Anthony Giddens: The Last Modernist

255 Pages·1998·1.94 MB·English

by  S. Mestrovic

ANTHONY GIDDENS
Anthony Giddens is arguably the world’s leading sociologist. In this
controversial contribution to the Giddens debate, Stjepan G.Meštrović takes up
and criticises the major themes of his work—particularly the concept of “high
modernity” as opposed to “postmodernity” and his attempted construction of a
“synthetic” tradition based on human agency and structure.
Confronting Giddens as theorist and social critic with the realities of world
developments from the continuing genocide in Africa to atrocities in Chechnya
to the secessionism in Quebec, this book argues that the construction of synthetic
traditions holds the ominous potential of ushering in a new form of totalitarian
control—what Meštrović calls “postemotionalism,” rather than the possibility of
freedom and agency promised by Giddens.
Stjepan G.Meštrović is Professor of Sociology at Texas A & M University.

ANTHONY GIDDENS
The last modernist
Stjepan G.Meštrović
London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1998 Stjepan G.Meštrović
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0-203-98061-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-09572-7 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-09573-5 (pbk)
TO JOEL AND CHARLOTTE

CONTENTS
Preface and acknowledgments x
1 INTRODUCTION 1
Why Giddens and not Habermas? 5
On the style and argumentation of this book 8
Parting thoughts 10
2 ANTHONY GIDDENS: THE LAST MODERNIST 13
Giddens and the end of sociology 17
Criticisms of Giddens 20
Giddens and postmodernism 28
An overview of Giddens’s major critics 30
Summary, and the parameters of the present critique 36
3 THE NEW VERSUS THE OLD RULES OF
SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD 41
Grounding hermeneutics 49
Schopenhauer’s critique of Kant 55
Sociology as the science of discoveries 57
The normal versus the pathological 64
The one, well-designed experiment 68
Conclusions 70
4 THE ROLE OF DESIRE IN AGENCY AND STRUCTURE 77
Denaturing the human agent 80
Faith and trust 83
Searching for the heart of sociology 85
viii
How Giddens attempts to account for emotion in human history 89
The paradox of agency leading to less agency 92
Durkheim’s depiction of faith in relation to emotional life 94
The emotional components of social structure 101
Conclusions and implications 107
5 GIDDENS’S POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY 111
Giddens’s critique of Marx 114
Elaborating Giddens’s position on nationalism and the nation-state 119
Giddens on post-tradition 124
Giddens’s version of the end of history 129
The meanings of Bosnia 134
From Bosnia to Russia 140
Conclusions 142
6 GIDDENS’S MODERNISM LITE 145
The mutual unawareness of Giddens and Baudrillard 158
Postmodernity transformed into modernity lite 164
The role of the information media 169
Conclusions 172
7 UNLIMITED AGENCY AS THE NEW ANOMIE 175
Partial agency 177
Mental illness as a problem with agency 179
Can excessive agency lead to anomie? 182
Laying the groundwork for a recontextualized reading of anomie 187
Anomie as secular sin 192
Conclusions and implications 200
8 CONCLUSIONS 203
Mixing metaphors 209
Contemporary sociologists as the leisure class 211
Summary 213
ix
Notes 217
References 221
Index 229