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1754_2 | 1864-1866: a first restoration was undertaken by Adrien Prévost de Longpérier, then curator of Antiquities at the Louvre. The main part of the body (2.14 m, from the upper belly to the feet) is erected on a stone base, and largely completed by fragments of drapery, including the fold of himation that flares behind the legs on the Nike. The remaining fragments - the right part of the bust and a large part of the left wing - too incomplete to be placed on the statue, are stored. Given the exceptional quality of the sculpture, Longpérier decided to present the body alone, exhibited until 1880 among the Roman statues first in the Caryatid Room, then briefly in the Tiber Room. |
1754_3 | 1875: Austrian archaeologists who, under the direction of Alexander Conze, had been excavating the buildings of the Samothrace sanctuary since 1870, studied the location where Champoiseau had found the Victory. Architect Aloïs Hauser drew the grey marble blocks left on-site and apprehended that, once properly assembled, they form the tapered bow of a warship, and that, placed on a base of slabs, they served as the basis for the statue. Tetradrachmas of Demetrios Poliorcetes struck between 301 and 292 BCE. representing a Victory on the bow of a ship, wings outstretched, give a good idea of this type of monument. For his part, the specialist in ancient sculpture O. Benndorf is responsible for studying the body of the statue and the fragments kept in reserve at the Louvre, and restored the statue blowing into a trumpet that she raises with her right arm, as on the coin. The two men thus managed to make a model of the Samothrace monument as a whole. |
1754_4 | 1879: Champoiseau, informed of this research, undertook a second mission to Samothrace from August 15 to 29 for the sole purpose of sending the blocks of the base and the slabs of the Victory base to the Louvre. He abandoned on the island the largest block of the base, unsculpted. Two months later, the blocks reached the Louvre Museum, where in December an assembly test was carried out in a courtyard. |
1754_5 | 1880-1883: the curator of the Department of Antiquities, Félix Ravaisson-Mollien, then decided to reconstruct the monument, in accordance with the model of Austrian archaeologists. On the body of the statue, he restored the belt area in plaster, placed the right part of the marble bust, recreated the left part in plaster, attached the left marble wing with a metal frame, and replaced the entire right wing with a plaster model. But he did not reconstruct the head, arms or feet. The ship-shaped base is rebuilt and completed, except for the broken bow of the keel, and there is still a large void at the top aft. The statue was placed directly on the base. The entire monument was then placed from the front, on the upper landing of the Daru staircase, the main staircase of the museum. |
1754_6 | 1891: Champoiseau returned to Samothrace a third time to try to obtain the Victory's head, but without success. He does however bring back debris from the drapery and base, a small fragment with an inscription and fragments of coloured plaster.
In the 20th century
1934: the presentation of the Victory is modified as part of a general redevelopment of the Daru museum and staircase, whose steps are widened and redecorated. The monument is staged to constitute the crowning of the staircase: it is advanced on the landing to be more visible from the bottom of the steps, and the statue is enhanced on the base by a modern 45 cm high block of stone, supposed to evoke a combat bridge at the bow of the ship. This presentation remained unchanged until 2013. |
1754_7 | 1939-1945: at the declaration of the Second World War in September 1939, the Victory statue descended from its base to be evacuated and sheltered with the other masterpieces of the Louvre Museum. It remained at the Château de Valençay (Indre) until the Liberation, and regained its place at the top of the stairs without damage in July 1945.
1950: American excavators from New York University, under the direction of Karl Lehmann, resumed exploration of the sanctuary of the Great Gods in Samothrace in 1938. In July 1950, they associated Louvre curator Jean Charbonneaux with their work, who discovered the palm of the statue's right hand in the Victory site. Two fingers preserved at the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna since the Austrian excavations of 1875 were reattached to the palm. The palm and fingers were then deposited in the Louvre Museum, and displayed with the statue since 1954. |
1754_8 | 1996: two pieces of grey marble that were used to moor fishing boats on the beach below the sanctuary were retrieved and reassembled at the museum in 1952. These were studied in 1996 by Ira Mark and Marianne Hamiaux, who concluded that these pieces, jointed, constitute the block of the base abandoned by Champoiseau in 1879.
In the 21st century
2008-2014: the American team led by J. McCredie undertook the digitization of the entire sanctuary to allow its 3D reconstruction.
2013-2014: under the direction of B. D. Wescoat, resumption of the study of the Victory enclosure and the small basic fragments preserved in reserve began. |
1754_9 | 2013-2014: In Paris, the Louvre Museum undertook the restoration of the entire monument with two objectives: to clean all the dirty surfaces and improve the general presentation. The statue came down from its base to undergo scientific examination (UV, infrared, X-rays, microspectrography, marble analysis): traces of blue paint are detected on the wings and on a strip at the bottom of the mantle. The blocks of the base were disassembled one by one to be drawn and studied. The 19th-century restoration of the statue is preserved with a few details (thinning of the neck and attachment of the left arm), fragments preserved in reserve at the Louvre are added (feather at the top of the left wing, a fold at the back of the chitôn), the metal vice behind the left leg is removed. Castings of small joint fragments preserved in Samothrace are integrated into the base. A cast of the large ship block left in Samothrace was replaced by a metal base on a cylinder ensuring the proper balance of the |
1754_10 | statue. Once in place on the base, the colour contrast of the marbles of the two elements becomes obvious again. The whole is reassembled on a modern base, a little removed on the landing to facilitate the movement of visitors. |
1754_11 | Description
The statue
The statue, in white Parian marble, depicts a winged woman, the goddess of Victory (Nikè), alighting on the bow of a warship. |
1754_12 | The Nike is dressed in a long tunic (chitôn) in a very fine fabric, with a folded flap and belted under the chest. It was attached to the shoulders by two thin straps (the restoration is not accurate). The lower body is partially covered by a thick mantle (himation) rolled up at the waist and untie when uncovering the entire left leg; one end slides between the legs to the ground, and the other, much shorter, flies freely in the back. The mantle is falling, and only the force of the wind holds it on her right leg. The sculptor has multiplied the effects of draperies, between places where the fabric is plated against the body by revealing its shapes, especially on the belly, and those where it accumulates in folds deeply hollowed out casting a strong shadow, as between the legs. This extreme virtuosity concerns the left side and front of the statue. On the right side, the layout of the drapery is reduced to the main lines of the clothes, in a much less elaborate work. |
1754_13 | The goddess advances, leaning on her right leg. The two feet that were bare disappeared. The right touched the ground, the heel still slightly raised; the left foot, the leg strongly stretched back, was still carried in the air. The goddess is not walking, she was finishing her flight, her large wings still spread out backwards. The arms disappeared, but the right shoulder raised indicates that the right arm was raised to the side. With her elbow bent, the goddess made her hand a victorious gesture of salvation: this hand with outstretched fingers held nothing (neither trumpet nor crown). There is no clue to reconstructing the position of the left arm, probably lowered, very slightly bent; the goddess may have held a stylis (a naval standard) on this side, a kind of mast taken as a trophy on the enemy ship, as seen on coins. The statue is designed to be seen three quarters left (right for the spectator), from where the lines of the composition are very clear: a vertical from the neck |
1754_14 | to the right foot, and an oblique starting from the neck diagonally along the left leg. "The whole body is inscribed in a rectangular triangle, a simple but very solid geometric figure: it was necessary to support both the fulfilled shapes of the goddess, the accumulation of draperies, and the energy of movement". Most recently the Alula feather was restored to the left wing in a flared position, as it would be for a bird landing. |
1754_15 | The art historian H. W. Janson has pointed out that unlike earlier Greek or Near Eastern sculptures, the Nike creates a deliberate relationship to the imaginary space around the goddess. The wind that has carried her and which she is fighting off, straining to keep steady – as mentioned the original mounting had her standing on a ship's prow, just having landed – is the invisible complement of the figure and the viewer is made to imagine it. At the same time, this expanded space heightens the symbolic force of the work; the wind and the sea are suggested as metaphors of struggle, destiny and divine help or grace. This kind of interplay between a statue and the space conjured up would become a common device in baroque and romantic art, about two thousand years later. It is present in Michelangelo's sculpture of David: David's gaze and pose shows where he is seeing his adversary Goliath and his awareness of the moment – but it is rare in ancient art.
The boat and the base |
1754_16 | These are carved from grey marble veined with white, identified as that of the quarries of Lartos, in Rhodes. The base has the shape of the bow of a Greek Hellenistic warship: long and narrow, it is covered at the front by a combat deck on which the statue is located. It has reinforced, projecting oars boxes on the sides that supported two rows of staggered oars (the oval oar slots are also are depicted). The keel is rounded. At the bottom of the bow, at the waterline, was represented the large triple-pronged spur and a little higher up a smaller two-bladed ram: that would have been used to smash the hull of the enemy ship. The top of the bow was crowned by a high and curved bow ornament (the acrostolion). These missing elements have not been reconstructed, which greatly reduces the vessel's warlike appearance. |
1754_17 | Epigraphist Ch. Blinkenberg thought that this bow was that of a trihēmiolia, a type of warship often named in Rhodes inscriptions: the island's shipyards were renowned, and its war fleet important. But specialists in ancient naval architecture do not agree on the ascription of the trihemolia. It can only be said that the Samothrace bow has boxes of oars and two benches of superimposed oars. Each oar being operated by several rowers, this can also be suitable for a Quadrireme (4 files of rowers) or a Quinquereme (5 files of rowers). These ships were widespread in all Hellenistic war fleets, including the Rhodian fleet.
Dimensions and construction of the set
Total height: 5.57 m
Statue: H: 2.75 m with wings; 2.40 m body without head
Ship: H: 2.01 m; L: 4.29 m; W max.: 2.48 m
Base: H: 0.36 m; L: 4.76 m; W: 1.76 m |
1754_18 | The Victory statue, about 1.5 times lifesize, is not cut from a single block of marble, but composed of six blocks worked separately: the body, the bust with the head, the two arms and the two wings. These blocks were assembled together by metal braces (bronze or iron). This technique, used for a long time by Greek sculptors for the protruding parts of statues, was used in Hellenistic times for the body itself, thus making it possible to use smaller pieces of marble, therefore less rare and less expensive. In the case of Victory, the sculptor optimized this technique by tilting the joint surfaces that connect the wings to the body by 20° forward, which ensured their cantilevered support in the back. To the body-block was added smaller projecting pieces: the end of the flying mantle at the back and the end of the fold falling to the ground in front of the left leg have been reattached; the right foot, the back of the left leg with the foot and a drapery fold in front of the legs are |
1754_19 | lost. |
1754_20 | The ship is composed of 16 blocks divided into three increasingly wide assizes aft, placed on a rectangular base. The seventeenth block, which remained in Samothrace, completed the void at the back of the upper assembly, just under the statue. Its weight allowed the cantilever of the blocks of the protruding oar boxes to hold on the sides. The baseboard of the statue was embedded in a basin dug on this block. Its contours, fully visible during the 2014 restoration, made it possible to determine very precisely the location of the statue.
The statue and base are inseparable to ensure the balance of the monument, designed as a whole. The construction of the monument was a real technical feat, a masterpiece of an artist who was not only a virtuoso sculptor.
Architectural context
The location |
1754_21 | The sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace is located in a very narrow river valley. The buildings reserved for the Mysteries ceremonies occupied the entire bottom of the valley. From the 3rd century BCE, the entrance to the site was a monumental propylaia to the east. To the west was a very long portico to house pilgrims (the stoa) and important offerings. The Victory Monument was located at the south end of the portico terrace, in a rectangular space dug into the hillside, and set back and raised from the theatre; facing north, it overlooks the entire sanctuary. In 1863 Champoiseau described and drew the monument surrounded on three sides by a limestone wall. All that remains of this enclosure now are the foundations of the walls, surrounded at the bottom and sides by walls supporting the lands of the hill. The enclosure itself is 13.40 m wide by 9.55 long, and we know from the surveys made by Hauser in 1876 that the Victory was arranged obliquely 14° 5 from the back wall. This |
1754_22 | arrangement highlights the left side of the statue for the observer from the terrace, which explains why the sculpture work is much more elaborate on this side than on the other. Large natural rocks are visible in the front part of space. The foundation walls have been restored and the place of the monument artificially indicated. |
1754_23 | Interpretation
The reconstructed whole has given rise to various interpretations. K. Lehmann hypothesized that the monument was placed in the basin of an open-air fountain, with water effects on the large rocks arranged for this purpose. But they could not be part of the original layout since the palm of the right hand was found under one of them: Charbonneau thought they came from a later natural landslide. The fountain hypothesis has been abandoned since the excavations of J. McCredie and B. Wescoat demonstrated that there was no water supply to the enclosure. |
1754_24 | Recent research has not determined the exact nature of the Victory's architectural setting, more than 500 blocks of which have been reused in a Byzantine construction at the other end of the west hill. Fragments of coloured plaster and some elements of terracotta architectural decoration were found in the enclosure. Two 3D reconstructions have been proposed by B. Wescoat: either low walls forming a peribolos around the open-air monument, or a covered building with columns and pediment of the naiskos type. The excellent state of conservation of the sculpture's surface suggests that it did not stay in the open air for long. The overall reconstruction of the sanctuary in 3D also highlighted that the statue of Victory was oriented along the axis of the river, which was the only unobstructed perspective of the sanctuary: the monument was thus clearly visible from the bottom of the valley. |
1754_25 | Another hypothesis was proposed by Jean Richer who observed that the Ship on which the statue is placed represents the constellation of the Argo: the ship's bow and the statue had been deliberately placed at an angle, within the important Sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace, so that Victory looked northward: according to Richer, this direction shows the path that leads to the gate of the gods identified at Mount Hemos, and thus alludes to a spiritual victory; for, in this orientation, the momentum and gaze of the statue were directed at the northeast corner of the Anaktoron, seat of the Little Mysteries, where initiation was given. This angle was thus the most sacred of the building.
Function, date and style
An offering |
1754_26 | In the sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace, as in all the great pan-Hellenic shrines, the faithful offered their ex-votos, from the most modest to the most sumptuous according to their wealth. It was a way to honour the gods and thank them for their benefits. In addition to a promise of a better spiritual life, the Cabeiri gods, including the Dioscuri, were reputed to ensure their protection to those who were initiated into their Mysteries if they were in danger at sea and in combat. Summoning them allowed their initiates to be saved from shipwreck and to obtain victory. In this context, a representation of Victory landing on a ship's bow can be interpreted as an offering to thank the Great Gods following an important naval victory. |
1754_27 | Several major naval offerings were known in the 3rd century BC. In the Greek world, such as the "bull monument" in Delos, the naval monument of the agora in Cyrene and Samothrace itself, the Neorion, (No. 6 on the map), which housed a ship about twenty meters long. In Rhodes, an offering of the same type as the base of Samothrace, but smaller, was found in the sanctuary of Athena at the top of the acropolis of Lindos.
Dating
The dedication inscription of the Victory Monument has not been found. Archaeologists are reduced to hypothesizing to define the historical context and to determine the naval victory justifying the erection of such an important ex-voto. The difficulty lies in the fact that in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE. In this period, naval battles to dominate the Aegean Sea were very numerous, first pitting the Antigonids and their Seleucid allies against the Lagids, then the Seleucids to the Rhodians and Pergamon. |
1754_28 | Austrian archaeologists first considered that the monument of Samothrace is the one represented on the tetradrachma of Demetrios Poliorcetes. They conclude that, like the coin, he celebrated his victory against Ptolemy I at the Battle of Salamis at Cyprus in 306 BCE. According to Benndorf, the Victory of Samothrace therefore dates from the last years of the fourth century BC. and may have been sculpted by a student of sculptor Scopas.
The construction of the monument was then related to the Battle of Cos (around 262-255 BCE)., during which the King of Macedonia Antigonus II Gonatas defeated the Lagids, allied with Athens and Sparta during the Chremonidean War. Antigonus Gonatas is also credited with the dedication, at the same time, of his flagship in the Neorium in Delos. |
1754_29 | The material of the base of the Victory of Samothrace was identified as early as 1905 as marble from the quarries of Lartos in Rhodes. The same is true of the small fragment found in 1891 by Champoiseau within the walls of the monument to Samothrace, bearing the end of an engraved name: [...]Σ ΡΟΔΙΟΣ. In 1931, Hermann Thiersch restored the name of the sculptor "Pythocritos son of Timocharis of Rhodes", active around 210-165 BCE. He is convinced that the fragment belongs to the ship-shaped base: he therefore makes this sculptor the author of the Victory of Samothrace. According to him, the monument was commissioned by the Rhodians, allies in the kingdom of Pergamos against Antiochus III, after their victory at the naval battles of Side and Myonnesos, on the Ionian coast, in 190 BCE. The definitive victory against the Seleucus came in 189 BCE. at the Battle of Sipyla Magnesia. The monument was therefore reportedly erected in Samothrace shortly after that date. Jean Charbonneaux also |
1754_30 | admits the historical link between the Victory of Samothrace and the battles of Myonnesus and Magnesia, and makes it the dedication of King Eumene II. |
1754_31 | Based on the same arguments, Nathan Badoud in 2018 favoured the conflict that earlier pitted the Rhodians and the King of Pergamon against King Philip V of Macedonia. The Rhodians were first defeated at the naval Battle of Lade in 201 BCE. Then Philip V was defeated at sea by the two allies at the Battle of Chios in 201 BCE. Persistent hostilities, Rhodes and Pergamon call the Roman Republic as reinforcements, and General Flamininus crushes the Macedonian army in Thessaly with the Battle of Cynoscephalae. The Rhodians reportedly dedicated the Victory Monument after that date, for their victory in Chios.
Other researchers have considered later occasions: the victory of the Romans at Pydna in 168 BCE. over Perseus, or a consecration of the kingdom of Pergamon at the same time, or the victory of Pergamon and Rhodes against Prusias II of Bithynia in 154 BCE.
Style and workshop |
1754_32 | Although the supposed dedication inscription of the name of a Rhodian found at the Victory's base was very quickly contested because of its small size, the entire monument remained attributed to the Rhodian sculpture school. This made it possible to put an end to previous hesitations about the style of the statue. In 1955 Margarete Bieber made him a major figure in the "Rhodian school" and the "Hellenic Baroque", next to the frieze of the Gigantomachy of the Great Altar of Pergamon, characterized by the strength of attitudes, the virtuosity of the draperies and the expressiveness of the figures. This style lasted in Rhodes until Roman times in complex and monumental creations such as the Laocoon group or Sperlonga sculptures attributed or signed by Rhodian sculptors. |
1754_33 | The base blocks and the sculpture of the statue are not by the same hand. The two parts of the monument were designed together, but produced by two different workshops. The marble base of Lartos was certainly made in Rhodes, where there are parallels. Moreover, the Rhodian sculpture in large marble is of high quality, without being exceptional for its time, but there are no parallels for the virtuosity of the Nike, which remains unusual. The sculptor could also come from elsewhere, as was common in the ancient Greek world for great artists. The Victory of Samothrace is a grandiose adaptation of the moving statue of the Athena-Niké of the Cyrene monument: the sculptor added wings, stretched out his front leg to express the flight, and modified the arrangement of the mantle with the floating panel at the back. He thus gives the statue of Samothrace a dynamic that brings it closer to the figures the Gigantomachy of the altar of Pergamon, conceived shortly after in the same spirit. |
1754_34 | See also
Nike of Paionios
Notes
Bibliography |
1754_35 | Nathan Badoud, La Victoire de Samothrace, défaite de Philippe V, Revue Archéologique, no 2, 2018.
Victor Basch, Le musée imaginaire de la marine antique, 1986.
Charles Champoiseau, La Victoire de Samothrace, Revue Archéologique, n°1, 1880.
Jean Charbonneaux, La main droite de la Victoire de Samothrace, Hesperia, 21, 1952.
Kevin Clinton et al., The Nike of Samothrace : setting the record straight, American Journal of Archaeology, 124, 2020.
Alexander Conze, Aloïs Hauser, Otto Benndorf, Neue Untersuchungen auf Samothrake II. Die Stoa und das Anathem der Nike, Wien, 1880.
Marianne Hamiaux, Musée du Louvre, Les Sculptures grecques, t. II, p. 27-40, éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, 1998
Marianne Hamiaux, La Victoire de Samothrace : découverte et restauration, Journal des Savants, 2001.
Marianne Hamiaux, La Victoire de Samothrace : étude technique de la statue, Monuments Piot, 83, 2004. |
1754_36 | Marianne Hamiaux, La Victoire de Samothrace : construction de la base et reconstitution, Monuments Piot, 85, 2006.
Marianne Hamiaux, La Victoire de Samothrace, collection Solo no 35, 48 pages, coédition Musée du Louvre et Réunion des Musées nationaux, Paris, 2007.
Marianne Hamiaux, Ludovic Laugier, Jean-Luc Martinez, The Winged Victory of Samothrace: Rediscovering a Masterpiece, éditions du Louvre et Somogy éditions d'art, Paris 2014.
Heiner Knell, Die Nike von Samothrake : Typus, Form, Bedeutung, 1995.
Karl and Phyllis W. Lehmann, Samothracian Reflections, Princeton University Press, 1973.
K. Lehmann, Samothrace. A guide to the Excavations and the Museum, 6th edition revised and augmented by J. Mc Credie, 1998.
Jean-Luc Martinez, La restauration de la Victoire de Samothrace : un projet international de recherche et de restauration du monument, 2013-2015, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, vol. 158e année, no 2, 2014. |
1754_37 | J. S. Morrison, J. F. Coates, Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 1996.
François Queyrel, La sculpture hellénistique, tome 1. Formes, thèmes et fonctions, Éditions Picard, Paris, 2016.
E. E. Rice, The Rhodian Navy in the Hellenistic Age, dans Actes du Colloque International : Rhodes 24 siècles, Rhodes, 1-5 octobre 1992, Athènes.
Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture II. The Styles of ca. 200-100 B.C., 2000.
Eugenio La Rocca, La Nike di Samotracia tra Macedoni e Romani : un Riesame del Monumento nel Quadro dell’assimilazione dei Penati agli Dei di Samotracia, Annuario della Scuola Italiana di Atene, Suppl. 1, 2018.
R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture, a handbook, Thames & Hudson, 1991
Andrew Stewart, The Nike of Samothrace: Another View. American Journal of Archaeology. 120 (3): 399–410, 2016.
Hermann Thiersch, Die Nike von Samothrake, ein rhodisches Werk und Anathem, Nachr. von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 1931. |
1754_38 | 1863 archaeological discoveries
Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures of the Louvre
Victory
Hellenistic sculpture
Ancient Samothrace
Archaeological discoveries in Greece
Marble sculptures in France
Sculptures of women
Sculptures of Greek goddesses
Ships in art |
1755_0 | Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities. He has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees. |
1755_1 | Four notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971) and The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (1973). In the second stage, Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an analysis of agency and structure in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of that period, such as New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) and The Constitution of Society (1984), brought him international fame on the sociological arena. The third stage of Giddens's academic work was concerned with modernity, globalisation and politics, especially the impact of modernity on social and personal life. This stage is reflected by his critique of postmodernity and discussions of a |
1755_2 | new "utopian-realist" Third Way in politics which is visible in The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way (1998). Giddens' ambition was both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity. |
1755_3 | In the most recent stage, Giddens has turned his attention to a more concrete range of problems relevant to the evolution of world society, namely environmental issues, focussing especially upon debates about climate change, analysed in successive editions of his book The Politics of Climate Change (2009); the role and nature of the European Union in Turbulent and Mighty Continent (2014); and in a series of lectures and speeches also the nature and consequences of the Digital Revolution.
Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics from 1997 to 2003, where he is now Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology. He is a life fellow of King's College, Cambridge. |
1755_4 | Biography
Born on 18 January 1938, Giddens was born and raised in Edmonton, London, and grew up in a lower-middle-class family, son of a clerk with London Transport. He attended Minchenden Grammar School. He was the first member of his family to go to university. Giddens received his undergraduate academic degree in joint sociology and psychology at the University of Hull in 1959, followed by a master's degree at the London School of Economics supervised by David Lockwood and Asher Tropp. He later gained a PhD at King's College, Cambridge. In 1961, Giddens started working at the University of Leicester where he taught social psychology. At Leicester, considered to be one of the seedbeds of British sociology, he met Norbert Elias and began to work on his own theoretical position. In 1969, Giddens was appointed to a position at the University of Cambridge, where he later helped create the Social and Political Sciences Committee (SPS, now HSPS). |
1755_5 | Giddens worked for many years at Cambridge as a fellow of King's College and was eventually promoted to a full professorship in 1987. He is cofounder of Polity Press (1985). From 1997 to 2003, he was Director of the London School of Economics and a member of the advisory council of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He was also an adviser to Tony Blair. It was Giddens' Third Way political approach that has been Blair's guiding political idea. He has been a vocal participant in British political debates, supporting the centre-left Labour Party with media appearances and articles (many of which are published in the New Statesman).
He was given a life peerage in June 2004 as Baron Giddens, of Southgate in the London Borough of Enfield and sits in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. He is the recipient of many academic honours (see below).
Work |
1755_6 | Overview
Giddens, the author of over 34 books and 200 articles, essays and reviews, has contributed and written about most notable developments in the area of social sciences, with the exception of research design and methods. He has written commentaries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradigms in both micro and macrosociology. His writings range from abstract, metatheoretical problems to very direct and 'down-to-earth' textbooks for students. His textbook, Sociology (9th edition, Polity), has sold over 1 million copies. Finally, he is also known for his interdisciplinary approach. Giddens has commented not only on the developments in sociology, but also in anthropology, archaeology, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recently political science. In view of his knowledge and works, one may view much of his life's work as a form of grand synthesis of sociological theory. |
1755_7 | Nature of sociology
Before 1976, most of Giddens' writings offered critical commentary on a wide range of writers, schools and traditions. Giddens took a stance against the then-dominant structural functionalism (represented by Talcott Parsons) as well as criticising evolutionism and historical materialism. In Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), he examined the work of Max Weber, Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, arguing that despite their different approaches each was concerned with the link between capitalism and social life. Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as such: study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries." |
1755_8 | In New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), the title of which alludes to Durkheim's Rules of the Sociological Method of 1895, Giddens attempted to explain how sociology should be done and addressed a long-standing divide between those theorists who prioritise macro-level studies of social life—looking at the big picture of society—and those who emphasise the micro level—what everyday life means to individuals. In New Rules, he noted that the functionalist approach invented by Durkheim treated society as a reality unto itself not reducible to individuals. He rejected Durkheim's sociological positivism paradigm which attempted to predict how societies operate, ignoring the meanings as understood by individuals. Giddens noted: "Society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, insofar as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do." |
1755_9 | Giddens contrasted Durkheim with Weber's approach—interpretative sociology—focused on understanding agency and motives of individuals. Giddens is closer to Weber than Durkheim, but in his analysis he rejects both of those approaches, stating that while society is not a collective reality, nor should the individual be treated as the central unit of analysis. Rather, he uses the logic of hermeneutic tradition from interpretative sociology to argue for the importance of agency in sociological theory, claiming that human social actors are always to some degree knowledgeable about what they are doing. Social order is therefore a result of some pre-planned social actions, not automatic evolutionary response. Unlike natural scientists, sociologists have to interpret a social world which is already interpreted by the actors that inhabit it. According to Giddens, there is a duality of structure by which social practice, the principal unit of investigation, has both a structural and an |
1755_10 | agency-component. The structural environment constrains individual behaviour, but it also makes it possible. He also noted the existence of a specific form of a social cycle. Once sociological concepts are formed, they filter back into everyday world and change the way people think. Because social actors are reflexive and monitor the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions, they adapt their actions to their evolving understandings. As a result, social scientific knowledge of society will actually change human activities. Giddens calls this two-tiered, interpretive and dialectical relationship between social scientific knowledge and human practices the double hermeneutic. Giddens also stressed the importance of power, which is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person. Power, the transformative capacity of people to change the social and material world, is closely shaped by knowledge and space-time. In New Rules, Giddens specifically |
1755_11 | wrote: |
1755_12 | Sociology is not about a pre-given universe of objects, the universe is being constituted—or produced by—the active doings of subjects.
The production and reproduction of society thus has to be treated as a skilled performance on the part of its members.
The realm of human agency is bounded. Individuals produce society, but they do so as historically located actors, and not under conditions of their own choosing.
Structures must be conceptualised not only as constraints upon human agency, but as enablers as well.
Processes of structuration involve an interplay of meanings, norms and power.
The sociological observer cannot make social life available as phenomenon for observation independently of drawing upon his knowledge of it as a resource whereby he constitutes it as a topic for investigation.
Immersion in a form of life is the necessary and only means whereby an observer is able to generate such characterisations.
Sociological concepts thus obey a double hermeneutic. |
1755_13 | In sum, the primary tasks of sociological analysis are the following:
The hermeneutic explication and mediation of divergent forms of life within descriptive metalanguages of social science.
Explication of the production and reproduction of society as the accomplished outcome of human agency.
Structuration |
1755_14 | Giddens' theory of structuration explores the question of whether it is individuals or social forces that shape our social reality. He eschews extreme positions, arguing that although people are not entirely free to choose their own actions and their knowledge is limited, they nonetheless are the agency which reproduces the social structure and leads to social change. His ideas find an echo in the philosophy of the modernist poet Wallace Stevens, who suggests that we live in the tension between the shapes we take as the world acts upon us and the ideas of order that our imagination imposes upon the world. Giddens writes that the connection between structure and action is a fundamental element of social theory, structure and agency are a duality that cannot be conceived of apart from one another and his main argument is contained in his expression duality of structure. At a basic level, this means that people make society, but they are at the same time constrained by it. Action and |
1755_15 | structure cannot be analysed separately as structures are created, maintained and changed through actions while actions are given meaningful form only through the background of the structure. The line of causality runs in both directions making it impossible to determine what is changing what. In Giddens own words from New Rules, he states: structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution." |
1755_16 | In this regard, Giddens defines structures as consisting of rules and resources involving human action. Thus, the rules constrain the actions and the resources make it possible. He also differentiates between systems and structures. Systems display structural properties, but they are not structures themselves. He notes in his article Functionalism: après la lutte (1976) as follows: "To examine the structuration of a social system is to examine the modes whereby that system, through the application of generative rules and resources is produced and reproduced in social interaction." |
1755_17 | This process of structures producing and re-producing systems is called structuration. Systems here mean to Giddens "the situated activities of human agents" (The Constitution of Society) and "the patterning of social relations across space-time" (ibid.). Structures are then "sets of rules and resources that individual actors draw upon in the practices that reproduce social systems" (Politics, Sociology and Social Theory) and "systems of generative rules and sets, implicated in the articulation of social systems" (The Constitution of Society), existing virtually "out of time and out of space" (New Rules). Structuration therefore means that relations that took shape in the structure can exist out of time and place. In other words, independent of the context in which they are created. An example is the relationship between a teacher and a student. When they come across each other in another context, say on the street, the hierarchy between them is still preserved. |
1755_18 | Structure can act as a constraint on action, but it also enables action by providing common frames of meaning. Consider the example of language: structure of language is represented by the rules of syntax that rule out certain combinations of words. However, the structure also provides rules that allow new actions to occur, enabling us to create new, meaningful sentences. Structures should not be conceived as "simply placing constrains upon human agency, but as enabling" (New Rules). Giddens suggests that structures (traditions, institutions, moral codes and other sets of expectations—established ways of doing things) are generally quite stable, but they can be changed, especially through the unintended consequences of action when people start to ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them differently. |
1755_19 | Actors or agents employ the social rules appropriate to their culture, ones that they have learned through socialisation and experience. These rules together with the resources at their disposal are used in social interactions. Rules and resources employed in this manner are not deterministic, but they are applied reflexively by knowledgeable actors, albeit that actors’ awareness may be limited to the specifics of their activities at any given time. Thus, the outcome of action is not totally predictable. |
1755_20 | Connections between micro and macro
Structuration is very useful in synthesising micro and macro issues. On a micro scale, one of individuals' internal sense of self and identity, consider the example of a family in which we are increasingly free to choose our own mates and how to relate with them which creates new opportunities yet also more work as the relationship becomes a reflexive project that has to be interpreted and maintained. At the same time, this micro-level change cannot be explained only by looking at the individual level as people did not spontaneously change their minds about how to live and neither can we assume they were directed to do so by social institutions and the state. |
1755_21 | On a macro scale, one of the state and social organisations like multinational capitalist corporations, consider the example of globalisation which offers vast new opportunities for investment and development, but crises—like the Asian financial crisis—can affect the entire world, spreading far outside the local setting in which they first developed and last but not least directly influences individuals. A serious explanation of such issues must lie somewhere within the network of macro and micro forces. These levels should not be treated as unconnected and in fact they have significant relation to one another. |
1755_22 | To illustrate this relationship, Giddens discusses changing attitudes towards marriage in developed countries. He claims that any effort to explain this phenomenon solely in terms of micro or macro level causes would result in a circular cause and consequence. Social relationships and visible sexuality (micro-level change) are related to the decline of religion and the rise of rationality (macro-level change), but with changes in the laws relating to marriage and sexuality (macro) as well, change caused by different practices and changing attitudes on the level of everyday lives (micro). Practices and attitudes in turn can be affected by social movements (for example, women's liberation and egalitarianism), a macro-scale phenomena. However, the movements usually grow out of everyday life grievances—a micro-scale phenomenon. |
1755_23 | All of this is increasingly tied in with mass media, one of our main providers of information. The media do not merely reflect the social world yet also actively shape it, being central to modern reflexivity. In Media, Gender and Identity, David Gauntlett writes: |
1755_24 | Another example explored by Giddens is the emergence of romantic love which Giddens (The Transformation of Intimacy) links with the rise of the narrative of the self type of self-identity, stating: "Romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative into an individual's life". Although the history of sex clearly demonstrates that passion and sex are not modern phenomena, the discourse of romantic love is said to have developed from the late 18th century. Romanticism, the 18th- and 19th-century European macro-level cultural movement, is responsible for the emergence of the novel—a relatively early form of mass media. The growing literacy and popularity of novels fed back into the mainstream lifestyle and the romance novel proliferated the stories of ideal romantic life narratives on a micro-level, giving the romantic love an important and recognized role in the marriage-type relationship. |
1755_25 | Consider also the transformation of intimacy. Giddens asserts that intimate social relationships have become democratised so that the bond between partners—even within a marriage—has little to do with external laws, regulations or social expectations, but instead it is based on the internal understanding between two people—a trusting bond based on emotional communication. Where such a bond ceases to exist, modern society is generally happy for the relationship to be dissolved. Thus, we have "a democracy of the emotions in everyday life" (Runaway World, 1999). |
1755_26 | A democracy of the emotions—the democratising of everyday life—is an ideal, more or less approximated to in the diverse contexts of everyday life. There are many societies, cultures and contexts in which it remains far from reality—where sexual oppression is an everyday phenomenon. In The Transformation of Intimacy, Giddens introduces the notion of plastic sexuality—sexuality freed from an intrinsic connection with reproduction and hence open to innovation and experimentation. What was once open only to elites becomes generalised with the advent of mass contraception as sexuality and identity become far more fluid than in the past. These changes are part and parcel of wider transformations affecting the self and self-identity.
Inevitably, Giddens concludes that all social change stems from a mixture of micro- and macro-level forces. |
1755_27 | Self-identity
Giddens says that in the post-traditional order self-identity is reflexive. It is not a quality of a moment, but instead an account of a person's life. Giddens writes: |
1755_28 | More than ever before, we have access to information that allows us to reflect on the causes and consequences of our actions. At the same time, we are faced with dangers related to unintended consequences of our actions and by our reliance on the knowledge of experts. We create, maintain and revise a set of biographical narratives, social roles and lifestyles—the story of who we are and how we came to be where we are now. We are increasingly free to choose what we want to do and who we want to be, although Giddens contends that wealth gives access to more options. However, increased choice can be both liberating and troubling. Liberating in the sense of increasing the likelihood of one's self-fulfilment and troubling in form of increased emotional stress and time needed to analyse the available choices and minimise risk of which we are increasingly aware, or what Giddens sums up as the manufacturing uncertainty. While in earlier, traditional societies we would be provided with that |
1755_29 | narrative and social role, in the post-traditional society we are usually forced to create one ourselves. As Giddens puts it: "What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity—and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour." |
1755_30 | Modernity |
1755_31 | Giddens' recent work has been concerned with the question of what is characteristic about social institutions in various points of history. Giddens agrees that there are very specific changes that mark our current era. However, he argues that it is not a post-modern era, but instead it is just a "radicalised modernity era" (similar to Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid modernity), produced by the extension of the same social forces that shaped the previous age. Nonetheless, Giddens differentiates between pre-modern, modern and late or high modern societies and does not dispute that important changes have occurred but takes a neutral stance towards those changes, saying that it offers both unprecedented opportunities and unparalleled dangers. He also stresses that we have not really gone beyond modernity as it is just a developed, detraditionalised, radicalised late modernity. Thus, the phenomena that some have called postmodern are to Giddens nothing more than the most extreme |
1755_32 | instances of a developed modernity. Along with Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash, he endorses the term reflexive modernisation as a more accurate description of the processes associated with the second modernity since it opposes itself in its earlier version instead of opposing traditionalism, endangering the very institutions it created such as the national state, the political parties or the nuclear family. |
1755_33 | Giddens concentrates on a contrast between traditional (pre-modern) culture and post-traditional (modern) culture. In traditional societies, individual actions need not be extensively thought about because available choices are already determined (by the customs, traditions and so on). In contrast, in post-traditional society people (actors or agents) are much less concerned with the precedents set by earlier generations and they have more choices, due to flexibility of law and public opinion. However, this means that individual actions now require more analysis and thought before they are taken. Society is more reflexive and aware, something Giddens is fascinated with, illustrating it with examples ranging from state governance to intimate relationships. Giddens examines three realms in particular, namely the experience of identity, connections of intimacy and political institutions. |
1755_34 | According to Giddens, the most defining property of modernity is that we are disembedded from time and space. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved and time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. |
1755_35 | In pre-modern societies, it was the elders who possessed the knowledge as they were definable in time and space. In modern societies, we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong as there is always a risk we have to take. Even the technologies which we use and which transform constraints into means hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a juggernaut as modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut travelling through space.
Humanity tries to steer it, but as long as the modern institutions with all their uncertainty endure, then we will never be able to influence its course. The uncertainty can be managed by reembedding the expert-systems into the structures which we are accustomed to. |
1755_36 | Another characteristic is enhanced reflexivity, both at the level of individuals and at the level of institutions. The latter requires an explanation as in modern institutions there is always a component which studies the institutions themselves for the purpose of enhancing its effectiveness. This enhanced reflexivity was enabled as language became increasingly abstract with the transition from pre-modern to modern societies, becoming institutionalised into universities. It is also in this regard that Giddens talks about double hermeneutica as every action has two interpretations. One is from the actor himself, the other of the investigator who tries to give meaning to the action he is observing. However, the actor who performs the action can get to know the interpretation of the investigator and therefore change his own interpretation, or his further line of action. |
1755_37 | According to Giddens, this is the reason that positive science is never possible in the social sciences as every time an investigator tries to identify causal sequences of action, the actors can change their further line of action. However, the problem is that conflicting viewpoints in social science result in a disinterest of the people. For example, when scientists do not agree about the greenhouse effect, people would withdraw from that arena and deny that there is a problem. Therefore, the more the sciences expand, the more uncertainty there is in the modern society. In this regard, the juggernaut gets even more steerless as Giddens states: |
1755_38 | In A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Giddens concludes:
There exists no necessary overall mechanism of social change, no universal motor of history such as class conflict.
There are no universal stages, or periodisation, of social development, these being ruled out by intersocietal systems and "time-space edges" (the ever-presence of exogenous variables) as well as by human agency and the inherent historicity of societies.
Societies do not have needs other than those of individuals, therefore notions such as adaptation cannot properly be applied to them.
Pre-capitalist societies are class-divided, but only with capitalism there are class societies in which there is endemic class conflict, the separation of the political and economic spheres, property freely alienable as capital and "free" labour and labour markets. |
1755_39 | While class conflict is integral to capitalist society, there is no teleology that guarantees the emergence of the working class as the universal class and no ontology that justifies denial of the multiple bases of modern society represented by capitalism, industrialism, bureaucratisation, surveillance and industrialisation of warfare.
Sociology, as a subject pre-eminently with modernity, addresses a reflexive reality. |
1755_40 | Third Way
In the age of late and reflexive modernity and post-scarcity economy, the political science is being transformed. Giddens notes that there is a possibility that "life politics" (the politics of self-actualisation) may become more visible than "emancipatory politics" (the politics of inequality); that new social movements may lead to more social change than political parties; and that the reflexive project of the self and changes in gender and sexual relations may lead the way via the "democratisation of democracy" to a new era of Habermasian "dialogic democracy" in which differences are settled and practices ordered through discourse rather than violence or the commands of authority. |
1755_41 | Relying on his past familiar themes of reflexivity and system integration which places people into new relations of trust and dependency with each other and their governments, Giddens argues that the political concepts of left and right are now breaking down as a result of many factors, most centrally the absence of a clear alternative to capitalism and the eclipse of political opportunities based on the social class in favour of those based on lifestyle choices.
Giddens moves away from explaining how things are to the more demanding attempt of advocacy about how they ought to be. In Beyond Left and Right (1994), Giddens criticises market socialism and constructs a six-point framework for a reconstituted radical politics:
Repair damaged solidarities.
Recognise the centrality of life politics.
Accept that active trust implies generative politics.
Embrace dialogic democracy.
Rethink the welfare state.
Confront violence. |
1755_42 | The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998) provides the framework within which the Third Way, also termed by Giddens as the radical centre, is justified. In addition, The Third Way supplies a broad range of policy proposals aimed at what Giddens calls the "progressive centre-left" in British politics. According to Giddens: " overall aim of third way politics should be to help citizens pilot their way through the major revolutions of our time: globalisation, transformations in personal life and our relationship to nature." Giddens remains fairly optimistic about the future of humanity: "There is no single agent, group or movement that, as Marx's proletariat was supposed to do, can carry the hopes of humanity, but there are many points of political engagement which offer good cause for optimism." |
1755_43 | Giddens discards the possibility of a single, comprehensive, all-connecting ideology or political programme without a duality of structure. Instead, he advocates going after the small pictures, ones people can directly affect at their home, workplace or local community. To Giddens, this is a difference between pointless utopianism and useful utopian realism which he defines as envisaging "alternative futures whose very propagation might help them be realised" (The Consequences of Modernity). By utopian, he means that this is something new and extraordinary, and by realistic he stresses that this idea is rooted in the existing social processes and can be viewed as their simple extrapolation. Such a future has at its centre a more socialised, demilitarised and planetary-caring global world order variously articulated within green, women's and peace movements and within the wider democratic movement. |
1755_44 | The Third Way was not just a work of abstract theory as it influenced a range of centre-left political parties across the world—in Europe, Latin America and Australasia. Although close to New Labour in the United Kingdom, Giddens dissociated himself from many of the interpretations of the Third Way made in the sphere of day-to-day politics. For him, it was not a succumbing to neoliberalism or the dominance of capitalist markets. The point was to get beyond both market fundamentalism and traditional top-down socialism to make the values of the centre-left count in a globalising world. He argued that "the regulation of financial markets is the single most pressing issue in the world economy" and that "global commitment to free trade depends upon effective regulation rather than dispenses with the need for it". |
1755_45 | In 1999, Giddens delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on the subject of runaway world, subsequently published as a book of that title. The aim was to introduce the concept and implications of globalisation to a lay audience. He was the first Reith Lecturer to deliver the lectures in different places around the world and the first to respond directly to e-mails that came in while he was speaking. The lectures were delivered in London, Washington, New Delhi and Hong Kong and responded to by local audiences. Giddens received the Asturias Prize for the social sciences in 2002. The award has been labelled the Spanish Nobel Prize, but it stretches well beyond the sphere of science. Other recipients of the prize that year included Woody Allen, the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee and conductor Daniel Barenboim.
Outside consultancies |
1755_46 | On two visits to Libya in 2006 and 2007, organised by the Boston-based consultancy firm Monitor Group, Giddens met with Muammar Gaddafi. Giddens has declined to comment on the financial compensation he received. The Guardian reported in March 2011 that Libya's government engaged Monitor Group as advisor on matters of public relations. Monitor Group allegedly received 2 million pounds in return for undertaking a "cleansing campaign" to improve Libya's image. In a letter to Abdullah Senussi, a high-ranking Libyan official in July 2006, Monitor Group reported as follows:
We will create a network map to identify significant figures engaged or interested in Libya today. ... We will identify and encourage journalists, academics and contemporary thinkers who will have interest in publishing papers and articles on Libya. ... We are delighted that after a number of conversations, Lord Giddens has now accepted our invitation to visit Libya in July. |
1755_47 | Giddens' first visit to Libya resulted in articles in the New Statesman, El País and La Repubblica, where he argued that the country had been dramatically transformed. In the New Statesman, he wrote: "Gaddafi's 'conversion' may have been driven partly by the wish to escape sanctions, but I get the strong sense it is authentic and there is a lot of motive power behind it. Saif Gaddafi is a driving force behind the rehabilitation and potential modernisation of Libya. Gaddafi Sr, however, is authorising these processes". During the second visit, Monitor Group organised a panel of three thinkers (Giddens, Gaddafi, and Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld) chaired by Sir David Frost. |
1755_48 | Giddens remarked of his meetings with Gaddafi as such: "You usually get about half an hour with a political leader". He also recalls the following: "My conversation lasts for more than three. Gaddafi is relaxed and clearly enjoys intellectual conversation. He likes the term 'third way' because his own political philosophy is a version of this idea. He makes many intelligent and perceptive points. I leave enlivened and encouraged". |
1755_49 | Theory of reflexivity |
1755_50 | Giddens introduces reflexivity and in information societies information gathering is considered as a routinised process for the greater protection of the nation. Information gathering is known as the concept of individuation. Individuality comes as a result of individuation as people are given more informed choices. The more information the government has about a person, the more entitlements are given to the citizens. The process of information gathering helps government to identify enemies of the state, singling out individuals that are suspected of plotting activities against the state. The advent of technology has brought national security to a completely new level. Historically, the military relied on armed force to deal with threats. With the development of ICT, biometric scans, language translation, real time programs and other related intelligent programs have made the identification of terrorist activities much easier compared to the past. The analysing of algorithm patterns |
1755_51 | in biometric databases have given government new leads. Data about citizens can be collected through identification and credential verification companies. Hence, surveillance and ICT goes hand-in-hand with information gathering. In other words, the collection of information is necessary as stringent safeguards for the protection of the nation, preventing it from imminent attacks. |
1755_52 | Living in a high opportunity, high risk society |
1755_53 | Giddens has vigorously pursued the theme of globalisation in recent years. He sees the growing interdependence of world society as driven not only by the increasing integration of the world economy, but above all by massive advances in communications. As he has noted when he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures just before the turn of the century, the Internet was in its infancy. However, now it has expanded in a wholly unprecedented way, linking people and organizations across the world on an everyday level as well as intruding deeply into everyday life. Billions of people have access to it and the numbers are growing every day. An increasingly interconnected and wired-up world offers many advantages and benefits, yet it carries new risks too, some themselves of global proportions. In the 21st century, work opportunity and risk combine as never before. Giddens refers to the emergence on a global level of a "high opportunity, high risk society". Both on the level of opportunity and risk |
1755_54 | we are in terrain human beings have never explored before. We do not know in advance what the balance is likely to be because many of the opportunities and risks are quite new as we cannot draw on past history to assess them. |
1755_55 | Climate change is one of those new risks. No other civilization before the advent of modern industrialism was able to intervene into nature to even a fraction of the extent to which we do on an everyday basis. |
1755_56 | Climate change was referred to in several of Giddens's books from the mid-1990s onwards, but it was not discussed at length until the publication of his work The Politics of Climate Change in 2009. Giddens says climate change constitutes a fundamental threat to the future of industrial civilisation as it spreads across the globe. Given that is the case, he asks why are countries around the world doing so little to counter its advance. Many reasons are involved, but the prime one is the historical novelty of humanly induced climate change itself. No previous civilisation intervened into nature on a level remotely similar to that which we do on an everyday level today. We have no previous experience of dealing with such an issue and especially one of such global scope, or of the dangers it poses. Those dangers hence appear as abstract and located at some indefinite point in the future. Giddens's paradox consists of the following theorem. We are likely put off responding adequately to |
1755_57 | climate change until major catastrophes unequivocally connected to it occur, but by then by definition it would be too late, for we have no way of reversing the build-up of greenhouses gases that is driving the transformation of the world's climate. Some such gases would be in the atmosphere for centuries. |
1755_58 | In his latest work, Giddens has returned to the subject of the European Union, discussed in 2007 in his book Europe in the Global Age and in a diversity of articles. In Turbulent and Mighty Continent: What Future for Europe?, he discusses the likely future of the European Union in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Giddens writes as a committed pro-European, but he accepts that fundamental reforms must be made if the European Union is to avoid stagnation or worse. The coming of the euro introduced economic federalism among the eurozone countries and therefore to the European Union as a whole. Some version of political federalism must follow, even if limited in nature. Reforms must confer qualities absent from much of the European Union's history, but which are now required for its future such as flexible and quick-acting leadership, coupled to the greater democratic involvement of citizens. However, he also emphasised that European Union "could still founder, even |
1755_59 | disintegrate, the result of a chain reaction of circumstances that member states were unable to control". In December 2014, Turbulent and Mighty Continent was awarded the European Book Prize, awarded by a selection jury featuring members from many different countries. |
1755_60 | In recent years, while continuing to pursue some of the core themes of his earlier works he has become preoccupied with the impact of the Digital Revolution on world society and on everyday life. That revolution, he argues, must not be identified solely with the advent of the internet, extraordinary although that is. Rather, the Digital Revolution is a massive wave of change washing across the world, driven by the interrelation between the Internet, robotics and supercomputers. It is huge algorithmic power—available to the billions of people who already possess smartphones—that connects the other two. |
1755_61 | Giddens sees the pace and global scope of such revolution as unprecedented in human history and we are probably only in its early stages. Many see the Digital Revolution as primarily producing endless diversity and as acting to dissolve pre-existing institutions and modes of life. Giddens emphasises that from its beginnings it has been bound up with power and large-scale structures too. It is deeply bound up with American global power and has physical form, depending as it does upon global satellite systems and systems, underground cables and concentrations of supercomputers. GPS has its origins in super-power rivalry between the United States and what was then the Soviet Union. The digital universe is also funded by mass advertising and expresses the dominance of large corporations in the world economy. |
1755_62 | The Digital Revolution forms an important part of Giddens's recent preoccupation with the emergence of the high opportunity, high risk society. For example, the advent of such revolution promises fundamental advances in core areas of medicine. New threats and problems abound, both in our everyday lives and in the larger institutions of our societies. Scientists can communicate with one-another in a direct way across the world. The overlap of supercomputers and genetics means that genetic structures can be decoded instantaneously, promising huge advances in conquering major diseases. Medical practice is likely to be transformed through remote monitoring and other digital innovations. At the same time, the overlap of the Digital Revolution with criminality, violence and war is pervasive and dangerous. Military drones are just one example of the continuing involvement of the Digital Revolution with war. |
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