Modern Day Sociological Theorists

1) Anthony Giddens
- born in January 18, 1938 in London
- first person in his family to go in a university
- received joint psychology and sociology degree from university of hull
- master’s at the London school of economics
- PhD at king’s college Cambridge
- appointed lecturer at the university of Leicester in 1961 and then in Cambridge
university in 1969
- Cambridge university: came up his first internationally famous book “The Class
Structure of Advance societies”, as well as other books such as “The Constitution of the
Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration”, textbooks on Sociology, and “Modernity
and Self-Identity”
- According to him, “Modernity is a shorthand term for modern society, or industrial
civilization.”
- Three Parts (Modernity):
(a) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as open to
transformation, by human intervention;
(b) a complex of economic institutions, especially in industrial production and market
economy;
(c) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass
democracy
- Modern world as a juggernaut. A runaway engine of enormous power which
collectively as human beings we can drive to some extent but which also threatens to
rush out of control. The juggernaut crushes who resist it and while it sometimes have a
steady path there are many times when it veers away erratically in directions we cannot
foresee.
- The idea of juggernaut fits with structuration theory, especially with the importance in
that theory of space and time. The image of juggernaut is of something that is moving
along through time and over physical space.
- Giddons draws heavily on Marx but stresses that modernity is multi-dimensional and
complex. He believes that there are four basic institutions: capitalism, industrialization,
surveillance capacities, and military power.
(a) Capitalism is commodity production, private ownership of capital, propertyless wage
labor, and a class system derived from these characteristics.
(b) Industrialization includes the use of of inanimate power sources and machinery to
produce goods; includes also transportation, communication and domestic life.
(c) Surveillance capacities include the supervision of the activities of subject
populations, mainly but not exclusively in the political sphere.
(d) Military power (the control of the means of violence) includes the industrialization of
war; it should be included at the macro level Giddens focuses at the Nation State.
- Also, he talks about three items that give modernity dynamism:
(a) Time and space separation
- The concept of time and space are changing. Gidden says that in the modern
society, there has been standardization and globalization of time which allows us
to interact with each other without problem. Also, he says that each technological
advancement expands our space.
(b) Disembedding of social systems
- Gidden says that social institutions are important for local society and has
survived a long time however he says that because of modernization they are
becoming disembedded from local societies. In this he says there are two
mechanisms:
(a) Symbolic tokens which are the media of exchange that can be passed around
individuals and institutions such as money and disturb the perception of space.
For example Canadian money and European money never meet each other but
can carry out transactions with each other. So these symbolic tokens lift
transactions out of the local community and produce new patterns across time
and space.
(b) Expert Systems. Gidden describes it as systems of technical accomplishment
of professional expertise that organize large areas of the material and social
environments in which we live today. So that it includes doctors, lawyers,
scientists who run the community and permit the removal of these social relations
from their media context as they move across space and time.
(c) Reflexivity of modern society
- Gidden says that social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the
light of incoming information about those practices which ultimately alters their
character. He says that everything is open to reflection in the modern world
including reflection itself leaving us with a sense of uncertainty.
2) Ulrich Beck
- Born on May 15, 1944 in Stolp Germany
- Received law degree from University of Freiburg
- Studied sociology, philosophy, psychology and political science at the University
of Munich.
- He became a professor at the University of Munster in Bamberg from 1979 and
1992.
- In 1992, he released his book “Risk Society towards New Modernity”
- From 1992 until his death, he was a professor of Sociology and Director of
Institute for Sociology at the University of Munich.
- In today’s society we don’t worry about the class structure of the Proletariat and
Bourgeoisie. We have global warming, obesity, political and environmental
downfalls and plenty more of risks. There’s no way to map out these risks and
dangers and we can’t definitively answer what causes them and what the
outcomes are, meaning we need to face them head-on and suffer the
consequences. This is what Beck argues in his Theory of Modernity. He says
that in Classical Modernity distribution of wealth was the main issue whereas in
our Modernity we focus on the preventions, causes, and minimizing of risk. We
care about safety.
- Beck says that Modernity has created a number of risks for people. He argues
that social justice, reasoning, and mass production has become a thing of the
past. The world is fast changing and we are now living in a world which is beyond
the modern, he calls this Second Modernity. Second Modernity refers to the fact
 that modern institutions are becoming global, while everyday life is breaking free
from the hold of tradition and customs.
- Beck says that earlier modernity largely consisted of industrialization and that it
was good for people but the new modernity has created risks and with the
advancements in science and technology that we have now, most people don’t
know what those risks are. As technology produces these new forms of risks, we
are constantly required to respond and adjust to these changes.
- Risk Society as Beck calls it, includes many changes that affect us globally within
contemporary social life. Such as employment pattern shifting, job security, the
declining influence of traditions and customs, and loss of traditional family
patterns.
- Beck says that in the West, individualization is arising where people are not
connected to structures anymore and can reflexively create themselves in the
society they live in.
- Beck states in his book “Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity” that, “Just as
modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteenth century
and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial
society and another modernity is coming into being.” To sum it up he says, “The
thesis of this book is: we are witnessing not the end but the beginning of
modernity – that is, of a modernity beyond its classical industrial design.”
- Beck argues that we do have the ability to be a better society because we can
evaluate risks and we can take action to reduce them but in our generation we
can’t survive without the advantages of modernity. The new and old modernity
are completely separated now with no one being tied to their own constraints
because of individualization, so there’s no going back.

To summarize these two theories:

- Gidden says there are four institutions of modernity and three items that give
them dynamism. Disembedding breaks down geographical barriers and makes
interaction less personal because we don’t need to be face-to-face to interact. He
also says that reflexivity means that traditions and customs are no longer a guide
to how we should act. We reflect and modify our actions in light of new
information.
- For Beck, he says we face new higher consequential risks in our society. He
sees second modernity as a time of growing individualization where we
becoming increasingly reflexive. Tradition no longer controls who we are and
because of that we have to reflect on ourselves and the consequences of our
actions.
It’s clear that Giddens and Beck have the same idea. Giddens also believes that late
modernity has become a risk society and Beck extends Gidden reflexivity to taking into
account the risks of our actions and our attempt to minimalize them. Also like Giddens,
Beck sees late modernity as a period of growing individualization, tradition is no longer
on the forefront.