ABSTRACT
The extensive breadth of Anthony Giddens's social theory has been employed to illuminate social, cultural and political research, although the precise relationship between structuration theory and empirical sociological research is contested. In this chapter, the author provides a brief overview of Giddens's writings in social and political theory. He focuses on specific aspects of Giddens's work, namely structuration theory, modernity and modernization, and his critique of radical politics. After examining Giddens's more substantive contributions to social theory, the author considers some of the issues raised by his critics. For Giddens, the central task of social theory is to grasp how action is structured in everyday contexts of social practice, while simultaneously recognizing that the structural elements of action are reproduced by the performance of action. In The Consequences of Modernity and Modernity and Self-Identity, Giddens develops a comprehensive analysis of the complex relation between self and society in the late modern age.
