Talk:Anthony Giddens

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	Anthony Giddens is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the archive.
Article milestones Date Process Result March 21, 2006 Peer review Reviewed April 14, 2006 Featured article candidate Not promoted August 9, 2006 Good article nominee Not listed Current Status: Former featured article candidate

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Contents 1 Missing citation 2 Questions 3 Failed GA 4 Failed GA nom and adding POV tag 5 Article Cleanup Co-Ordination Point 5.1 Discussion 6 Cleanup 7 More edits needed... 8 upper lower middle-class 9 Introduction

[edit] Missing citation

If i am not mistaken, the missing citation on teacher and student and MC2, is from the following sourse:

Banks, S. P., & Riley, P. (1993). Strucuration theory as an onthology for communication research. Communication Yearbook, 16, 167-196.

I do not have enough wiki experience to mess up with the article itself, so i will leave it to the more experienced people to edit the actual post. Thanks! Dima

[edit] Questions

I am expanding this stub, but there are few things in his writings I don't understand. Namely:

1. If there are "no universal stages, or periodization, of social development" than how can he differentiate between pre-modern/modern/late modern societies at all?
2. His concept of importance of 'time-space' in the structurization theory still eludes me.

--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 00:55, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

1. In answer to question 2, this quote may be of some help: "but social practices ordered across space and time". Giddens argues that "society has a form, and that form has effects on people, in so far as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do." thus soical practices ordered across space and time are not homogenous, it therefore shows how structures, dirived from social action, are specific to their locale. Britain in the 19th century had a geographical space and social practices and action were carried out in terms of sturcture. However, Britain in the 21st century has a completely different geographical space and thus the nature of time and space change as does action and structure; this relates to the duality of structure and agency transformation. (Daniel R. Smith, 2007)

[edit] Failed GA

Here's my reasoning:

• There is only one picture of him, and it is fair use, not GFDL.
• Possibly too long, consider condensing.
• Could use a thorough copyedit by a third person familiar with this topic (I'm not), as much of this article has been written by one person.
• Select Bibliography may be too long, and needs ISBNs.
• Too many redlinks.

It certainly has a lot of information, though. It's well on its way. Just needs a bit more time and TLC. —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 16:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Tnx. Picture is a though one: I cannot find any copyleft ones with him on it. I'll try to address the others before PR.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 17:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Update: can't find another image, can't get copyleft license for it. Can't find anybody else to work on it. ISBNs are optional. I did what I could during the PR/FAC rounds, including dealing with redlinks: do you think it passes the GA criteria now?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 03:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Failed GA nom and adding POV tag

I feel this article fails the first criteria that the prose should be well-written, compelling and accessible for the non-specialist reader. An admirable effort has been made in synthesising summaries of Giddens' work from academic books, but the text is still dauntingly dense for the non-specialist reader. The text also needs a thorough going over for wording, misspellings and syntax e.g. "The problem is, however, that conflicting viewpoints in social science result in a desintrest of the people. For example, when scientist don't agree about the greenhouse-effect, people will withdraw from that arena, and negate that there is a problem. Therefore, the more the sciences expand, the more incertitude there is in the modern society. In this regard, the juggernaut even gets more steerless." (sentence also doesn't distinguish clearly between social science/scientists and natural science/scientists). Also there is a lack of NPOV issue as this article is comprehensive in its positive portrayal of Giddens' theories and concepts but it neglects to convey that while he is a very influential contemporary theorist, he is also a much-criticized (as all influential social theorists are) and even academically controversial one (controversial even at Cambridge SPS). Bwithh 04:50, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the POV tag is a little extreme and needlessly off-putting to potential readers. The article appears a fair representation of the man and his theories regardless of whether they are agreed with or not. As mentioned above, most influential theorists are criticised, that is the point of critical study and analysis. Therefore have removed the tag.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.153.139.126 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Article Cleanup Co-Ordination Point

[edit] Cleanup

As a start, I've tried to clean up part of the Modernity section, but are having problems with some of the content. Aside from my reservations that this kind of jargon-orientated account is suitable for a general encyclopedia, I'm not sure what the original writer is trying to say, as some of the content seem contradictory and odd. Giddens may have written about these things (I don't recall enough of his work to be definite), I don't think most of these problems stem from his actual writings.

It is stated (this version includes some minor word tweaking by myself, but the original sense remains intact) for instance: Humanity tries to steer [the juggernaut of modernity], but as long as the modern institutions, with all their uncertainty, endure, we will never be able to influence its course. The uncertainty can however be managed, by 'reembedding' the expert-systems into the structures which we are accustomed to.. This statement has a number of problems - how are modern institutions separable from modernity? Have modern institutions really had little or no influence over managing the course of modern social transformations? The solution of rembedding the expert systems into familiar structures... does this mean that modern structures are unfamiliar to us? i.e. we find modern offices, hospitals, banks, supermarkets, factories, police stations alienating?

Then there's the apparent reference to the US TV chat show celebrity, Oprah Winfrey (I assume that's what the original "Oprah" was referring to - if not, what does it refer to?) uses expert (computer?... this is what "expert system" usually refers to) systems to guide people while being perceived as an ordinary woman. But Oprah isn't perceived as an ordinary woman (she's a major celebrity and the wealthiest African-American woman, I believe) and how does she use expert (computer?) systems to help people as if she was a doctor? I'm not sure how this explains how uncertainty is managed... as apparently the expert systems of modern institutions are still relied on?

Then there's the line about how the enhanced reflexivity of modern institutions needs explanation, and explains it by saying that language has become increasing abstract and institutionalized into universities - so the reflexivity of modern institutions is due to the institutionalized abstraction of language into universities (themselves being modernized institutions too)? Then the section launches into a discussion of double hermeneutica which describes a concept which is attributed to Giddens, but doesn't sound particularly original. I'm not sure where this explanation is going.

As for the block of text immediately following this, I already discussed this above in an earlier comment. I'll try to look at the rest of the article more later. Bwithh 20:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More edits needed...

I deleted the following, from the end of the first paragraph:

"It is not clear, however, that his theories have had any beneficial impact on social research. His theories have been criticised as being empty conceptual schemes lacking any empirical implications."

This is a strange point and just not true. Giddens has clearly had a significant impact on social research. The comment is subjective and rather silly, so i got rid of it.

Davidgauntlett 16:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

---

I just noticed that this article says:

Giddens writes in Modernity and Self-Identity that: "The importance of the media in propagating many modern lifestyles should be obvious. [...] The range of lifestyles - or lifestyle ideals - offered by the media may be limited, but at the same time it is usually broader than those we would expect to just 'bump into' in everyday life. So the media in modernity offers possibilities and celebrates diversity, but also offers narrow interpretations of certain roles or lifestyles - depending where you look.".[4]

... but this quote is not from Giddens; in fact it is from my own book, 'Media, Gender and Identity' (David Gauntlett, 2002) - page 104.

So this obviously needs to be fixed, but i don't want be the person adding references to myself in this article. But it would be great if somebody could do some work on this article please...

Davidgauntlett 16:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

---

David, thank you for the comments; any others would be greatly appreciated, and don't hesistate to add refs to your publications to the article: you are a respected scholar and the fact that you wrote about the subject should make it more, not less, welcome, to see you contribute to the article on it.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  21:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] upper lower middle-class

"grew up in an upper lower middle-class family"

Is there such a thing as "upper lower middle-class"? I would tend to think of lower middle-class or upper middle-class or just middle-class, but upper lower class sounds to me like an oxymoron... Zigzig20s 01:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

This may not be significant, but the statement, "He has been described as Britain's best known social scientist since John Maynard Keynes", bothered me.

I decided to check the source, and found the exact statement in Blackwell's Companion (bottom of p.248), but the source didn't indicate where they had garnered that notion from. Is it a legitimate claim since it's from Blackwell's? Or can it be removed? Jy10 18:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Why does it bother you? Eyedubya 00:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)