Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens

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The Right Honourable Professor
The Lord Giddens
Anthony Giddens at the Progressive Governance Converence, Budapest, Hungary, 200
4 October.jpg
Anthony Giddens in 2004
Born
18 January 1938 (age 77)
London, England
Residence
England
Nationality
British
Fields Sociology
Institutions
University of Leicester
University of Cambridge
London School of Economics
Alma mater
University of Hull (BA)
London School of Economics (MA)
University of Cambridge (PhD)
Known for
Structuration theory
The Third Way
Risk society
Durkheim Schtz
Merton Goffman
Parsons
Lvi-Strauss
Influences
Weber
rmas Foucault
Castoriadis
Freud
Chomsky
Dilthey
Beck
Influenced
Archer Barley
Bauman
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 8 January 1938), is a British sociologist w
ho is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern soci
eties. 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 ave
rage more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth mos
t-referenced author of books in the humanities.[1][2]
Three notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one invol
ved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and me
thodological understanding of that field, based on a critical reinterpretation o
f 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 o
f agency and structure, in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of tha
t period, such as New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Central Problems in S
ocial Theory (1979) and The Constitution of Society (1984), brought him internat
ional 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"[3] th
ird 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 o
f the development and trajectory of modernity.
Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics 1997 2003, where he i
s now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Work

Elias

3
4
5
6
7
8

2.1 Overview
2.2 The nature of sociology
2.3 Structuration
2.4 Connections between micro and macro
2.5 Self-identity
2.6 Modernity
2.7 The Third Way
Outside consultancies
Theory of 'reflexivity'
4.1 Living in a high opportunity, high risk society
Select bibliography
References
6.1 Video clips
Further reading
External links
8.1 Selected interviews

Biography
Giddens was born and raised in Edmonton, London, and grew up in a lower-middle-c
lass family, son of a clerk with London Transport; he attended Minchenden School
.[4] He was the first member of his family to go to university. Giddens received
his undergraduate academic degree (in joint sociology and psychology) at Hull U
niversity in 1959, followed by a Master's degree at the London School of Economi
cs. He later gained a PhD at King's College, Cambridge. In 1961, he started work
ing at the University of Leicester where he taught social psychology. At Leicest
considered to be one of the seedbeds of British sociology
he met Norbert Elia
er
s and began to work on his own theoretical position. In 1969, he was appointed t
o a position at the University of Cambridge, where he later helped create the So
cial and Political Sciences Committee (SPS now HSPS), a sub-unit of the Faculty
of Economics.
Giddens worked for many years at Cambridge as a fellow of King's College and was
eventually promoted to a full professorship in 1987. He is cofounder of Polity
Press (1985). From 1997 to 2003, he was director of the London School of Economi
cs and a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Resea
rch. He was also an adviser to Tony Blair; it was Giddens whose "third way" poli
tical approach has been Tony Blair's guiding political idea. He has been a vocal
participant in British political debates, supporting the centre-left Labour Par
ty with media appearances and articles (many of which are published in New State
sman). He was given a life peerage in June 2004, as Baron Giddens, of Southgate
in the London Borough of Enfield[5] and sits in the House of Lords for Labour. G
iddens also holds 15 honorary degrees from various universities.[6]
Work
Overview
Sociology
Social Network Diagram (segment).svg
Outline History
Theory
Positivism Antipositivism Functionalism Conflict theories Social constructio
nism Structuralism Interactionism Critical theory Structure and agency
Methods
Quantitative Qualitative Historical Mathematical Computational Ethnography E
thnomethodology Network analysis

Subfields
Conflict Criminology Culture Development Deviance Demography Education Econo
mic Environmental Family Gender Health Industrial Inequality Knowledge Law Liter
ature Medical Military Organizational Political Race & ethnicity Religion Rural
Science Social change Social movements Social psychology Stratification Technolo
gy Urban
Browse
Portal People Organizations Journals Index Timeline
v t e
Giddens, the author of over 34 books and 200 articles, essays and reviews, has c
ontributed and written about most notable developments in the area of social sci
ences, with the exception of research design and methods. He has written comment
aries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradig
ms in both micro and macrosociology. His writings range from abstract, metatheor
etical problems to very direct and 'down-to-earth' textbooks for students. Final
ly, he is also known for his interdisciplinary approach: he has commented not on
ly on the developments in sociology, but also in anthropology, archaeology, psyc
hology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recent
ly, political science. In view of his knowledge and works, one may view much of
his life's work as a form of 'grand synthesis' of sociological theory.
The nature of sociology
Before 1976, most of Giddens' writings offered critical commentary on a wide ran
ge of writers, schools and traditions. Giddens took a stance against the then-do
minant structural functionalism (represented by Talcott Parsons, exponent of Max
Weber), as well as criticising evolutionism and historical materialism. In Capi
talism and Modern Social Theory (1971), he examined the work of Weber, Durkheim
and Marx, arguing that despite their different approaches each was concerned wit
h the link between capitalism and social life. Giddens emphasised the social con
structs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as:
"the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial t
ransformation of the past two or three centuries."
In New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) (the title of which alludes to Durkhe
im's Rules of the Sociological Method of 1895), Giddens attempted to explain 'ho
w sociology should be done' and addressed a long-standing divide between those t
heorists who prioritise 'macro level' studies of social life
looking at the 'big
picture' of society and those who emphasise the 'micro level'
what everyday lif
e means to individuals. In New Rules... he noted that the functionalist approach
, invented by Durkheim, treated society as a reality unto itself, not reducible
to individuals. He rejected Durkheim's sociological positivism paradigm, which a
ttempted to predict how societies operate, ignoring the meanings as understood b
y individuals.[7] Giddens noted:
"Society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, insofa
r as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do".[8]
He contrasted Durkheim with Weber's approach
interpretative sociology
focused on
understanding agency and motives of individuals. Giddens is closer to Weber tha
n Durkheim, but in his analysis he rejects both of those approaches, stating tha
t while society is not a collective reality, nor should the individual be treate
d as the central unit of analysis.[7]
Rather he uses the logic of hermeneutic tradition (from interpretative sociology
) to argue for the importance of agency in sociological theory, claiming that hu
man social actors are always to some degree knowledgeable about what they are do

ing. Social order is therefore a result of some pre-planned social actions, not
automatic evolutionary response. Sociologists, unlike natural scientists, have t
o interpret a social world which is already interpreted by the actors that inhab
it it. According to Giddens there is a "Duality of structure" by which social pr
actice, which is the principal unit of investigation, has both a structural and
an agency-component. The structural environment constrains individual behaviour,
but also makes it possible. He also noted the existence of a specific form of a
social cycle: once sociological concepts are formed, they filter back into ever
yday world and change the way people think. Because social actors are reflexive
and monitor the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions, they adapt
their actions to their evolving understandings. As a result, social scientific
knowledge of society will actually change human activities. Giddens calls this t
wo-tiered, interpretive and dialectical relationship between social scientific k
nowledge and human practices the "double hermeneutic".
Giddens also stressed the importance of power, which is means to ends, and hence
is directly involved in the actions of every person. Power, the transformative
capacity of people to change the social and material world, is closely shaped by
knowledge and space-time.[9]
In New Rules... Giddens specifically wrote[10] that:
Sociology is not about a 'pre-given' universe of objects, the universe is be
ing constituted
or produced by the active doings of subjects.
The production and reproduction of society thus has to be treated as a skill
ed performance on the part of its members.
The realm of human agency is bounded. Individuals produce society, but they
do so as historically located actors, and not under conditions of their own choo
sing.
Structures must be conceptualised not only as constraints upon human agency,
but also as enablers.
Processes of structuration involve an interplay of meanings, norms and power
.
The sociological observer cannot make social life available as 'phenomenon'
for observation independently of drawing upon his knowledge of it as a resource
whereby he constitutes it as a 'topic for investigation'.
Immersion in a form of life is the necessary and only means whereby an obser
ver is able to generate such characterisations.
Sociological concepts thus obey a double hermeneutic.
In sum, the primary tasks of sociological analysis are the following: (1) Th
e hermeneutic explication and mediation of divergent forms of life within descri
ptive metalanguages of social science; (2) Explication of the production and rep
roduction of society as the accomplished outcome of human agency.
StructurationPickover's primary interest is in finding new ways to expand creati
vity by melding art, science, mathematics, and other seemingly disparate areas o
f human endeavor.[9] In The Math Book and his companion book The Physics Book, P
ickover explains that both mathematics and physics "cultivate a perpetual state
of wonder about the limits of thoughts, the workings of the universe, and our pl
ace in the vast space-time landscape that we call home." [10] Pickover is an inv
entor with over 200patents, the author of puzzle calendars, and puzzle contribut
or to magazines geared to children and adults. His Neoreality and Heaven Virus s
cience-fiction series explores the fabric of reality and religion.[5]
Pickover is author of hundreds of technical papers in diverse fields, ranging fr
om the creative visualizations of fossil seashells,[11] genetic sequences,[12][1
3] cardiac[14] and speech sounds, and virtual caverns[15] and lava lamps,[16] to
fractal and mathematically based studies.[17][18][19][20] He also has published
articles in the areas of skepticism (e.g. ESP and Nostradamus), psychology (e.g
. temporal lobe epilepsy and genius), and technical speculation (e.g. What if sci

entists had found a computer in 1900? and An informal survey on the scientific and
social impact of a soda can-sized super-super computer ).[21] Additional visualiz
ation work includes topics that involve breathing motions of proteins,[22] snowflake like patterns for speech sounds,[23] cartoon-face representations of data,
[24] and biomorphs.[25]
Pickover has also written extensively on the reported experiences of people on t
he psychotropic compound DMT.[26][26][27] Such apparent entities as Machine Elve
s are described as well as "Insects From A Parallel Universe".[27]
On November 4, 2006, he began Wikidumper.org, a popular blog featuring articles
being considered for deletion by Wikipedia.
Pickover stalks
Pickover stalks are certain kinds of details that are empirically found in the M
andelbrot set in the study of fractal geometry. In the 1980s, Pickover proposed
that experimental mathematicians and computer artists examine the behavior of or
bit trajectories for the Mandelbrot in order to study how closely the orbits of
interior points come to the x and y axes in the complex plane. In some rendition
s of this behavior, the closer that the point approaches, the higher up the colo
r scale, with red denoting the closest approach. The logarithm of the distance i
s taken to accentuate the details. This work grew from his earlier work with Jul
ia sets and "Pickover biomorphs," the latter of which often resembled microbes.[
28][29]
Frontiers of Scientific Visualization
In "Frontiers of Scientific Visualization" (1994) Pickover explored "the art and
science of making the unseen workings of nature visible". The books contains co
ntributions on "Fluid flow, fractals, plant growth, genetic sequencing, the conf
iguration of distant galaxies, virtual reality to artistic inspiration", and foc
uses on use of computers as tools for simulation, art and discovery.[30]
Visualizing Biological Information
In "Visualizing Biological Information" (1995) Pickover considered "biological d
ata of all kinds, which is proliferating at an incredible rate". According to Pi
ckover, "if humans attempt to read such data in the form of numbers and letters,
they will take in the information at a snail's pace. If the information is rend
ered graphically, however, human analysts can assimilate it and gain insight muc
h faster. The emphasis of this work is on the novel graphical and musical repres
entation of information containing sequences, such as DNA and amino acid sequenc
es, to help us find hidden pattern and meaning".[31]
Vampire numbers and other mathematical highlights
In mathematics, a vampire number or true vampire number is a composite natural n
umber v, with an even number of digits n, that can be factored into two integers
x and y each with n/2 digits and not both with trailing zeroes, where v contain
s all the digits from x and from y, in any order. x and y are called the fangs.
As an example, 1260 is a vampire number because it can be expressed as 21 60 = 1
260. Note that the digits of the factors 21 and 60 can be found, in some scrambl
ed order, in 1260. Similarly, 136,948 is a vampire because 136,948 = 146 938.
Vampire numbers first appeared in a 1994 post by Clifford A. Pickover to the Use
net group sci.math, and the article he later wrote was published in chapter 30 o
f his book Keys to Infinity.[32]
In addition to Vampire numbers ,[33] a term Pickover actually coined, he has coined
the following terms in the area of mathematics: Leviathan number,[34] factorion
,[35] Carotid Kundalini function and fractal,[36] batrachion,[37] Juggler sequence
,[38] and Legion s number,[39] among others. For characterizing noisy data, he has
used Truchet tiles and Noise spheres,[40] the later of which is a term he coine

d for a particular mapping, and visualization, of noisy data to spherical coordi

nates.
In 1990, he asked Is There a Double Smoothly Undulating Integer? ,[41] and he compu
ted All Known Replicating Fibonacci Digits Less than One Billion".[42] With his c
olleague John R. Hendricks, he was the first to compute the smallest perfect (na
sik) magic tesseract.[43] The Pickover sequence dealing with e and pi was named af
ter him,[44] as was the Cliff random number generator [45] and the Pickover attract
or, sometimes also referred to as the Clifford Attractor.[46][47]
Culture, religion, belief
Starting in about 2001, Pickover s books sometimes began to include topics beyond
his traditional focus on science and mathematics. For example, Dreaming the Futu
re discusses various methods of divination that humans have used since stone-age
times. The Paradox of God deals with topics in religion. Perhaps the most obvio
us departure from his earlier works includes Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves: Su
shi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence, which ex
plores the borderlands of science and is part memoir and part surrealist perspectiv
e on culture. .[48] Pickover follows-up his quest for transcendence and examination
of popular culture with A Beginner s Guide to Immortality: Extraordinary People, A
lien Brains, and Quantum Resurrection.
History of science and mathematics
Starting in 2008, Pickover's books began to focus on the history of science and
mathematics, with such titles as Archimedes to Hawking, as well as The Math Book
, The Physics Book, and The Medical Book a trilogy of more than 1,500 pages that p
resents various historical milestones, breakthroughs, and curiosities.
WikiDumper.orgTorrent downloaded from http://www.Demonoid.com anuuuuuuuuuuuus