ABSTRACT
THE CENTRE OF THE THEORY This chapter, too, is likely to suffer the same diffi culty as the last: that of losing the reader (not to mention the writer) as we move through the different sections of Giddens’s theory. It is worth repeating that it is not, nor does Giddens claim or want it to be, a tight, logically deduced and interrelated theory. This makes exposition diffi cult: it could-almost-be set out in any order, and the order I am choosing has much to do with the line of criticism I want to develop later. In what follows, I will do my best to provide retrospective and prospective links. My method of setting out the theory is a compromise between following its development in Giddens’s own work and trying to provide an analytic coherence in which the ideas gain some logical connection with each other, even if it is one imposed by myself rather than Giddens.
