About the Author 

Anthony Giddens is director of the London School of Economics (LSE) and has become one of the hip sociologists of our time, being able to translate the current Zeitgeist into a kind of agreeable theory which seems to be applicable to the moment. The Guardian newspaper has referred to him as 'the most quoted sociologist of our time' and Tony Blair and his team seem to have taken Giddens to heart.

Amongst sociologists inspired by Jurgen Habermas there was a reaction against the radical relativism of postmodernism. Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck developed a 'reflexive sociology' in which social relations were not fixed but mutually impacting. This was hoped would avoid the pitfalls both of positivist sociology and also the anti-enlightenment thinking of the post modernists. However, in Beck and Giddens' hands the defense of Enlightenment was qualified by the Frankfurt School's critique of 'instrumental reason'. The open-ended nature of risk, particularly struck them both: Industry and social complexity brought with them 'manufactured uncertainty'.  It seemed as if the current of irrationalism represented by postmodernism had been reproduced in all but name.

The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy Notes and review by Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata August 16, 1999

Giddens is struggling in this book with the development of policy through which we may experience renewal. He tries to steer clear of both the overwhelming tendency towards univsersalism as an absolute good, as in the days of Enlightenment, and of the radical retreat into the totally individual or regional which opposes the universal. Negation most often relies on a counter-norm, which traps us as fully as the original norm against which we were struggling for liberation. Giddens, a theorist, here puts his skill to the test in trying to define policy that might guide us into the praxis to realize some of our theoretical approaches. He, like many others, calls this attempt to find our way out of the opposition advocacy of "a right way to proceed" a "third way," a "non-confrontational way, what Habermas might call a listening in good faith to all the validity claims presented.

"The neglect of what any casual survey of history shows to be an overwhelmingly obvious and chronic trait of human affairs - recourse to violence and war - is one of the most extraordinary blank spots in social theory" (The Nation-State and Violence, 1985).

A warning when reading Giddens. Like all sociologists, he seems to feel that he has to use some words instead of ordinary words. So, 'social agents' or 'social actors' means 'people', 'social totalities' means groups of people, etc.

Structuration Theory -- Basic Points:

1. All human beings are knowledgeable agents. 'Objectivism' fails to appreciate the complexity of social action produced by actors operating with knowledge and understanding as part of their consciousness. People understand the world, often better than sociologists appear to.

2. The extent of people's knowledge of the world is bordered on the one side by the unconscious and on the other by the unacknowledged conditions and intended consequences of action.

3. Day to day life is bound up with the reproduction of social institutions and hence it is a valuable area of study. The context of day to day interaction is an important area of study.

4. The predominant form of day to day activity takes the form of routine, behavior which appears to outsiders as extreme and bizarre becomes routine after a while, for example with violent or 'evil' behavior. The Nazi Holocaust was able to be carried out with such murderous efficiency partly because it was for the most part a routine activity for those involved.

5. Constraints on behavior associated with structural properties of the system are not unique, but are only one type of constraint on the individual person. There are varying degrees of 'systemness' or 'structuredness' in society. The predominance of the nation state leads us to think that societies are clearly bordered and defined when they may not be.

6. The study of power is not a secondary consideration for social science. Power is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person.

7. Actors (people) are knowledgeable. Their everyday sociological knowledge feeds into their behavior. They have reasons for doing what they do. Because of that, sociology should not be used as an excuse to explain behavior as due to 'society'. People are responsible for their actions.

Here is another digestible explanation of the theory that might help the two of us at this early stage. This comes from the web page of the London School of Economics, of which Anthony Giddens is Director.

What is structuration theory?

The theory of structuration states that the basic domain of social science study is neither the experience of the individual, nor the existence of any form of societal totality, but social practices. Through social activities people reproduce the actions that make these practices possible.

What are the central concepts of structuration theory?

The core of structuration theory lies in the concepts of structure, system, and duality of structure. Structuration refers to the conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of structures, and therefore the reproduction of social systems. Structure refers to the rules and resources, or sets of transformation relations, organized as properties of social systems - the structuring properties allowing the binding of time and space in social systems. System refers to the reproduced relations between people organized as regular social practices. Structuring properties makes it possible for discernibly similar social practices to exist across varying spans of time and space. Analyzing the structuration of social systems means studying the modes in which such systems are produced and reproduced in interaction. The constitution of agents and structures are not two independently given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality. According to the notion of duality of structure, the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome.

For structuration theory, the moment of the production of action is also that of its reproduction. Structure is not external to the individual but rather almost internal, as memory traces. Structure has no existence independent of the knowledge agents have about what they do in their day-to-day activity, and the duality of structure is always the main grounding of continuities in social reproduction across time and space.