Dynamics of Contemporary Social Theory: Reassessing the Structure, Genealogy of Modernity, and the Arena of Global Contestation from Anthony Giddens’ Perspective
One of Giddens’s arguments is that most theorists tend to be imperialists, claiming all the basis for their own favorite concepts whether these are structure and its limiting qualities (in the case of structuralism and functionalism) or action and meaning (as in symbolic interactionism and phenomenology). This imperialistic tendency often traps sociological debates in rigid binary dichotomies, where one school of thought seeks to swallow up another without room for compromise. As a result, theoretical dynamics become a domain of epistemic power struggles that ignore the real complexities of the fabric of everyday human social life.
Giddens was a professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge and later director of the London School of Economics before retiring in 2003 to concentrate on his writing. This retirement marked a new phase in which his intellectual productivity expanded into the global public sphere, no longer confined solely to the confines of the academic ivory tower. Through his works, born after this purely intellectual thought, he continues to contextualize macro-structural changes with the micro-behaviors of contemporary society.
The most comprehensive exposition of Giddens’s ideas appears in The Constitution of Society, where he sets out his theory of structuration. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing that social theory must reconceptualize its subject matter in terms of dualities of structure. Focusing solely on the activity of free agents is as misleading as looking solely at the structural constraints that limit free activity. It is from this perspective that his major ideas work to break down the dividing wall between subjectivism and objectivism that has divided social thinkers for centuries.
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