On Giddens' Social Theory Of Modernity And The Thought Of "the Third Way"

Anthony Giddens summarizes systematically three main lines of the theory of classical modernity:capitalism, industrialism and rationalization by trimming it and reflection. Based on the late modern social background, he proposes his own social theory about this modernity.Giddens views this modernity as a political and economic system about modern society, and put forward four institutional dimensions:capitalism, industrialism, monitoring and military forces. The relation between globalization and modernity is one of the important aspects in Giddens' thought of modernity. Their interaction led to the crises of risk,morality, ecology ,existential anxiety, and so on.Giddens holds that, as the post-traditional societies, the contemporary western societies are bound to be ones with many contradictions and problems because their developing speed and degree is incomparable. In these post-traditional societies there exist many problems such as the problem of risk, the crisis of morality, the absence of trust, the existential anxiety and the problem of ecology, etc..Giddens conceives life politics as a resolution of modernity. He thinks that the emancipatory politics can't tackle lots of problems in post-traditional societies , therefore we must resort to life politics, a new one about life style, which focuses on how to live in the post-traditional societies. Giddens' conception of life politics consists of four aspects—Beyond the scarcity-based economy, the dialogic democracy, the ecological politics and non-violence. It concerns those problems of body, sex and self and thus is the politics closest to each individual.Suppose Giddens' life politics is a theoretical conception that aims at the problems of modernity, his third way that relates the theoretical conception to the realistic political concern is a practical tactic that deals with the problems of modernity.This politics comprises conception of founding 'a new composite economy', refreshing the broken social solidarity, reforming the welfare countries and the cosmopolitist foreign policies. Giddens' third way is typically a medial politics across the oppositions of the left to the right, the socialism to the capitalism, the social democracy to the neo-liberalism and thus the typical neutrualism politics.