest things in our society require a remarkable amount of trust. The example given is flying to LA. There are lots of things we need to know to get to LA on a plane – I would need to know what an airline ticket was, have my passport, how to get to the airport, what is appropriate to wear (you know, no t-shirts with God is Great written on them) or to say to the customs people – but what I wouldn’t need to know even the first thing about is how to fly the plane. I wouldn’t even need to know how the plane flies. There are other people that we call experts that can worry about those sorts of things. But this isn’t quite the same as ‘faith’. Obviously, there is a kind of faith involved, however, in the case of the plane at least, that faith doesn’t really amount to the same sort of thing as believing in the virgin birth, say.
Or does it? We like to think that if we wanted we could go off and learn enough physics to understand how a plane flies and then learn how to fly one. But we certainly couldn’t really do all of that – learn how to make a plane and so on - eventually we come back to having to have trust in someone. And the way science is taught it is generally presented as a series of givens – it is transmitted as a series of truths that must be accepted whole. It is only towards the end of a science degree that the first glimmers of the limits of what we know start to become clear. Faith is a necessary companion of trust, I guess. But trust is difficult to sustain in a post-modern world.
Take global warming, the example given in the book is nuclear war, but for some daft reason we seem to imagine this risk has disappeared. Global warming is hardly a ‘side-effect’ of Capitalism. If Capitalism is inconceivable without constant growth, it is hard to see how global warming isn’t then also a necessary consequence of Capitalism. And if, rather than our hopes that the rise in temperatures will be at the bottom end of predictions, it ends up at the top end – what then? I’ve read estimates that the world will only be able to sustain a population of about half a billion people. Given there is over seven billion here now, that means an over supply of about six and a half billion people. This is truly nightmare stuff. Clearly there is some level of risk that this might happen – but it is in the future and it is a relatively small risk as far as we humans as individuals are able to assess such things. So, we either ignore these risks as much as we can or we make ourselves sick in worrying about things we have no power to fix.
And here is one of the fundamental conditions of late modernity. There are all of these risks and they call into question our trust in those around us, but we can do virtually nothing to address that lack of trust. You know, if you catch your husband in bed with another woman, there is something you can do. Your trust is probably shattered, and so you can leave him. Okay, but you can’t really leave society if you lose trust in it. Where would you go? As he points out brilliantly here – the opposite of trust isn’t really mistrust, that is far too gentle a term – the opposite of trust is anxiety.
Think about that for a while. Think of all of the people who spend so much time in some form of therapy or have some sort of anxiety disorder – how much can that be blamed to a fundamental lack of trust and one we can do literally nothing to avoid?
He makes the point that society isn’t really a car we have control over, but rather a juggernaut. We can sometimes guide where it goes, but it is always on the verge of careening off course or crashing to bits. We want to believe that with a few more modification the whole thing will come under our control – that society is essentially a product of the individual actions of humans and so all that is required is an exercise of our will or free agency and all will be well. But the problem is that society is literally bigger than all of us – even all of us added together.
There is much more to this book than I’ve covered here. I really can recommend this book as well worth reading and thinking about.
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Pooya Roohi
Mar 30, 2014Pooya Roohi rated it really liked it · review of another edition
گیدنز ویژگی های مدرنیته، مخاطرات و پیامدهای آن و نیز راه حل هایی را که به عقیده او برای فائق آمدن بر این مخاطرات می توان اتخاذ کرد را مورد بحث و بررسی قرار داده است.
یکی از مهم ترین خصوصیات مدرنیته دو لبه بودن آن است. به عقیده گیدنز باید هر دو روی پرخطر و پرامکانات مدرنیته را مطالعه کرد. مدرنیته در همان حال که برای انسان ها امنیتی به ارمغان آورده که در گذشته میسر نبود، خطراتی نیز به وجود آورده که در طول تاریخ حتی تصور آن نیز محال بود. مارکس، وبر و دورکیم به جنبه های پرخطر مدرنیته همچون محیط زیست، ...more
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Amirsaman
Oct 03, 2018Amirsaman rated it it was ok · review of another edition
قبل از اینکه قرن هفده بشود و سرعت رشد صنعت بترکاند و مدرنیسم شروع شود، «سرنوشت» داشتیم. ولی در دورهی مدرن، «ریسک» داریم؛ حالتی که منافع و ضررهای احتمالی را در نظر میگیریم و بر مبنای این اعتماد، نهایتا خودمان را ملامت میکنیم. یعنی انسان مدرن پذیرفته است که «بیشتر احتمالهایی که بر فعالیت بشری تاثیر میگذارند زاییدهی انساناند و نه خدا یا طبیعت.»
بخش عمدهی کتاب، صرف تشریح ترس انسان از مخاطرات دنیای مدرن، و اعتماد او به این ابزارهای نو شده است.
کتاب بقدری «کلی» بحث میکرد که چیز زیادی دستم را ن ...more
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M&A Ed
Dec 28, 2018M&A Ed rated it really liked it · review of another edition
کتاب بسیار خوبی بود که آنتونی گیدنز درباره ی پیامدهای مدرنیت نوشته است! از جمله پیامدهای مدرنیت جنگ های هسته ای هست که در این کتاب بسیار به آن اشاره می کند. ترممه سلیس و روان مترجم در درک مطالب به خواننده بسیار کمک می کند.
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Andrew
Nov 07, 2012Andrew rated it it was amazing
Shelves: sociology
This relatively short book, based on a series of lectures Giddens gave over twenty years ago, still contains fresh insights - although I think it may be difficult to use this an introduction to his thinking, since it rehearses some ideas as well as a theory of modernity that he outlined in greater detail in earlier works, especially his book 'The Nation State and Violence,' which might be my favorite of his writings because it's grounded in history as much as history. Still I liked his discussion here of symbolic tokens and trust and risk (arguments that I think owe a lot to Niklas Luhmann), as well as his multdimensional reading of modern society as formed through a conjunction of overlapping forces - in particular, industrialism, capitalism, militarism, and democracy. It's still a vision of modern society that deserves to be revisited periodically. (less)
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Tuncay Özdemir
Dec 23, 2020Tuncay Özdemir rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: sociology, nonfiction, philosophy, politics, history
"Modernliğin Sonuçları", soyut sistemlerin giderek daha fazla hayatımızın bir parçası olarak ontolojik güvenlik algımızı radikal bir şekilde değiştirmesini konu ediyor. Geleneksel toplumlardaki güvenlik unsurları ve tehditler, bugünün toplumunda artık geçersiz olsa da modern toplumların çok daha farklı güven unsurları ve tehlikeleri mevcuttur. Giddens, tüm bunları postmodernliğe bir geçiş olarak değil de modernliğin radikalleşmesi olarak yorumluyor ve alternatif bir perspektif sunuyor. Dili bira ...more
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Ayesha
Mar 30, 2021Ayesha rated it liked it
Like, yeah it’s fine. It’s sociological theory what more can I say 🥴
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Perdana
Feb 02, 2018Perdana rated it liked it · review of another edition
Some parts of my review for the class (yes, I cheat the reading challenge).
Giddens’ The Consequences of Modernity gives an interesting take on how we should scrutinize from modernity. He elaborates the reasons behind the dynamism of modernity; the reorganization and/or the separation of time and space, the disembeddedness, and the reflexivity of modernity (p. 53). Rather than jump into the debate whether the situation that we have now is post-modern(ism), thus implies the break from “modernity”, Giddens focuses on the more fruitful discussion on the consequences of modernity, whether they are intended or not. These consequences also signify how knowledge plays role in the process of transition to modernity, until the modernity itself creates those unintended and intended effects. “the circulation of social knowledge… that alters the circumstances to which the knowledge originally referred” (p. 54). In our discussion, I would like to focus on Giddens’ explanation on risk and would like to connect to his historical investigation.
Giddens writes that the most classical thinkers “did not see how extensive the darker side of modernity would turn out to be” (p.7), implying that no one had predicted the “negative” side of modernity. I would like to dig the question to what extend we should do this risk calculation? What gave birth to the risk speculations that fuel our modern need to rigorously calculate risk and danger; using statistics, mega planning, high-modernist development, overcoming existential crisis, etc. And why should we? What systemic benefit that ones could gain by keep predicting the unstable world – especially when the modern knowledge (this means the statistics, modern urban planning, heavy industrialization) contributes to this instability (p.45)? The reason we have risks calculated in certain manners, because we already plan something ahead in a grandiose universal manner. Rather than answering the question, Giddens justifies the spectrums of risk, that we all now have, which are closely tied to modernity. In pre-modern era, risk was already available, but more to “natural causes”, i.e., earthquake or “natural” disasters (p. 102, p. 110) and how it did not evolve to more structured manner, for example systemic risk – a scapegoat that was to blame for the 2008 economic crisis by the British economists.
How was the spectrum of risk different in pre-modern/traditional time? Especially when the tradition, according to Giddens, never really fades away and even co-exists with the modernity (p…). Trust in the abstract system and confidence in risk calculation, for example, have become the replacement of fate/fortuna (p. 111). Giddens says that the risk in modernity tends to have more future-oriented rather than the past. Although it is convincing enough if we look at the current system from Wall Street to Chicago Climate Exchange, it does not really explain the once-existing future-oriented behavior in traditional society, especially in the concept of survivability, e.g., inheritance, food storing, the expectations from offerings for the elder and dead people. Giddens’ take on this, for me, is quite high-modernistic. Although it is true that risk is not just about “danger and peril” (Hacking, p. 199) and more about “probability, eventuality” (ibid), it is still unclear for me what brings to more sophisticated risk management (like insurance).
In the most “acultural” (or material-based) sense, we might investigate this emergence of modern risk through the scale of the constituted risk, or the problem of accumulation – whether it is in the system of capitalism (Weber and Marx) or industrialism (Durkheim). Growth–be it personal (overcoming the existential crisis/ontological security), economic, or cultural (globalization)—has been a key feature in modernity. Growth can mean anything that gradually or not expands, but to put in the definition, growth is an enlarged accumulation (Levebfre, 1981). Although Giddens did not explain anything specific about growth (I assume it is both in the darker and brighter side of modernity), the idea that we need to expand for better or worse (as unintended consequences?) contribute to the modern management of risk. In the spectrum of capitalism, risk is critical in sustaining the system.
In the 2008 financial crash, a lot of economists explained that housing bubble in China and the market crash occurred due to the “systemic risk” – a risk that is in-built within a system that is highly speculative like financial and stock markets. If imaginary investments are the fuel for this systemic risk, that what would it be for general modern spectrums of risk? We did not have this systemic and complicated system to handle risk in pre-modern society because the idea of growth was still rudimentary; a peasant dared not to imagine being a successful merchant whose wealth was as many as the Dutch King, for example—let alone in the colonial society during the colonialization. (less)
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Elizabeth
Sep 14, 2011Elizabeth rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2011
This book's greatest contribution (likely what causes it to be cited with such regularity) is in some ways also its biggest drawback. Giddens is doing such high level theorizing that his examples, themselves, are also largely grounded in theory. This makes for a fully understandable and (especially at the time it was published in 1990) a relevant intervention into theories of modernity and postmodernity; nonetheless, it also makes for an argument that is less grounded in specific empirics than it might be. This seems especially relevant as Giddens is most interested in society-level critiques, which both (necessarily) define and situate modernism and modernity as they relate to specific social processes and functions (rather than aesthetics or taste). Giddens is honest about this, and his role as a sociologist certainly justifies the centrality of his critique. However, it is difficult to know how much could be abstracted beyond the large-scale social domains that he defines and describes. (less)
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Marcos Henrique Amaral
Apr 23, 2019Marcos Henrique Amaral rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Nesta obra, Giddens mantém sua postura crítica em relação não somente à sociologia clássica, como também à sociologia contemporânea. De forma geral, o autor traz diversos escritos sobre a modernidade, que se caracterizaria — segundo Giddens — pelo “descontinuísmo”, ou seja, seria diferente, sob alguns aspectos, completamente diferente tradição. A tradição seria a “cola que une as ordens sociais pré-modernas”, integrando a ação à organização tempo-espacial dessas “sociedades pré-modernas”. Sumariamente, a tradição seria uma orientação contínua ao passado, de modo que tal passado é constituído para ter pesada influência no presente. O descontinuísmo que caracteriza a modernidade, segundo Giddens, é o rompimento com esta tradição genuína, ou seja, com valores vinculados ao passado pré-moderno, “criando” novas tradições. A modernidade apresenta essa descontinuidade como ruptura entre o que se apresenta como “novo” e o que persiste como herança do “velho”. Com isto, ele quer romper com qualquer influência que o evolucionismo social possa ter sobre sua sociologia, de modo que busca fugir das concepções que mostram a história humana como um grande enredo que traz a idéia de organização.
Para ele, é importante notar que as descontinuidades que separam as instituições sociais modernas das ordens sociais tradicionais têm peculiaridades próprias à modernidade: (i) o ritmo de mudança — já que a rapidez da mudança em condições modernas é extrema —; (ii) o escopo da mudança, se considerarmos que as transformações na modernidade perpassam todo o globo terrestre; e (iii) a natureza intrínseca das instituições modernas. É válido ressaltar que, nesta concepção de modernidade, já estão inseridos elementos por meio dos quais autores como Lyotard caracterizam uma suposta pós-modernidade, tais como a “evaporação do enredo” por meio do qual somos inseridos na história como tendo um passado perene e um futuro predizível e a “pluralidade de reivindicações heterogêneas de conhecimento”. Para ele, o tema sobre o qual se debruçam os pós-modernas nada são senão as próprias conseqüências da modernidade.
A crítica que ele faz à sociologia clássica — de Marx, Durkheim e Weber, essencialmente — se coloca em três pilares: (i) o diagnóstico institucional da modernidade; (ii) a concepção de sociedade para estes autores — que tratavam sociedade como sinônimo do Estado-Nação moderno —; (iii) as conexões entre conhecimento sociológico e as características da modernidade.
Outra noção que, para Giddens, parece central para a compreensão da modernidade é a noção de desencaixe. Para ele, nas sociedades pré-modernas — ou tradicionais —, as relações sociais estão encaixadas no eixo espaço-tempo. O tempo, para os indivíduos dessas sociedades, é cíclico e local, de modo que ele orienta toda a organização social, gerando a noção de encaixe. A modernidade seria caracterizada por um tempo social e artificial: um tempo linear, e não cíclico como na pré-modernidade, de modo que não pode servir como referência para previsões. Mais ainda, a noção de tempo na modernidade é universal e não local. Isto gera a impressão de uma diminuição das distâncias entre os espaços, uma vez que o tempo calibra a organização de sociedades espalhadas em diferentes parte do globo. Assim, a modernidade “desencaixa” o indivíduo de sua identidade fixa no tempo e no espaço. Dois trechos da obra elucidam esse mecanismo de desencaixe: “Por desencaixe me refiro ao ‘deslocamento’ das relações sociais de contextos locais de interação e sua reestruturação através de extensões indefinidas de tempo-espaço” (p. 29). “Este [desencaixe] retira a atividade social dos contextos localizados, reorganizando as relações sociais através de grandes distâncias tempo-espaciais” (p. 58). (less)
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Andrew
Aug 10, 2018Andrew rated it liked it
Quite a short book, written in 1989, and a pretty good window into Giddens' sociology.
Anthony Giddens' is an interesting thinker and a talented writer. I find his work accessible and thought provoking. However, tends to present quite a neat picture of the direction society is headed - away from tradition and towards a kind of cosmopolitan and progressive liberal individualism. Obviously it's not all rosy, and he spends some time discussing environmental problems, as well as the anxieties produced by our "runaway world".
However generally speaking, there's a more or less optimistic tenor to this book - and as I finished it I could definitely envisage Tony Blair's slick grin and hear D:Ream's 1993 hit "Things Can Only Get Better" playing in my head. I do find this good foil for more lopsidedly pessimistic writers - such as Zygmunt Bauman. But it's also a bit hard to reconcile with the state of the world as it is now. (less)
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Jimmy Jonecrantz
Nov 24, 2019Jimmy Jonecrantz rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: sociology
Hade svårt att komma in i boken, kanske för att den genomgående förhåller sig ganska abstrakt och inte direkt tar exempel eller diskuterar faktiska händelser i någon större utsträckning. Efter att jag läst den är jag lite osäker på vad jag egentligen läst, vad det betyder, och hur jag ska använda detta i min förståelse av samhället. Samtidigt finns vissa observationer, såsom globaliseringens effekter, som är intressanta att diskutera vidare.
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David
Aug 15, 2020David rated it really liked it
This book was outstanding! I finished it one day. I would recommend taking more time, but I was reading it for writing a paper. If you want to get a good idea of how Anthony Giddens thinks, this is a great primer. I highly recommend for any Sociology student interested in the topics of globalism or modernity.
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Abby
Feb 24, 2019Abby rated it it was amazing
Shelves: books-for-school, sociology, in-library
Scholarly work that's written to actually be understood, and that's a nice change...I have more thoughts on the argument itself, but for now I'll just say that it wasn't an absolute misery to read this. (less)
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