Biography
Anthony Giddens was born in 1938 in Edmonton, North London. He completed his B.A. in Sociology and Psychology at the University of Hull, his M.A. at the London School of Economics, and his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge. He lectured at the University of Leicester, before moving to King's College Cambridge where he became Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. From 1998 to 2003 he was Director of the London School of Economics, where today he remains as a Professor. Giddens was awarded a peerage in 2004, and now sits in the House of Lords.
Giddens' work covers a vast range of topics. Of particular importance are his notions of reflexivity, globalization, structuration theory and the Third Way. Reflexivity refers to the notion that both individuals and society are defined not just by themselves but in relation to each other, and must continually redefine themselves in reaction to others and new information. For Giddens, globalization is a process that is far more than just about economics, it ‘is the intensification of world-wide social relationships which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by distant events and, in turn, distant events are shaped by local happenings.' He argues that globalization is the natural consequence of modernity, and will lead to the need to reconstruct modern institutions such as the nation-state. His theory of structuration suggests that in order to understand a society, one cannot look solely at either the actions of individuals or the nature of the structures that maintain the society; both must be examined.
Giddens has perhaps been most famous for his development of the Third Way, a political philosophy which seeks to redefine social democracy for a post-Cold War and globalized era. It is an attempt to transcend traditional social democratic and neo-liberal value systems, drawing on aspects of both sides to create what he terms a ‘radical centre'. This work has had a profound influence on centre-left politics throughout the world, and has been closely associated with social democratic reforms that have come to characterize the ‘new left'.
More recently, he has written about what governments can do to tackle social inequality, and the future of the European Union, as well as interventions on issues such as climate change.
