The Theory of Structuration & the Politics of the Third Way
Anthony Giddens is the leading contemporary English-language social theorist and one of the major theoretical architects of the “Third Way” programme for the modernisation of European social democracy. In Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), Giddens launched his project with the claim that “social theory stands in need of radical revision”.[1] The major axes of this revision were to be a break with the dualisms characteristic of social theory (especially structure and agency) and the turn to a fully modern concept of society. Classical social theory (Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Georg Simmel) conceived the social as an organic totality with relatively simple functional differentiation, whereas contemporary social formations are characterised by complex functional differentiation and cannot be described as organic totalities or functional unities.
Throughout the 1970s, Giddens critically appropriated the work of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel, and then turned to an investigation of the major contemporary thinkers in social theory, including Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser and Herbert Marcuse. On the basis of this survey and critical appropriation of the central concepts in social theory, Giddens began the construction of his alternative, the theory of structuration. In The Constitution of Society (1984), Giddens’ major statement of structuration theory, he outlines a theoretical and methodological alternative to the persistent dualisms of social theory, centred on the tension between the individual and society. Giddens therefore rejects not only both methodological individualism and methodological collectivism, but also any dialectical reconciliations or mediations of the two perspectives, claiming the development of a new and alternative position. Giddens then applied the conceptual apparatus developed in the preliminary surveys and the central theoretical statements to modernity (The Consequences of Modernity, 1990), the nation state (The Nation State and Violence, 1985) and the globalisation of capital (On the Edge, 2000). This considerable body of social theory has recently been turned towards explicit political engagement in the project of the renewal of social democracy. In Beyond Left and Right (1994), The Third Way (1998) and The Third Way and Its Critics (2000), Giddens has elaborated the political consequences of his methodological stance and positions in social theory.
Giddens’ theoretical stance is distinguished by his insistence on the need to transcend the dichotomy of subject and object (philosophy), or agent and structure (social theory), through a turn to questions of social existence (ontology) rather than concentration on problems of knowledge (epistemology). Yet Giddens simultaneously maintains that philosophy cannot dominate social theory and so refuses a strictly philosophical discussion of this position. Instead, Giddens concentrates on finding specific solutions to context-bound problems, in line with his belief that social practice fundamentally represents the effort to respond to the perennial social question, ‘what is to be done?’ Philosophical positions and social theories represent tools for the solution of political problems and for the investigation of social questions. This approach - theory construction from incompatible elements to patch up social problems - has the familiar ring of pragmatism to it. Giddens, however, manages to avoid incoherence and the cynical conformity characteristic of pragmatism only because his essentially subjectivist position is effectively an existential social theory.
Because of its shifting nature (Giddens produces approximately a book a year and a myriad articles), strategy of critically appropriating and transforming the conceptual vocabulary of opponents, and deepening engagement with empirical research and political action, Giddens is often criticised for “eclecticism” and inconsistency. This style of criticism is singularly unproductive in dealing with the theoretical developments of Giddens’ sociology. As Hegel reminded us some time ago, great intellectual figures are never wrong, only subject to the limitations and partiality of the age, and Giddens is nothing if not a central thinker in contemporary social theory. Therefore, it seems far more productive to initially interpret Giddens’ work as a diacritical totality of concepts and positions - an internally related system of different positions and concepts whose meaning emerges through the relational positions that the various terms occupy in the whole theoretical arsenal - rather than as a loose set of analytically distinct propositions, each of which might be analysed in isolation. It is also reasonable to assume that, in mapping a rapidly changing society through a series of approximations and revisions, later theorisations stand as corrections to earlier ones, rather than as contradictions of them. The meaning of this interpretive strategy can be readily seen from an example. On the surface, little or nothing divides the proposition “society is matter in motion” from the claim that “the social is a text”. This may seem outrageous, but a moment’s reflection will reveal that if the “social text” position in actual fact used a set of new names which played exactly the same role as fundamental positions in the “social materialist” theory, then we would in fact have a theoretical duplication under two different brand-names. This is not such an unlikely thing as might first seem the case: consider the research into Hegel conducted by Marxists during the twentieth century, the main result of which was to disclose that actually very little separates Hegelian philosophy from Marxism methodologically speaking, and even the substantive propositions turned out on detailed inspection to be much closer than the superficial dismissal of Hegel’s idealism might have lead socialists to believe at the end of the nineteenth century. The critical difference, therefore, between the “social text” position and the “social materialist” theory will be how the theories map social phenomenon (what they regard as most important, the extent of coverage and the presence or absence of blindspots). This cannot be revealed in a term-by-term comparison, nor by taking individual propositions from the “social text” position and assessing them from the standpoint of the other theory, the “social materialist” theory. It can only come out on the basis of a global comparison of the two theories across the entire range of social phenomena over which they claim explanatory coverage. Only on the basis of this global interpretive strategy can we identify concepts that stand in contradiction to the rest of the theoretical field (inconsistencies), or that remain unsupported by the theoretical totality (eclecticism).
This strategy of viewing Giddens’ work as an ongoing totalisation is also valuable in terms of situating his theory in relation to the rest of the social theoretical field. Giddens’ role, from Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971) onwards, has been to elaborate an alternative to Marxism. While it is incorrect to suppose that Marxism was the sole theoretical antagonist in Giddens’ development, both Western Marxism and structural Marxism are crucially important for the development of Giddens’ work as a whole. Giddens’ “contemporary critique of historical materialism” ranges across three volumes and two decades: A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (1981) rejects what Giddens views as the determinism and functionalism of Marxism, whilst retaining the importance of class conflict as vital to the understanding of modern society; The Nation State and Violence (1985) develops an alternative to the Marxist theory of the state, and; Beyond Left and Right - the Future of Radical Politics (1994) elaborates the political consequences of this position. With the decline of the socialist tradition and the emergence of postmodern social theory, Giddens has increasingly defined his position against two new interlocutors: the modernism of Jürgen Habermas and the postmodernism of Michel Foucault. Symptomatic of the politicization of social theory and Giddens’ role as a leading defender of non-radical positions has been his reaction to the rest of the sheaf of competing (more radical) “Third Way” positions: “he tries to push them off the middle ground”.[2]