Giddens, Anthony (1938–)

Abstract

The British sociologist Anthony Giddens has authored or edited more than 40 books and 200 articles. From the 1960s to the 1980s they were addressed solely to social scientists and their students. They were political only insofar as they engaged with issues of structure and agency both in theory and in the practices of alternative forms of modern society. Giddens acknowledges that his many (meta)theoretical writings that culminate in The Constitution of Society are an attempt to resolve the complex problems hidden in Marx's deceptively simple claim that “Men make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.” Giddens's own “structuration theory” seeks to supersede the dualisms of the individual and society, subjectivism and objectivism, and voluntarism and determinism. It has numerous interconnected components. They include the “duality of structure” (whereby structure, understood as rules and resources, is the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursively organizes) and the “reflexive monitoring of action” by the agent.