B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 3 Recent Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology 2019 Jun Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: Giddens and the place of modernity in his work; modernity as a discontinuity, in three senses; why he rejects postmodernity in favour of radicalised modernity, with a table; the four institutional dimensions and their global forms; the three sources of dynamism, with fresh examples; trust, access points and ontological security; risk and the four reactions to it; the self, the pure relationship and life politics; utopian realism; an Indian application; criticism; a conclusion.

Giddens and his work on modernity

Anthony Giddens (born 1938) is a British sociologist and a former Director of the London School of Economics. His work falls into phases. He first reinterpreted the classical thinkers in Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971). He then built structuration theory, culminating in The Constitution of Society (1984). Around 1990 he turned to the nature of the present age. The key books are The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991) and The Transformation of Intimacy (1992). Later he applied these ideas to politics in the "Third Way".

How Giddens departs from the classical thinkers

Each founder of sociology picked out one driving force of modernity. For Marx it was capitalism; for Durkheim, industrialism and the division of labour; for Weber, rationalisation and bureaucracy. Giddens argued that each saw only part of the picture, and that none foresaw how dangerous modernity would become. Modernity, for him, is double-edged. It has created great security and opportunity, and also nuclear weapons, ecological crisis and totalitarian surveillance. A theory of modernity must hold both sides together.

Radicalised modernity, not postmodernity

Many thinkers claim that a new, postmodern age has begun. Giddens rejected this. The things that postmodern writers describe, such as uncertainty, fragmentation and global connection, are not signs that modernity has ended. They are signs that its own tendencies have become stronger. We live in high, late or radicalised modernity.

No single dimension explains the others. Giddens thus rejected both the Marxist view that capitalism is primary and the view that industrialism alone drives change.

Three sources of dynamism

The separation of time and space. Before modern times, "when" was tied to "where": the day began at local sunrise. The spread of mechanical clocks, the standard calendar and world time zones, agreed at an international conference in 1884, made time uniform everywhere. Railway timetables, airline schedules and global markets depend on this empty, universal time. Once time and space are separated, activity can be coordinated among absent people across vast distances.

Disembedding. Social relations are lifted out of local, face-to-face settings and restructured across time and space. Two mechanisms do this.

• Symbolic tokens, chiefly money, let value be exchanged among strangers anywhere.
• Expert systems, the technical knowledge of engineers, doctors, lawyers and others, organise large areas of daily life. Every time we drive over a bridge or take a prescribed medicine we rely on experts we never meet.

1. Pragmatic acceptance: getting on with daily life and ignoring what cannot be controlled.
2. Sustained optimism: faith that science and reason will find solutions.
3. Cynical pessimism: dark humour and a belief that nothing can be done.
4. Radical engagement: joining movements to change the sources of danger.

The self, intimacy and life politics

In Modernity and Self-Identity Giddens argued that the self becomes a reflexive project. Tradition no longer tells us who to be, so we must choose and constantly revise our lifestyle, career and relationships. Life planning becomes a central task.

In The Transformation of Intimacy he described the pure relationship. It is a relationship entered for its own sake and kept going only as long as both partners find it satisfying.

This shift creates life politics, a politics of lifestyle, identity and self-fulfilment. It joins the older emancipatory politics, which aimed to free people from exploitation and inequality.

2. Too much choice. Critics argue that Giddens overstates freedom and reflexivity, and understates the constraints of class, caste and gender.
3. Underplayed power. Inequality and domination receive less attention than trust and risk.
4. Hard to test. The concepts are broad and difficult to measure.
5. Postmodern reply. Postmodern theorists argue that the break with modernity is deeper than he allows.

Conclusion. Giddens's theory of modernity treats the present as radicalised modernity, a sharp break with traditional society in the pace, scope and nature of change. It rests on four institutional dimensions, capitalism, industrialism, surveillance and military power, each now global. It is driven by the separation of time and space, disembedding through symbolic tokens and expert systems, and reflexivity. It depends on trust in abstract systems, produces manufactured risks, and turns the self into a reflexive project. It is a powerful map of contemporary life, though critics find it too generous about freedom and too thin on inequality.