Theory on steroids: Anthony Giddens on modernity

A review essay on three books by Anthony Giddens: The Consequences of Modernity (see abstract in IRPS No. 53/90c01280); Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (see abstract in IRPS No. 60/91c01488); & The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love & Erotism in Modern Societies (for all, Stanford U Press, 1990, 1991, & 1992, respectively [see listings in IRPS No. 78]). The review critiques Giddens's project to advance an ideal for the modernity generation. His thinly veiled collection of observations originally & better expressed by classical sociologists & popular psychotherapists is couched in a jargon of neologisms. Mistakenly portraying Max Weber as a naive positivist, Giddens's suggestion that modernity's double-edged nature requires an institutional analysis is far from original. Giddens's ambitious plans to explore the transformation of intimacy leading potentially to self-fulfillment & radical changes in society offer few innovative perspectives. Instead, his weak ideological discourse reduces to a facile duplication of the insights of Max Weber, Georg Simmel, & Friedrich Nietzsche. He proposes a self-defeating vision of the modernist individual's realization of autonomous self-identity. J. Sadler