AN EXAMINATION OF MODERNITY - A DIAGNOSIS BY GIDDENS,ANTHONY

This article offers a critical analysis of Anthony Giddens' theory of modernity. The value of this theory lies in breaking the falsely unitary notion of ''modernity'' into four partially autonomous institutional logics - capitalism, industrialism, surveillance, and militarism -, each being the carrier of specific risk profiles, social movements, and contradictions. Their concurrent extension at the global level, argues Giddens, signals not the transition to postmodernity but the apex of modern society. This theory, however, consists essentially of a web of conceptual distinctions disconnected from the real world and from the practice of research which function at a level of abstraction such that it becomes difficult lo discern their usefulness for sociohistorical analysis. So much so that one wonders if we are not dealing here with a reincarnation of Grand Theory in the Parsonian model, i.e., a theoretical scholasticism whose relevance appears doubtful at a time when the social sciences are effecting a ''historic turn'' to which Giddens has, paradoxically, made a most significant contribution.