Sociology. Anthony Giddens
risks and changes to people’s trust in others and social institutions. In a world of rapid change, traditional forms of trust are dissolved. Our trust in other people used to be based in local communities, but in globalized societies our lives are influenced by people we never meet or know, who may live on the far side of the world from us. Such impersonal relationships mean we are pushed to ‘trust’ or have confidence in ‘abstract systems’, such as food production, environmental regulation agencies or international banking systems. In this way, trust and risk are closely bound together. Trust in authorities is necessary if we are to confront the risks around us and react to them in an effective way. However, this type of trust is not habitually given but is the subject of reflection and revision.
When societies were more reliant on knowledge gained from custom and tradition, people could follow established ways of doing things without much reflection. For modern people, aspects of life that earlier generations were able to take for granted become matters of open decision-making, producing what Giddens calls ‘reflexivity’ – the continuous reflection on our everyday actions and the re-formation of these in the light of new knowledge. For example, whether to marry (or divorce) is a very personal decision, which may take account of the advice of family and friends. But official statistics and sociological research on marriage and divorce also filter into social life, becoming widely known and shared, thus becoming part of an individual’s decision-making.
For Giddens, these characteristic features point to the conclusion that global modernity is a form of social life that is discontinuous with previous ones. In many ways, the globalization of modernity marks not the end of modern societies or a movement beyond them (as in postmodernism – see chapter 3) but a new stage of ‘late’ or ‘high’ modernity which takes the tendencies embedded within modern life into a more far-reaching global phase.
Critical points
Giddens’s critics argue that perhaps he exaggerates the discontinuity between modernity and previous societies and that tradition and habit continue to structure people’s everyday activities. The modern period is not so unique, they say, and modern people are not so different from those who went before. Others think that his account of globalizing modernity underplays the central sociological question of power – in particular that of transnational corporations to promote a form of globalization that privileges their needs at the expense of the world’s poor. The concept of ‘modernity’ essentially masks the power of capitalist corporations.
Some critics also argue that Giddens sees reflexivity in almost wholly positive terms, reflecting the opening up of social life to more choice. However, such reflexivity could also be leading to heightened levels of ‘anomie’, as described by Durkheim, and, in that sense, reflexivity may be more of a problem to be solved than a welcome development to be promoted.
Contemporary significance
Because theories of globalization are relatively recent and Giddens continues to develop his theories of modern life, these constitute very much a ‘work in progress’. The ideas he has developed have been taken in fruitful directions by other sociologists, and, in that sense, he has provided a theoretical framework and some conceptual tools for younger generations to take forward. As is evident from the contribution of the critics of his work on modernity, reflexivity and trust relationships, this has provoked much sociological debate. No doubt it will continue to do so in the future and readers will come to their own assessment of it.
Under conditions of globalization, people are faced with a new individualism, in which they actively construct their own identities. The social codes that previously guided people’s choices and activities have significantly loosened. That eldest son of a tailor could now choose numerous paths to construct his future, and women are no longer restricted to the domestic realm. Girls do better than boys in most school subjects, women make up a majority of students in higher education, and more women work in the formal economy than before the 1960s and 1970s, often in jobs with attractive career paths. The social norms that guided an older generation’s gendered expectations are no longer appropriate for the lives of their children as norms continue to change.
Globalization processes press people to live in more open, reflexive ways, responding and adjusting to their changing environment. Even the small choices we make in our daily lives – what we wear, how we spend our leisure time, and how we take care of our health and our bodies – are part of the ongoing process of creation and re-creation of self-identity. A simple conclusion is to say that people in many countries today have lost a clear sense of belonging but gained more freedom of choice. Whether this constitutes ‘progress’ is part of continuing debates on the pros and cons of globalization.
How to govern a global society?
As globalization progresses, existing political structures and models seem inadequate for a world full of challenges that transcend national borders. In particular, national governments cannot individually control oil and energy prices or the spread of disease pandemics, tackle global warming and organized crime, or regulate volatile financial markets. There is no global government or world parliament and no one votes in a global election. And yet,
… on any given day, mail is delivered across borders; people travel from one country to another via a variety of transport modes; goods and services are freighted across land, air, sea and cyberspace; and a whole range of other cross-border activities takes place in the reasonable expectation of safety and security for the people, groups, firms and governments involved … This immediately raises a puzzle: How is the world governed even in the absence of a world government to produce norms, codes of conduct, and regulatory, surveillance, and compliance instruments? (Weiss and Thakur 2010: 1)
The question is apposite, but on reflection we can see that it conflates government with governance. While government is a set of institutions with executive power over a given territory, governance is less tangible. Precisely because there is no world government or any prospect of one, some scholars have called instead for more effective global governance as a way of addressing global issues. The first book title on the subject was published in 1993, but since then there have been well over 500 academic books on global governance (Harman and Williams 2013: 2).
Global governance is a concept that aims to capture all those rules and norms, policies, institutions and practices through which global humanity orders its collective affairs. In this sense we already have some global governance in the form of international law, the UN Security Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency, multilateral treaties, and norms of conflict and conflict resolution, alongside institutions such as the United Nations, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In 1995, in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, a UN report, Our Global Neighbourhood, argued for a version of global governance: a ‘broad, dynamic, complex process of interactive decision-making that is constantly evolving and responding to changing circumstances’ (UN Commission on Global Governance 2005 [1995]: 27). It also suggested that a shared, global, civic ethic needs to be developed.
However, the architecture of global governance remains largely inter-national rather than truly global, as it was designed in an age of competing nation-states, assumed the state was the primary actor, and relied on powerful states to enforce the rules. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2019–20 saw individual nation-states pursuing a range of strategies to protect their own citizens, with no coordinated set of actions. The WHO produced data on the global spread of the virus and some general guidance on infection control measures, but it was nation-state governments which made the key decisions on how to tackle the pandemic. Similarly, the EU was slow to provide financial assistance to the union’s worst affected countries – such as Spain and Italy – amid differing views on how to help and at what level, before finally agreeing to a €540 billion recovery fund (The Guardian 2020a). National governments were clearly in control.