60 Facts About Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens was born on 18 January 1938 and is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies.

Anthony Giddens 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.

Anthony Giddens has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees.

Anthony Giddens' ambition was both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity.

Anthony Giddens served as Director of the London School of Economics from 1997 to 2003, where he is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology.

Anthony Giddens is a life fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Anthony Giddens was the first member of his family to go to university.

Anthony 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.

Anthony Giddens later gained a PhD at King's College, Cambridge.

In 1961, Anthony Giddens started working at the University of Leicester where he taught social psychology.

In 1969, Anthony Giddens was appointed to a position at the University of Cambridge, where he later helped create the Social and Political Sciences Committee.

Anthony Giddens worked for many years at Cambridge as a fellow of King's College and was eventually promoted to a full professorship in 1987.

Anthony Giddens has been a vocal participant in British political debates, supporting the centre-left Labour Party with media appearances and articles.

Anthony Giddens 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.

Anthony Giddens has written commentaries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradigms in both micro and macrosociology.

Anthony Giddens has commented not only on the developments in sociology, but in anthropology, archaeology, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recently political science.

Anthony Giddens took a stance against the then-dominant structural functionalism as well as criticising evolutionism and historical materialism.

Anthony 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.

Anthony Giddens rejected Durkheim's sociological positivism paradigm which attempted to predict how societies operate, ignoring the meanings as understood by individuals.

Anthony 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.

Anthony Giddens noted the existence of a specific form of a social cycle.

Anthony Giddens calls this two-tiered, interpretive and dialectical relationship between social scientific knowledge and human practices the double hermeneutic.

Anthony Giddens stressed the importance of power, which is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person.

Anthony Giddens 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.

Anthony Giddens's 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.

Anthony 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.

Anthony Giddens suggests that structures 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.

Inevitably, Anthony Giddens concludes that all social change stems from a mixture of micro- and macro-level forces.

Anthony Giddens says that in the post-traditional order self-identity is reflexive.

We are increasingly free to choose what we want to do and who we want to be, although Anthony Giddens contends that wealth gives access to more options.

Anthony Giddens agrees that there are very specific changes that mark our current era.

Anthony Giddens stresses that we have not really gone beyond modernity as it is just a developed, detraditionalised, radicalised late modernity.

In Beyond Left and Right, Anthony Giddens criticises market socialism and constructs a six-point framework for a reconstituted radical politics:.

Anthony Giddens 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".

In 1999, Anthony Giddens delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on the subject of runaway world, subsequently published as a book of that title.

Anthony Giddens 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.

Anthony Giddens received the Asturias Prize for the social sciences in 2002.

On two visits to Libya in 2006 and 2007, organised by the Boston-based consultancy firm Monitor Group, Anthony Giddens met with Muammar Gaddafi.

Anthony Giddens has declined to comment on the financial compensation he received.

Anthony Giddens' first visit to Libya resulted in articles in the New Statesman, El Pais and La Repubblica, where he argued that the country had been dramatically transformed.

Anthony Giddens remarked of his meetings with Gaddafi as such: "You usually get about half an hour with a political leader".

Anthony Giddens likes the term 'third way' because his own political philosophy is a version of this idea.

Anthony Giddens introduces reflexivity and in information societies information gathering is considered as a routinised process for the greater protection of the nation.

Anthony Giddens has vigorously pursued the theme of globalisation in recent years.

Anthony Giddens 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.

Anthony Giddens refers to the emergence on a global level of a "high opportunity, high risk society".

Anthony Giddens says climate change constitutes a fundamental threat to the future of industrial civilisation as it spreads across the globe.

Anthony 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.

Anthony Giddens sees the pace and global scope of such revolution as unprecedented in human history and we are probably only in its early stages.

Anthony Giddens emphasises that from its beginnings it has been bound up with power and large-scale structures too.

Artificial intelligence and geopolitics, Anthony Giddens says, are converging all over again "as the circle of change comes back to its point of origin".

Anthony Giddens was a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on artificial intelligence which reported in April 2018.

Anthony Giddens was appointed to a life peerage on 16 June 2004 as Baron Anthony Giddens, of Southgate in the London Borough of Enfield and sits in the House of Lords for the Labour Party.

Anthony Giddens was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 1993.

Anthony Giddens is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Anthony Giddens received the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences in 2002.

In June 2020 it was announced that Anthony Giddens had been awarded the Arne Naess Chair and Prize at the University of Oslo, Norway, in recognition of his contributions to the study of environmental issues and climate change.

Anthony Giddens holds over 15 honorary degrees from various universities, including recently honorary degrees from Jagiellonian University, the University of South Australia, Goldsmiths, University of London and Lingnan University.

Anthony Giddens is the author of over 34 books and 200 articles.