The persuasive micro-foundation of modernity

The Consequences of Modernity (Paperback)
Giddens, Anthony / Stanford Univ Pr / 1991년 3월

기든스 저작중 가장 대중적인 책이다. 아마 그가 쓴 사회학 교과서 다음으로 많이 팔렸을 것이다. 결코 쉽지 않은 기든스가 쓴 책이 인기를 끈 것은 첫째 이책이 스텐포드대에서 한 강의였기 때문이다. 강의는 쉽게 할 수 밖에 없다. 둘째 이책이 나온 1990년은 포스트모던에 관한 잡설들이 쏟아지던 때이다. 그러나 이들 논의는 생산성과는 거리가 멀었다. 그리고 당시 세계화가 화두가 되던 때에 기든스는 시기적절하게 포스트모던이란 논의는 사회과학적으로 무의미하다는 것 그리고 세계화를 어떻게 사회과학적으로 그리고 사회이론적으로 볼 것인가를 간단명료하게 이책에서 보여주었다. 물론 그의 논의는 그의 이론을 근거로 한다. 그러나 읽기 쉽다.

다음은 내가 아마존에 포스팅했던 리뷰이다

This is the most popular title among Giddens¡¯s books. There are several reasons for the attractiveness.
1. It was the lecture held in Stanford. So the writing style is easy enough to grip the whole line. It¡¯s hard to say his earlier theoretical books like ¡®Central Problems of Social Theory¡¯, ¡®The Constitution of Society¡¯ are easy to read through, though it¡¯s the nature of theoretical works of sociology, unfortunately.
2. Timing: This book was published in 1990 when the chats of postmodernism or postmodernity waned for its unproductivity, while the discussion of globalization was about to wax. Giddens¡¯s countering of postmodernity and theoretical founding of globalization is so persuasive. The framing of modernity in terms of ¡®time-space distanciation which surfaced first in this book, still dominates the talk of globalization.
3. He founded the seemingly macro-matter of globalization on the micro-level with the concept of trust. A set of ancillary concepts are accompanied to support this foundation like ontological security, risk, reflexivity, and abstract system. His linking between micro- and macro-level seems so convincing.
The overall outline of his framework in this book based on the concept of trust. Trust came from Erickson. So it has the psychological connotation. It¡¯s not hard to capture the gist. But I prefer more friendly version to social sciences. Let¡¯s consider it with the concept of ¡®expectation¡¯. We impose some expectation on every object we encounter; mother, friend, colleague, mug, pen, computer. We expect what my friend would talk or behave before his action or what this mug would like before buying it. What we expect for something is called the expectation. In other word, we assign the identity to those object. Object is everything we can allot name. My self-identity is no exception. Myself is also object which should have some expectation. Everything including myself on the time-space has identity. Trust is the name given to this process. Let¡¯s suppose the nature of time-space changed (time-space distanciation). Then our trust should change accordingly. This is the nub of Giddens¡¯s micro-foundation of modernity in this book.