ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to look at fi ve books that make up the core of Giddens’s substantive sociology, works in which his main focus is less the construction and elaboration of theory than the understanding of events and situations in the world. They are not so much empirical research (although Giddens has certainly been involved in empirical research projects) as exercises in the interpretation and analysis of others’ research and of historical data. They are all theoretical works in the sense that structuration theory is developed, extended and elaborated, but it is fair to say this purpose does not override that of making sense of the world.
