The Consequences of Modernity

Rating:
Summary: The consequence of modernity
Review: Anythony Giddens, book "The consequences of modernity," is excellently phrased and written. However, the book tends to be a bit too concentrated, providing for an interesting night of reading. I was assigned this book for a sociology class and found it a difficult read. I did enjoy his arguements and thesis. I don't reccomend this book for pleasure reading!

Rating:
Summary: Egocentric, but somehow good nonetheless
Review: Giddens' text provides excellent tools with which to analyze many other books. While I adamantly reject his definition of modernity as ethnocentric and marginally racist, his theories have some merit when removed from his Euro-centric perspective.
"'Modernity' refers to modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onward and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence." No, modernity is often used in academia to mean simple the current era or whatever era the author happens to be living in. It need not mean a particular social mode of life. Moreover, what occurred in Europe and in the United States from about the seventeenth century onward was nothing more than the immoral, unscrupulous use of firearms to ensure people throughout the world agree with unfair trade agreements forced on them, political and bureaucratic structures which were likewise reinforced by weapons. The current era is another issue altogether.
That said, some of the concepts that Giddens presents have value. Face work, expert systems, and the scope and pace of change do make the current era remarkably different from previous centuries. Time-space distanciation and compression, the disembedding and re-embedding of social systems and cultural paradigms, the transmission of symbolic tokens and their disconnection from their original culturally embedded values provide not only a framework, but also provide an excellent vocabulary with which to examine the modern era. These descriptions are particularly applicable to electronic media - where the pace of change in technology has been exponentially accelerated. Time and space take on new meanings in cyberspace or when watching the nightly news with images of Afghanistan refugees coming into living rooms throughout the Americans and Asia. These aspects of Giddens' work make it worthwhile despite its obvious faults.

Rating:
Summary: reflection from the Third World
Review: In dealing the "consequences of modernity" (especially the sombre side, the dangers and risks), I am sure Giddens himself belongs to the "radical engagement" kind he describes. Not only trying to have some impact through his analysis of the situation to date, but practically participate in the "power arena" -as we know he is an important "mastermind" for the British ruling Labor Party. Thus his argument about getting into power to "make thing done" has its trail. And I can't agree more on this standpoint. However, I think he could have paid more attention to the uneven relationship between Western and Non-Western countries within modernity or globalization.

Modernity is a western project in terms of the ways of life fostered by the transformative agencies of nation-state and capitalism, according to Giddens. This is "because of the power they(the West) have generated"(p174). On the other hand, modernity is NOT particularly Western from the standpoint of its globalising tendencies because "there are no others"(p175). Hence, it seems clear that the Non-Western world can only "accept" what introduced to them by a "powerful brother". The helplessness is just identical to the situation of lay population facing the expert systems-but only the latter is detailed analyzed in this book.

Furthermore, I don't really understand why Giddens makes such an effort to discuss the unique of "trust" in modern era. I mean of course we have to "trust" the abstract systems. But it is the "abstract systems" not "trust" that results our difference from the pre-modern world. A per-modern person had to trust the rules of the society and something he didn't know as well (there were doctors and fortunetellers)!

Rating:
Summary: reflection from the Third World
Review: In dealing the "consequences of modernity" (especially the sombre side, the dangers and risks), I am sure Giddens himself belongs to the "radical engagement" kind he describes. Not only trying to have some impact through his analysis of the situation to date, but practically participate in the "power arena" -as we know he is an important "mastermind" for the British ruling Labor Party. Thus his argument about getting into power to "make thing done" has its trail. And I can't agree more on this standpoint. However, I think he could have paid more attention to the uneven relationship between Western and Non-Western countries within modernity or globalization.

Modernity is a western project in terms of the ways of life fostered by the transformative agencies of nation-state and capitalism, according to Giddens. This is "because of the power they(the West) have generated"(p174). On the other hand, modernity is NOT particularly Western from the standpoint of its globalising tendencies because "there are no others"(p175). Hence, it seems clear that the Non-Western world can only "accept" what introduced to them by a "powerful brother". The helplessness is just identical to the situation of lay population facing the expert systems-but only the latter is detailed analyzed in this book.

Furthermore, I don't really understand why Giddens makes such an effort to discuss the unique of "trust" in modern era. I mean of course we have to "trust" the abstract systems. But it is the "abstract systems" not "trust" that results our difference from the pre-modern world. A per-modern person had to trust the rules of the society and something he didn't know as well (there were doctors and fortunetellers)!

Rating:
Summary: The persuasive micro-foundation of modernity
Review: The persuasive framework to grasp modernity

This is the most popular title among Giddens¡¯s books. There are several reasons for the attractiveness.
1.It was the lecture held in Stanford. So the writing style is easy enough to grip the whole line. It¡¯s hard to say his earlier theoretical books like ¡®Central Problems of Social Theory¡¯, ¡®The Constitution of Society¡¯ are easy to read through, though it¡¯s the nature of theoretical works of sociology, unfortunately.
2.Timing: This book was published in 1990 when the chats of postmodernism or postmodernity waned for its unproductivity, while the discussion of globalization was about to wax. Giddens¡¯s countering of postmodernity and theoretical founding of globalization is so persuasive. The framing of modernity in terms of ¡®time-space distanciation which surfaced first in this book, still dominates the talk of globalization.
3.He founded the seemingly macro-matter of globalization on the micro-level with the concept of trust. A set of ancillary concepts are accompanied to support this foundation like ontological security, risk, reflexivity, and abstract system. His linking between micro- and macro-level seems so convincing.
The overall outline of his framework in this book based on the concept of trust. Trust came from Erickson. So it has the psychological connotation. It¡¯s not hard to capture the gist. But I prefer more friendly version to social sciences. Let¡¯s consider it with the concept of ¡®expectation¡¯. We impose some expectation on every object we encounter; mother, friend, colleague, mug, pen, computer. We expect what my friend would talk or behave before his action or what this mug would like before buying it. What we expect for something is called the expectation. In other word, we assign the identity to those object. Object is everything we can allot name. My self-identity is no exception. Myself is also object which should have some expectation. Everything including myself on the time-space has identity. Trust is the name given to this process. Let¡¯s suppose the nature of time-space changed (time-space distanciation). Then our trust should change accordingly. This is the nub of Giddens¡¯s micro-foundation of modernity in this book.

Rating:
Summary: The persuasive micro-foundation of modernity
Review: The persuasive framework to grasp modernity

This is the most popular title among Giddens¡¯s books. There are several reasons for the attractiveness.
1. It was the lecture held in Stanford. So the writing style is easy enough to grip the whole line. It¡¯s hard to say his earlier theoretical books like ¡®Central Problems of Social Theory¡¯, ¡®The Constitution of Society¡¯ are easy to read through, though it¡¯s the nature of theoretical works of sociology, unfortunately.
2. Timing: This book was published in 1990 when the chats of postmodernism or postmodernity waned for its unproductivity, while the discussion of globalization was about to wax. Giddens¡¯s countering of postmodernity and theoretical founding of globalization is so persuasive. The framing of modernity in terms of ¡®time-space distanciation which surfaced first in this book, still dominates the talk of globalization.
3. He founded the seemingly macro-matter of globalization on the micro-level with the concept of trust. A set of ancillary concepts are accompanied to support this foundation like ontological security, risk, reflexivity, and abstract system. His linking between micro- and macro-level seems so convincing.
The overall outline of his framework in this book based on the concept of trust. Trust came from Erickson. So it has the psychological connotation. It¡¯s not hard to capture the gist. But I prefer more friendly version to social sciences. Let¡¯s consider it with the concept of ¡®expectation¡¯. We impose some expectation on every object we encounter; mother, friend, colleague, mug, pen, computer. We expect what my friend would talk or behave before his action or what this mug would like before buying it. What we expect for something is called the expectation. In other word, we assign the identity to those object. Object is everything we can allot name. My self-identity is no exception. Myself is also object which should have some expectation. Everything including myself on the time-space has identity. Trust is the name given to this process. Let¡¯s suppose the nature of time-space changed (time-space distanciation). Then our trust should change accordingly. This is the nub of Giddens¡¯s micro-foundation of modernity in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Consequensence of Modernity
Review: The title itself sounds dangerous, however, the time I read this book makes me aware how far humanities came into destroying the human race. This is the reason why I advocate to all students and reader to fight back against globalization because this is part of what the book it says. The main core of the book or Anthony Giddens thought is that reflexivity of modernity is dangerous. Human are becoming distrusted, playing something that is move by self-centered interest. I know there are consequences of modernity, that is when we abuse our knowledge or intellect, when we are using this modern technology in destruction and in wrong way.

Rating:
Summary: consequences of modernity
Review: this book discusses the dimensions and dynamism of modernity. modernity is multi dimensional at the institutional level. there are four basic institutional dimensions 1. capitalism -where is insulation of economic from political. 2. surveillance is fundamental to all types of organisation. 3. militaryb power - control of means of violence in the context of industrialisation of war. 4. industrialism modern industry with the alliance of science and technology transfers the world of nature and develop created environment. there are three sources of dynamism of modernity each connected with each other.1. separation of time and space .it provides means of precise temporal spacial zoning.2. development of disembedding mechanisms."liftout" social activity from localised context,reorganising social relations across large time space distances.3. reflexive appropriation of knowledge book also covers the topic of globalisation of modernity.it shows the difference in environment of trust and risk in premodern and moderrn culture.it concentrates on the themes of risk and danger in modern life and deskilling and reskilling in everyday life.