ABSTRACT
Anthony Giddens combines an old-school, ‘classical’ sociological style with a contemporary awareness of changes in society, and he is happy to mix new theories with more established sociological perspectives. He was born in 1938, but has kept up with the rolling ball of social change. He hasn’t tried to marginalise the impact of feminism in his understanding of society, for instance, and considers change in gender relations to be important. Some commentators criticise him for being too eclectic and for not going into things in enough depth, but those people are normally trying to turn their own narrowness into a virtue, and therefore might not be entirely trustworthy. In interviews, Giddens seems pleasant and self-effacing, which is nice because he has been so prolific that you wouldn’t expect him to have had time to develop social skills.
