SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:38 pm Page 559

Sociology
Copyright 2002
BSA Publications Ltd
Volume 36(3): 559576
[0038-0385(200208)36:3;559576;025046]
SAGE Publications
London,Thousand Oaks,
New Delhi

Psychoanalysis and Structuration Theory:

The Social Logic of Identity
Steven Groarke
School of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Surrey Roehampton

AB ST RAC T
This article examines the sociological appropriation of psychoanalysis in the work
of Anthony Giddens. It describes how Giddens uses psychoanalysis as a theoreti-
cal and strategic resource for the sociology of identity. The paper comprises an
outline of the axes and problematizations of subjective identity in structuration
theory. On the one hand, the three axes of cognition, competence and biography;
on the other hand, the four problems of trust (how to believe in the world);
knowledge (how to appropriate our belief in the world); anxiety (how to defend
our sense of the world); and morals (how best to manage ourselves in the world).
From this I draw three main conclusions: (1) Giddens includes trust as well as
knowledge along the axis of cognition; (2) he views operations of defence as
achievements of competent subjects; and (3) he understands the narrative of self-
identity as a type of defence mechanism. If these conclusions are correct, then
structuration theory will continue to treat affectivity as a problem of representa-
tion.

K E Y WORDS
affect / psychoanalysis / security / self-identity / structuration theory / subjectivity

Introduction

T
he use of psychoanalysis in postwar social theory is an important baro-
meter of our capacity to make sense of ourselves. This article explores
the extent to which the contemporary sociological appropriation of

559
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:38 pm Page 560

560 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

psychoanalysis remains preoccupied with the related problems of self-represen-

tation and social security. Concentrating on the work of Anthony Giddens, I
shall argue that these problems are presented in the form of a general schema
of security based on the logic of identity. However, unlike Parsons (1964), who
attempts a similar integration of sociology with the psychoanalytic theory of
personality, Giddens draws not so much on Freud, but on the post-Freudian
developments of Lacanian psychoanalysis, ego-psychology, and object-relations
theory. Essentially, Giddens presents a reflexive conception of the self along the
lines of cognition, competency and biography. As part of the general theory of
structuration, Giddens addresses the constitution of emotional states of security
in terms of these three basic areas of concern, and their interconnections:

(1) the assimilation of affectivity to cognitive representations at the level of

trust and knowledge;
(2) the synthetic function of agency contra social anxiety (the work of
defence); and
(3) the representation of identity in the form of reflexively ordered narratives
of self, the idea of biography as a particular type of defence mechanism.

The aim of this article, then, is to show how Giddens draws on psycho-
analysis as a theoretical and strategic resource for the sociology of identity. In
more detail, I will consider the sociological appropriation of the psychology of
trust (section one); the achievement of knowledge in the form of practical con-
sciousness (section two); the social management of anxiety (section three); and
finally, the remoralization of the social on the biographical model of the thera-
peutic self (section four).

Everyday Beliefs: the Problem of Trust

Cognition is the first of the three axes along which Giddens elaborates the logic
of identity and the concomitant schema of security. The emphasis here is on the
combined emotive-cognitive orientation towards others, the object-world, and
self-identity (Giddens, 1991: 38). Giddens details the affectivecognitive
couple along the lines of trust (how to believe in the world) and knowledge
(how to appropriate our belief in the world). We will consider the two in turn,
but first it is important to grasp their essential interdependence in structuration
theory. Giddens is not suggesting that trust itself is a cognitive phenomenon. On
the contrary, he accepts that trust is at once a matter of being and an emo-
tional phenomenon (Giddens, 1990: 92). However, his account of ontological
security is presented in terms of the combined orientation of trust and know-
ledge. The inclusion of the problem of trust along the axis of cognition is a
defining characteristic of the logic of identity in structuration theory. At best,
Giddens blurs the distinction between conditions and attributes by claiming
that the substratum of trust is the condition and the outcome of everyday
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:38 pm Page 561

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 561

knowledgeability (Giddens, 1991: 129). Trust is seen as a condition of self-

identity, but also as an attribute of the knowing subject. How can an attribute
of subjectivity also be the condition of its identity? The paradox arises on
account of the definition of affects in structuration theory. As attributes of the
subject, affects are distinguishable from rules, in so far as the latter are defined
as structural components of social action rather than properties of individu-
als (Giddens, 1977: 126). However, as a condition of subjectivity, affectivity is
a meaningful aspect of everyday life. The implication is that affects are more
personal than rules, and yet provide social life with much of its meaning. This
is how Giddens defines the connection between trust and knowledge: while the
achievement (Leistung) of knowledge is seen as integral to the constitution and
reproduction of everyday life; at the same time the knowledgeability of human
social actors is coupled with a sense of basic trust. Structuration theory
addresses the problems of trust and knowledge as two aspects of the same rela-
tion of identity. While drawing attention to the application of knowledge in the
production and reproduction of day-to-day social encounters (Giddens, 1984:
22), at the same time Giddens assimilates affectivity in general to cognitive rep-
resentations. Let us now consider the notions of trust and knowledge in turn.
Trust appears as a problem of basic security in Giddenss initial attempts
to integrate psychoanalysis with sociology. Lacan is summarily dismissed in
New Rules of Sociological Method for his failure to conceptualize the active
subject (Giddens, 1976: 212). In Central Problems in Social Theory, however,
Giddens proposes a cautious appropriation of Lacans psychoanalysis, drawing
critically and sparingly on the structuralist problematic of the unconscious. In
particular, Giddens focuses on the construction of identity in Lacan, the idea
that the inscription of the infant in a subject/object relation is achieved through
the identification of the mirror-stage, or the deflection of the specular I
into the social I (Giddens, 1979: 1201). At the same time, however, Giddens
is critical of the fact that the reflexive, acting subject is all but absent from
Lacans account of signifying structures. He concludes that subjectivity here
appears only as a series of moments brought about by the intersection of signi-
fying structures. For Giddens, [t]here are no signifying practices in the
Lacanian sense; rather, signification is understood as an integral element of
social practices in general (1979: 39).
Giddenss critique of Lacan is important for two reasons. First, it reveals
the extent to which Giddens presupposes the co-existence of identity and the
unconscious. Reflexivity, understood as the purposive, or intentional character
of human behaviour (Giddens, 1984: 376), is obviously not part of the uncon-
scious as a system. But according to the stratified model of the subject
(Giddens, 1979: 56), unconscious motivation is not incompatible with the
reflexive monitoring of action. If, as Giddens (1982: 10) suggests, [u]ncon-
scious sources of cognition and motivation form [a] boundary to the know-
ledgeability/capability of agents; the identity of the subject is nonetheless seen
as intact. Giddens (1979: 40) accepts the bounded nature of action as entirely
consistent with the logic of identity. Secondly, the critique of Lacans use of
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:38 pm Page 562

562 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

structural linguistics suggests a model of child development based not on the

formative effects of a gestalt, spatial captation, and the function of miscogni-
tion (mconnaissance) (Lacan, 1977); but rather, on the formation of a
basic security system. Structuration theory couples the compatibility of iden-
tity and the unconscious with the combination of emotional security and basic
competencies.
Lacans psychoanalysis is found to be inadequate to the problem of trust,
as Giddens defines it, not only in Central Problems in Social Theory, but more
particularly in The Consequences of Modernity and Modernity and Self-
Identity. In these later works, he raises the question of trust in relation to the
transformations of modernity. Essentially, Giddens (1994: 57) describes two
directly connected domains of transformation: globalization (action at dis-
tance) and detraditionalization (the excavation of traditional contexts of
action). The two are considered dialectically related: the end of tradition in
everyday life includes the transformation of intimacy which, in turn, has been
largely created by globalising influences (1994: 95). There is a direct connec-
tion then, according to Giddens, between the globalising tendencies of moder-
nity and the transformation of intimacy in contexts of day-to-day life (1990:
114). In terms of trust, Giddens aims to combine a comparative analysis of
environments of trust in pre-modern and modern societies (1990: 10024). We
are concerned primarily with the contribution of structuration theory to
the sociology of emotions. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that
Giddenss analysis of modernity relies to a large extent on the idea that the
modern citizen is a type of emotionally secure subject. Giddens addresses
the problem of how to live after the end of tradition, the problem of ethics,
from the point of view of reflexive modernisation, an essential aspect of which
involves the democratizing of personal life, the development of an ethical
framework for a democratic personal order (Giddens, 1992: 188). Historically,
the problem of trust is presented as a problem of how to institute stable
lifestyle habits (Giddens and Pierson, 1998: 134); and the psychology of trust
informs the account of self-autonomy intrinsic to the order of democracy. In
presenting these arguments, Giddens draws not on Lacanian psychoanalysis,
but on alternative traditions of post-Freudian research, on the work of Erikson
and Winnicott.
Eriksons account of the stages of psychosexual development provides
Giddens with a sociological theory of identity, including an account of the emo-
tional feelings of security. Giddens now defines security in terms of the
confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity
and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of
action (1990: 92).
Giddens concentrates on the first three stages in Eriksons developmental
account of identity. The first stage (the first 12 months) is equivalent to Freuds
(1905: 198) oral stage, but with an emphasis on social trust. In the context of
nourishment, and through the mutual regulation of the infants receptive
capacities with the mothers techniques of provision, the sense of trust
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 563

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 563

constitutes the infants first social achievement (Erikson, 1995: 222). For
Giddens, social achievement is invariably an expression of practical con-
sciousness coupled with feelings of security. In this case, so long as the infant is
able to sort out good and bad feelings, to introject the former and to project the
latter, according to Erikson he or she will be in a position to let the mother out
of sight without undue anxiety. The outside world may be threatening, but
with a basic sense of inner certainty based on feelings of inner goodness, the
infant is able to tolerate the mothers absence, to let her go without feeling
abandoned. The break with Freud is immediately clear: for Freud, conflict exists
from the beginning between instinctual gratification and social restraint,
between desire and prohibition; subjectivity is invariably besieged by the exci-
tations arising out of the component instincts of sexual life (1940: 186). For
Erikson, the tension which arises in the motherchild relation is routinely
resolvable through socially-learned meaning; the problem of the self is essen-
tially interpersonal, even as it leads back into history at large.
The second stage (the second and third years) consists of the conflict
between autonomy and shame. Freud (1913: 321) described this as the anal
stage, a pre-genital organisation where anal-erotic and sadistic instincts pre-
dominate. Holding on and letting go are the behaviourial correlates of the
underlying tension characteristic of this stage. As with basic trust, the tension
here can be resolved in a relatively benign or more disruptive way. Erikson
describes two simultaneous sets of social modalities: (1) holding on can be an
expression of care or of primitive greed; (2) letting go can be a peaceful, relaxed
feeling of letting things pass or the unleashing of aggressive, destructive
impulses. When Giddens (1984: 55) notes that the second stage can stand in a
relation of generalised tension to the first, essentially, he is making Eriksons
point that basic trust must not be jeopardized by the infants ability to hoard or
spend without reserve. Learning to hold on and let go with care, the infant has
to be properly managed and contained; it is only in this way, according to
Erikson, that he or she will be protected against meaningless and arbitrary
experiences of shame and of early doubt (Erikson, 1995: 226). These are expe-
riences which are at the forefront in Giddenss (1992: 1756) account of the
transformation of intimacy, that is as the negative ideal of competency.
The third stage (between about three and six years) adds to autonomy the
quality of initiative, namely, undertaking, planning and attacking a task for
the sake of being active and on the move (Erikson, 1995: 229). The child
becomes even more integrated at this stage, according to Erikson, in so far as
the force of self-will is turned neither to defiance nor to protested independence,
but to the power of action itself. The pleasure which comes not from instinc-
tual satisfaction but from the realization of capacity, is active from this early
stage for Erikson. This is equivalent to Freuds (1905: 199) genital stage.
However, unlike Freud, Erikson does not concentrate primarily on the sexual
conflict in the phase of oedipal transition. Instead, he maps a general economy
of action divided between the desire to do things spontaneously (initiative) and
the internalized parental prohibitions (guilt). The division goes to the heart of
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 564

564 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

self-identity, even as purposive action (intentionality) follows from the trans-

formative capacity of the agent. The same holds for Giddens as for Erikson: the
child is subject to internal differentiation, not on the model of the Lacanian
mconnaissance, but at the level of agency. This, at least, is how I understand
the fundamental claim that agency is logically prior to a subject/object differ-
entiation (Giddens, 1979: 92). On the basis of this claim, the Freudian drama
of instinct and chance is translated into a cognitive programme of skills and
capacities.
To some extent, then, Erikson follows Freud by mapping the early forma-
tion of identity onto the oral, anal and genital stages of psychosexual develop-
ment. However, he generalizes the Freudian stages by combining each
libidinal zone with a corresponding mode of identity: mouthreliability; anus
autonomy; genitalsinitiative. Moreover, Erikson places a greater emphasis
than Freud on the social and environmental conditions of development, identi-
fying the emergence of subjectivity in terms of the critical periods of develop-
ment (1995: 221). Taken together, the successive polarities of the first three
stages represent a progressive movement towards the autonomy of action,
which in turn, for Giddens, is a condition of the reflexive monitoring of con-
duct. In this respect, Giddens accepts Eriksons critique of Freud and views the
break with classical drive theory as a positive advance in the human sciences.
He comes to the conclusion early on that, as far as development is concerned,
inbuilt competencies are more important than needs and the management
of organic drives (Giddens, 1979: 123).
However, on the other hand, Giddens seeks to distance himself from
Eriksons developmental scheme: I consider the least interesting areas of Erik-
sons work to be those for which he is probably most famed to do with the
formation of ego-identity and with the importance of developmental stages
in personality (Giddens, 1984: 59). I think this claim is ill-founded. The soci-
ology of the reflexive subject depends on the developmental concept of trust.
Giddenss account of the routinized character of everyday life, including habits
of memory, perception and recognition, presupposes the formation of self-
identity as Erikson describes it. Following Goffman, Giddens (1991: 128)
argues that the substratum of trust is, at once, the condition and outcome of
the routinized nature of daily social activity. The precariousness of routine, the
idea that events may puncture the protective mantle of ontological security
(Giddens, 1991: 131), will be clear when we come to the problem of anxiety.
Nevertheless, Giddens incorporates the psychology of trust within a social logic
through the conceptual series of security, routine and habit. Arguing from the
point of view of the pervasive influence of habit, Giddens concludes: The pre-
dictability of the (apparently) minor routines of day-to-day life is deeply
involved with a sense of psychological security (1990: 98). Far from differen-
tiating sociology and developmental psychology, the emphasis on routinization
underpins the assimilation of the Freudian unconscious to a social logic of iden-
tity. If anything, Giddens shares Eriksons simplification of the Freudian concept
of agency, the emphasis on the habits of living, and the routines of daily life,
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 565

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 565

rather than the vicissitudes of the drive. The evasion of the schism in the self,
including the multiple part-objects of the libidinal body, in favour of a stable
self-identity consolidates the cognitive bias of structuration theory.1 Giddens
sustains this prejudice on two counts: first, in terms of the compatibility of self-
identity and the unconscious, the idea that the reflexive monitoring of encoun-
ters in circumstances of co-presence ordinarily co-ordinates with unconscious
components of personality (1984: 41); secondly, with respect to the combina-
tion of security and competence, the intersection of basic trust with emergent
social capabilities in motherinfant relations (1990: 97).

Practical Consciousness:The Problem of Knowledge

The interdependence of security, routine and habit is predicated on the under-

lying connection between trust and knowledge. This brings us to practical con-
sciousness as the second aspect of everyday life in structuration theory. By
practical consciousness Giddens (1979: 5) means the type of knowledge that
actors possess regarding their own actions, but which they cannot put into
words or express discursively. Giddens (1990: 99) argues that the subject is
afforded protection against the anxieties which even the most casual encounter
with others can potentially provoke, only to the extent that basic trust is
realised as knowledge in the form of practical consciousness. Social security
and self-consciousness are presented as two aspects of the same formation of
everyday life.
Let me begin with two general points regarding the notion of convention,
before returning to Giddenss use of psychoanalysis. First, the knowledgeable
use of convention in practical consciousness presupposes a competent, as well
as a cognitive, subject. Giddens defines the sense we have of our ongoing con-
tinuity of being, the line of life, in terms of the skills and capacities of compe-
tent members of society (1984: 26). Like Parsons (1964: 94), Giddens places
the cognitive subject, its active manipulation of the object-world, in the con-
text of a generalised motivational system of competence.
Secondly, Giddens borrows the notion of convention (bereinkunft,
Konvention) from Wittgenstein (1978b: 113) rather than Hume (1740/1972:
226). The distinction is decisive for the development of structuration theory, in
so far as it involves two contrasting theories of the self as habit. Humes con-
cept of convention belongs to a tradition of political thought in which
conventions founded on utility are opposed to a set of obligations founded on
a contract (1740/1972: 228). Moreover, the notion of association, under-
stood in terms of a conventional rather than a contractual logic of relation, has
direct implications for the theory of affectivity. For Hume, knowledge is pos-
sible on condition that the sensation of affect provides ideas with associations.2
However, Giddens draws on Wittgensteins conventionalism, on the idea that
grammatical propositions allow for transformations of empirical propositions;
that the former resemble rules in so far as they play the role of norms of
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 566

566 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

description (Wittgenstein, 1978a: 55); and that every action according to the
rule is an interpretation (Wittgenstein, 1978b: 81). The non-discursive concep-
tion of knowledge in the form of practical consciousness derives from the
Wittgensteinian notion of convention as the ground of intelligible action
(Giddens, 1976: 51). The idea of knowledge grounded in what actors know
how to do, combined with the notion of a basic security system, renders the
problem of subjectivity twofold, not only how to believe in the object-world
(the Humean problem of subjectivity), but how to appropriate ones belief (the
Wittgensteinian problem of meaning). Knowledge and practice represent dis-
tinct orders of analysis; but in so far as competent actors know how to apply
rules, questions concerning subjectivity and meaning arise in conjunction with
the role of recurrent social practices in systems of social interaction.
Whereas Giddens sees Erikson as a source for the problem of trust, he turns
to Winnicott for the combination of trust and knowledge. As Giddens (1990:
96) points out, Winnicotts ideas are comparable to Eriksons with respect to
the structure of subjectivity as an accumulation of introjected reliability
(Winnicott, 1989a: 196). For Winnicott, we have faith in things in so far as we
learn to trust, by way of a silent communication, the environmental provision
that enables the ongoing continuity of being (Winnicott, 1986: 147). Winnicott
thus addresses the problem of trust in terms of a belief in the environmental reli-
ability which, for the infant, arises in relation to the mothers capacity to meet
its developing needs. Winnicott emphasizes above all the mothers holding and
handling of the infant, indeed, the whole routine of care throughout the day
and night (Winnicott, 1985: 49; emphasis added). Accordingly, belief in the
world is defined in terms of the interplay of trust and risk characteristic of
motherinfant relations (Winnicott, 1989b: 260).
Does the continuity of our going on being presuppose a knowing as well as
a believing subject? Does the feeling of security, in other words, belong to a cog-
nitive subject? Winnicott and Giddens come to different conclusions. Winnicott
(1987: 15) differentiates between two types of knowledge: first, what we know
and do by virtue of the fact of who we are; and secondly, what we know by
learning. He maintains a distinction between primitive sensibility, or the kind
of knowledge that comes naturally, and cognitive representation (types of
useful knowledge). Winnicotts concept of environment, which is based on
holding, handling and object presenting, presupposes a link between primary
affective development and object-relations; but is nonetheless irreducible to the
order of cognition and representation. Therefore, belief and knowledge are pre-
sented as separate, albeit related modes of relation.
On the other hand, Giddens maps a combined orientation of trust in the
world and knowledge of the world across the threefold division of security,
practical and discursive consciousness (1984: 41). The connections set out here
on the stratification model of subjectivity account neither for the existence of
unconscious affects (the impersonal force relations that precede our identifica-
tions with a given social order); nor for the type of intuitive experience charac-
teristic of the noeticnoematic structure of mental processes in the
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 567

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 567

phenomenological sense (Husserl, 1983: 233).3 The phenomenology of affect

goes far deeper in Winnicott than in Giddens, not least of all on account of
Giddenss failure to maintain a qualitative distinction between believing and
knowing.
Furthermore, Giddens generalizes the combined problem of trust and
knowledge from the individual to society. For Giddens, the constitution of soci-
ety has its source in a general schema of security which extends from the self-
constituted nature of subjectivity rather than the absolute singularity of the
ego (Husserl, 1970: 186). The fundamental problem of social theory for
Giddens is how to explain the constitution and reproduction of everyday life on
the model of the ontologically secure subject. The theory of structuration
addresses this problem through a critique of what he sees as the traditional
dualisms in social theory. Giddens (1991: 127) argues that the process of con-
sciousness of . . . connects the basic security system to the environment
(Umwelt) understood as the world around us, but also as a system of rele-
vances. The idea is that subjectivity appropriates its belief in the world by way
of practical involvement, or the knowledgeable use of convention. The sense we
have of our ongoing continuity of being, the aspiration to persevere in being, is
coupled with self-awareness understood as a practical mode of consciousness.
As such, the notion of practical consciousness, together with the analysis of
social practices, is presented as a critique of the dualism of subject and object,
but also of the dualism of conscious/unconscious formations: Practical con-
sciousness is not consciousness as ordinarily understood in structuralist
theories; but it is also easily distinguishable from the unconscious in any sense
of that term (Giddens, 1979: 256; emphasis added). While the presentation of
the conatus essendi 4 as agency underpins the duality of structure, namely, the
idea that the structural properties of social systems are both medium and out-
come of the practices they recursively organise (Giddens, 1984: 25); at the
same time, the logic of identity is primarily concerned with modes of con-
sciousness rather than the essential characteristics of the unconscious as a
system.
The complementarity that Giddens insists on, with respect to identity and
the unconscious, is possible only to the extent that he incorporates unconscious
motives, as well as unintended consequences, within a general theory of
action. The relationship between identity and the unconscious is presented in
terms of a continuous flow of conduct, which includes unacknowledged con-
ditions of action alongside practical and discursive consciousness (Giddens,
1979: 56). Thus, the logic of identity rests on the threefold division of the strat-
ification model: security, practical consciousness and discourse, rather than on
the respective contents of the preconsciousconscious and unconscious systems
set out by Freud in the first topography.5 Practical consciousness is more prop-
erly a type of what Freud calls the preconscious (das Vorbewusste) rather than
the unconscious (das Unbewusste). Giddens states as much in his critique of
Lacan and the structuralist theory of the subject, where he defines practical con-
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 568

568 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

sciousness as a non-discursive, but not unconscious, knowledge of social insti-

tutions (1979: 24). Therefore, we can conclude that while basic trust is seen as
an attribute of the cognitive subject; at the same time, practical consciousness
designates all those contents that are not necessarily, or ordinarily available to
discursive consciousness, but yet is not screened off by a bar of repression, as
is the case with the unconscious (Giddens, 1984: 375).

Defence Mechanisms:The Problem of Anxiety

Further to the questions of trust and knowledge, Giddens addresses the prob-
lem of subjectivity with respect to the way in which anxiety is socially
managed (1991: 46). The efficient or competent management of anxiety is the
second of the three main axes along which Giddens elaborates the logic of iden-
tity. The problem now is how to defend our sense of the world. Giddens sees
anxiety as a psychological problem, but also as a problem of being; he defines
it as a state of mind, but also as a form of existential angst or dread (1990:
100; emphasis in original). In the following section, then, I shall include some
preliminary remarks on Freud, but concentrate for the most part on the differ-
ent conceptions of anxiety in Giddens and Heidegger.
There are two ways in which Giddens can be seen to respond to Freuds
views on anxiety, as well as his later attempts to account for repetition, ambiva-
lence and hatred in terms of the death drive (Todestriebe). First, Giddens
generalizes the Freudian repetition compulsion (Wiederholungszwang) in terms
of the compulsive character of modernity (Giddens, 1994: 90). The same holds
for Giddens as for Freud: the compulsion to repeat is a problem of anxiety. But
whereas Freud sees compulsion as an unmanageable process originating in the
unconscious; Giddens (1994: 701) sees it as a social formation characteristic
of late modernity, a negative index of the very process of the detraditional-
ising of society, and therefore as a problem of social management.
Secondly, Giddens (1991: 44) accepts the general distinction Freud
(191617: 395) makes between anxiety (Angst) and fear (Furcht), the idea
that anxiety has no definite object, but is a diffuse, free-floating phenomenon.
However, there is no discussion of the fact that Freud presents a new theory of
anxiety in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926), together with the second
topography. Initially, Freud (1985: 82) maintained that neurotic anxiety
(Angstneurose), as opposed to realistic anxiety, was the result of the accumula-
tion of sexual tension or unsuccessful repression. Anxiety appears therefore
only in so far as repression fails. After 1926, Freud abandoned the idea that
psychical libido can be transformed into anxiety. In the later theory anxiety
precedes repression, and is thus the motive for repression. At the same time, the
causal distinction between real fear and neurotic anxiety is put into question.
The idea that anxiety is antecedent to subjectivity is incommensurable with the
basic assumptions of structuration theory. Giddens insists rather that anxiety
attacks the core of the self once a basic security system is set up (1991: 45).
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 569

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 569

The source of a persistent confusion in Giddens, anxiousness appears only as

representation. The confusion arises to the extent that Giddens addresses the
experience of feeling oneself in sensation, including the primitive agony of
unthinkable anxiety (Winnicott, 1989b: 8990), at the level of cognition/
competence. For Giddens, the problem of anxiety remains a problem of iden-
tity. To understand how he arrives at the view of anxiety as self-representation
we need to consider his reading of Heidegger.
The idea of our being overwhelmed by anxieties that extend to the very
roots of our coherent sense of being in the world (Giddens, 1991: 37), intro-
duces chaos into our immediate surroundings. As Bion (1970: 46) points out,
the psyche remains alive in chaotic circumstances only to the extent that living
itself, living-on (survivre), is permeated by transformations akin to dread, or in
so far as the appearance of impending harm seems wholly indifferent to the
active defences against it. However, Giddens complicates matters by claiming
that the risk of chaos threatens our sense of being, but yet is experienced as
such by the self. To support these claims, Giddens turns to Heideggers
account of the relationship between anxiety and routine. Does Heideggers phe-
nomenology offer Giddens support for the social logic of anxiety? For
Heidegger, the self is essentially in the world (In-der-Welt-sein) and not merely
within the world (innerhalb der Welt); more than a belonging to the world
(weltzugehrig), the self is worldly (weltlich). And yet, in so far as anxiety
deprives the world of significance, [e]veryday familiarity collapses. Hence the
uncanniness one feels in anxiety: Dasein has been individualised, but individu-
alised as Being-in-the-world. Being-in enters into the existential mode of the
not-at-home [Un-zuhause] (Heidegger, 1962: 233). In anxiety, one no longer
feels at home in the world. Heidegger is not suggesting that one has ceased to
be in the world, but rather, that the world itself becomes essentially discontin-
uous according to an anxiety that is always latent in In-der-Welt-sein.
The irreconcilable difference between Heidegger and Giddens is already
clear: for Heidegger, anxiety is constitutive in its uncanny (unheimlich) influ-
ence, such that homelessness (Unheimlichkeit) is our primary condition; for
Giddens the self-representation of anxiety is a secondary phenomenon, in so
far as we are first of all at home (zu Hause) in the world. For Heidegger, there
is no idea of feeling, either reflected or formed, in the mood (Stimmung) of
anxiety understood as a fundamental mode of attunement. Giddens, on the
other hand, explains the threat of anxiety which (for Heidegger) concerns
the self and comes from the self, not in terms of our being free for the freedom
of choosing and grasping ourselves, but as something one has to cope with
more or less successfully. For Giddens, anxiety is not the mood in which the
self is left with the freedom of choosing itself, but rather, an occasion for
accomplishing who we are by coping with the threat to self-awareness. Anxiety,
in other words, is seen as a general problem of personal and social
management.
The reduction of ontology to a social logic of identity characterizes
Giddenss reading of Heidegger from the beginning. For example, as Craib
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 570

570 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

(1998: 65) points out, Giddens reduces the unitary view of time-space (Zeit-
Raum), which is already implicit in Being and Time, to a social organization of
time and space: measurable time-space is derived that is, imposed on time-
space relations in Western culture and should not be confused with the nature
of time-space as such (Giddens, 1981: 33). The idea of the ecstatic temporality
of the spatiality of Dasein; the idea that it is possible for Dasein to break into
space, as Heidegger (1962: 421) puts it, only on the basis of ecstatic and
horizonal temporality; is reduced to a conception of time-space relations as
constitutive of social systems. The argument is functional, rather than
phenomenological.
The environmental schema of security consolidates this elimination of
complexity, where happiness means more than anxiety in a sociological theory
of the emotions that stresses the pleasure in handling oneself and doing things
well. In so far as sociology remains preoccupied with skills and capacities,
anxiety is seen merely as a threat to our well-being. So long as one conducts
oneself in accordance with ones capability as a competent actor, the implica-
tion is that one remains free from the burden of anxiety. The ethic of reflexive
modernity is clear: we are happy doing what we do, rather than anxious being
who we are. The idea that one manages anxiety, not as a fundamental mode of
being in the world, but as a risk to oneself, is in all respects inimical to the con-
clusions of Fundamentalontolgie.
Heidegger allows for our precariousness, but not as a social problem.
Rather, for Heidegger the threat to the being-at-home of publicness . . . can go
together factically with complete security and self-sufficiency in ones everyday
concern (1962: 234). The point is that one does not have to cope with anxiety,
which factically goes along with the everyday way of taking care.6 Giddens
views the matter differently: so long as anxiety is understood according to the
logic of self-identity, the threat which it presents to our belonging to the home
(heimisch), the feeling it gives us of not being at home (Nicht-zuhause-sein),
becomes instead a twofold problem of integration and stability. Giddens (1984:
345) presents the problem of order as the fundamental question of social
theory, accordingly, in terms of our coping with the continuity of conduct
across time-space. The feeling of anxiety that Heidegger (1982: 248) describes,
the very homelessness [Heimatlosigkeit] of historical man within beings as a
whole which drives us towards our homecoming (Heimkehr); becomes for
Giddens a problem of social security: how to apply insurance principles in rela-
tion to risk-taking and what role government should have in that (Giddens and
Pierson, 1998: 165).
We can summarize the incommensurable accounts of anxiety in Giddens
and Heidegger as follows. First, for Giddens it is not the self in its basic mood
(Stimmung) that is threatened so much as the awareness of self-identity. The
theory of structuration brings the cognitive content of affectivity to the fore
through the representation of anxiety. There is nothing left of the nothing (das
Nichts) in Giddenss social psychology of separation anxiety; even the most
violent attack, or the most disastrous event, attaches itself to the core of the
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 571

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 571

self and is experienced as something threatening, or something ruinous. We are

first of all at home in the object-world, even through the perception of per-
ceived risks, or the collective nature of the awareness of risk and of the limita-
tions of expertise (Giddens, 1990: 125).
Secondly, in Heidegger (1980: 7) the feeling (Gefhl) of anxiety involves a
homesickness (Heimweh), which lifts us beyond ourselves through a desire to
be at home (zu Hause) everywhere, to exist among beings as a whole (das
Seiende im Ganzen); while in Giddens, anxiety is merely a dissatisfaction. The
immediacy of enjoyment and its ruin turns the feeling of anxiety, understood
phenomenologically as the basic mode of ourselves, into a moral preoccupation
with our inability to trust one another. Notwithstanding the complex formation
and psychogenesis of anxiety in Freud after 1926 (Green, 1986), Giddens con-
cludes that anxiety is rooted in fear as the fear of loss. The essential disagree-
ment here concerns the very value of affectivity: for Heidegger, fear is angst that
is concealed from itself as such; for Giddens, anxiety is rooted in that which is
familiar to us as fear and is in no way unauthentic. Two incommensurable eval-
uations of the affect of anxiety emerge at this point: on the one hand, we fall
into fear in our efforts to conceal or cover up who we are; on the other hand,
faced with the time-space absences of the parenting figures (Giddens, 1991:
46), the fear of loss opens up the fear for myself (sich frchten) at the level of
awareness and self-conscious emotions. As the negative value of trust, anxiety
becomes yet another attribute of the cognitive subject.
Thirdly, the problem of the self becomes one of accomplishment in the face
of anxiety understood as fear of loss. In addition to the link between trust and
knowledge, Giddens makes a further link between the fear of loss and the man-
agement of the social. The social management of anxiety is an achievement in
two senses: first, it involves the continuity of the routines of daily life in
general (Giddens, 1990: 98); secondly, it is seen as historically specific to the
world of reflexive modernisation. For Giddens, anxiety before being becomes
the administration of anxiety, part of a general insurance mechanism commen-
surate with the reproduction of global capitalism and market economies. In
principle, at least, the social logic of anxiety constitutes an altogether more
reflexive tutelary complex (Donzelot, 1979) for the government of even our
most intimate fears. Heidegger comes to somewhat different conclusions about
the coping mechanisms of our modernity: Angst before beyng is as great
today as ever. Proof: the gigantic apparatus for shouting down this Angst
(Heidegger, 1989: 139).

Integration and Regulation:The Problem of Morals

Biography is the third and final axis along which Giddens elaborates the logic
of identity. In Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), but also in The
Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Giddens articulates the problems of secu-
rity and self-representation with respect to behaviour and narrative, the
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 572

572 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

strategic implications of which can be discussed in terms of security and in-

security, respectively.
Giddens argues that [a] persons identity is not to be found in behaviour,
nor important though this is in the reactions of others, but in the capacity
to keep a particular narrative going (1991: 54; emphasis in original). If, as
Giddens suggests, our sense of being arises at the level of behaviour; our sense
of self, on the other hand, is accomplished alongside but distinct from our
ontological awareness, particularly through our capacity to construct coher-
ent narratives about ourselves. Giddens adopts psychoanalysis therefore as a
genre of biographical truth, as a theoretical as well as a therapeutic resource for
the creation of a reflexively ordered narrative of self (Giddens, 1992: 31). He
uses psychoanalysis, in other words, not only in support of the formal proposi-
tion of cognition (the trustknowledge couple), but also more strategically as a
way of connecting the work of defence to the reflexive project of the self. For
Giddens, the narrative of self-identity is a particular type of defence mechanism;
indeed, he identifies the autobiographical thinking (1991: 76) of psychoanaly-
sis as constitutive of the core of self-identity in modern social life. The thera-
peutic self is presented as a model of modern subjectivity.
Much of the second half of Modernity and Self-Identity is concerned with
the so-called phenomenal world of the modern self, and more particularly
with the shift from a tragic to a biographical order of culture. By connecting the
notions of defence and project at the level of self-identity, Giddens shifts
the discussion of modern culture from the tragic fate of the human psyche, what
Freud called the Oedipus complex, to reflexive achievements, the assessment
of risk, and the personal colonising of future domains (Giddens, 1991:
11426).7 Where fateful moments arise in the context of modernity, according
to Giddens (1991: 143), they provide a focus for the reconstruction of self-
identity in the form of counselling or therapy. The book concludes by drawing
out the political implications of the defence-project couple in terms of the
reconnection of life and morals. Concerned as Giddens (1991: 2256) puts it
with the most intimate human sensibilities, the project of the self is seen to
provide a fundamental impetus towards a remoralising of daily life. As a
twofold problem of security and identity, the remoralization of the social is
coupled with the subjective regime of social recognition. The model is
Hegelian rather than Freudian: through the problematization of modernity
along the biographical axis, Giddens combines the structural series of security,
consciousness, and habit with the functional series of anxiety, defence, and
morality.
When we turn to the breakdown of self-identity, it becomes clear that the
distinction between behaviour and narrative, at least in structuration theory,
cannot be sustained. Drawing on Laings (1965: 3961) account of ontological
insecurity, Giddens outlines the collapse of subjectivity in terms of disintegra-
tion, psychic deadness or numbness, and the sense of moral emptiness. The
analysis of ontological insecurity in terms of the breakdown of self-identity
indicates probably the most fundamental confusion in structuration theory, at
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 573

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 573

least as far as the problem of subjectivity is concerned. Giddens explains onto-

logical insecurity in terms of the breakdown of social identity. The distinction
between the behaviourialmotivational systems of ontological experience, on
the one hand, and the representationalsymbolic systems of reflexive
self-awareness, on the other, is no longer viable. Giddens privileges the self-
representation of separation anxiety over unthinkable anxieties and the trans-
formation of affect, taking into account that which the subject knows (believes)
about the context of its action as the essential datum of what it means to be
human. Together, anxiety and morality are problematized on the model of iden-
tity, where ontological awareness is presented in terms of the identity of
objects, and the sense of self is presented in terms of the identity of the subject.
Giddens conflates being and self-identity at the level of representation,
reducing subjectivity to a problem of integration and regulation. Irrespective of
what Freud says about the existence of defences prior to repression, Giddens
draws on psychoanalysis, above all, in support of the claim that reflexive
biographies (1) integrate external events and (2) regulate the equilibrium of the
system. Transposed from the Freudian drama of anxiety and ambivalence to the
social logic of identity, Giddens uses the narrative of psychoanalysis to orches-
trate the reflexive phenomenon of the self across these two orders of reality,
integrating the worlds of emotional behaviour and self-awareness, and at the
same time stabilizing everyday life at the level of representation.

Notes

1 Cf. Deleuze (1994: 56) for the logic of the multiple as a veritable theatre of
metamorphoses and permutations.
2 Deleuze indicates the extent to which relation and passion, understood in
Hume as kinds of affections, function in relation to one another: association
links ideas in the imagination; the passions give a sense to these relations
(1991: 63).
3 Husserl (1983, ss.8796) presents noesis (the act of giving meaning) and noema
(the meaning and object intended) as correlative parts of the structure of the
mental process.
4 The striving [conatus] by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is
nothing but the actual essence of the thing, Spinoza (1677/1985), pt.3, propo-
sition 7, 20. Spinoza defines affect as the sensation of whatever increases
(intensive affect) or diminishes (depressive affect) the power of action.
5 Freud formulated two topographical conceptions of the psychical apparatus:
the first involves the differentiation of the psyche in terms of unconscious,
preconscious, and conscious; the second differentiates the three agencies of
id, ego and superego.
6 Anticipating the phenomenological analysis of factical Dasein in Being and
Time (1927), factical life (faktisches Leben) is already equated with Dasein in
Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitt, 1988), the Freiburg lectures (summer
semester) of 1923. In Being and Time, existentiality, facticity and falling are
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 574

574 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

presented as the three basic constituents of Dasein. Hence being-ahead-of-itself

(existence); being-already-in-a-world (facticity); and being alongside entities
within the world (falling). The idea that an entity within the world already has
being-in-the-world recalls the earlier formulation of the be-ing there of fac-
ticity in the awhileness of its temporal particularity.
7 The idea that anxiety is antecedent to character, and therefore our fateful inher-
itance, underlies the tragic model of subjectivity in Freud. Freud (1910: 137)
combines the first years of our childhood with the necessities of our con-
stitution as the two aspects of human fate. As such, the chancenecessity cou-
ple in Freud is comparable to the fatal, but loved combination of Nietzsches
(1979: 68) Dionysian amor fati, in which one loves ones life, with all its pains
and anxieties, just for being what it is. The ego fatum (I, something fated) of
the amor fati, set out in Untimely Meditations (187376) and elaborated fur-
ther in Human, All Too Human (1878), addresses the problem of subjectivity
beyond the Cartesian cogito, but also beyond the self-representation of the late
modern subject. The self-overcoming of nihilism which, for Nietzsche,
involves the experience of amor fati understood as an expression of the doctrine
of the eternal recurrence of the same (die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen),
exceeds the problematic of social insurance and the sociological reorientation
of values based on conscious governance, alliance groups and active atti-
tudes to risk management (Giddens and Pierson, 1998: 216). Similarly, Freuds
claim that everything is chance is presented in terms of the impersonal uncon-
scious, the vicissitudes of love along the lines of fate (Schicksal), rather than the
apparatuses of social insurance and reflexive risk environments. Cf. also
Deleuze (1983: 202, n.23) for the affirmation of chance as opposed to the prob-
abilistic schema of the logic of identity, the combination of probability and
finality.

References

Bion, W.R. (1970) Attention and Interpretation. London: Maresfield Reprints.

Craib, I. (1998) Experiencing Identity. London: Sage.
Deleuze, G. (1983) Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. H.Tomlinson. London:
Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. (1991) Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay On Humes Theory of
Human Nature, trans. C.V. Boundas. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton. London: Athlone
Press.
Donzelot, J. (1979) The Policing of Families: Welfare versus the State, trans.
R. Hurley. London: Hutchinson.
Erikson, E.H. (1995) Childhood and Society. London: Vintage.
Freud, S. (1905) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, pp. 122245 in
J. Strachey (ed.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,
Vol. 7. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1910) Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, pp. 57137
in J. Strachey (ed.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works,
Vol. 11. London: Hogarth Press.
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 575

Psychoanalysis and structuration theory Groarke 575

Freud, S. (1913) The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis: A Contribution to the

Problem of Choice of Neurosis, pp. 31126 in J. Strachey (ed.) The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, Vol. 12. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (191617) Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part III), in J.
Strachey (ed.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, Vol.
16. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1926) Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, pp. 75175 in J. Strachey
(ed.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, Vol. 20.
London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1940) An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, pp. 138207 in J. Strachey (ed.)
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, Vol. 23. London:
Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1985) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess
(18871904), J. Masson (ed.). Harvard, MA: Belknap Press.
Giddens, A. (1976) New Rules of Sociological Method. London: Hutchinson.
Giddens, A. (1977) Functionalism: Aprs la lutte, pp. 98129 in A. Giddens,
Studies in Social and Political Theory. London: Hutchinson.
Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory. London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1981) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Vol. 1.
London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1982) Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory. London: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of
Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1994) Living in a Post-Traditional Society, pp.56109 in U. Beck, A.
Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernisation: Politics, Tradition and
Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. and C. Pierson (1998) Conversations with Anthony Giddens.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Green, A. (1986) Conceptions of Affect, pp. 174213 in A. Green (ed.) On Private
Madness. London: Hogarth Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (1980) Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 39: Hlderlins Hymnen Germanien
und DerRhein, S. Ziegler (ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
Heidegger, M. (1982) Nietzsche, Vol. IV: Nihilism, D.F. Krell (ed.). San Francisco,
CA: Harper & Row.
Heidegger, M. (1988) Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 63: Ontologie (Hermeneutik der
Faktizitt), K. Brcker (ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
Heidegger, M. (1989) Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 65: Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom
Ereignis), F.-W. von Hermann (ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
Hume, D. (1740/1972) A Treatise of Human Nature, Books II and III. London:
Fontana.
Husserl, E. (1970/1954) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
SOC 025046 Groarke 25/6/2002 2:39 pm Page 576

576 Sociology Volume 36 Number 3 August 2002

Husserl, E. (1983/1913) Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a

Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten. Dordrecht:
Kluwer.
Lacan, J. (1977) crits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock.
Laing, R.D. (1965) The Divided Self. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Nietzsche, F. (1979/1908) Ecce Homo, trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Nietzsche, F. (1996/1878) Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans.
R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1997/18736) Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parsons, T. (1964/1958) Social Structure and the Development of Personality:
Freuds Contribution to the Integration of Psychology and Sociology, pp.
78111 in T. Parsons, Social Structure and Personality. New York: Free Press.
Spinoza, B. (1985/1677) Ethics, pp. 408617 in E. Curley (ed.) The Collected
Works of Spinoza, Vol. I. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Winnicott, D.W. (1985/1960) The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship,
pp. 3755 in J. Sutherland (ed.) The Maturational Processes and the
Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development.
London: Hogarth Press.
Winnicott, D.W. (1986) Home Is Where We Start From. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Winnicott, D.W. (1987) Babies and Their Mothers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Winnicott, D.W. (1989a/1967) The Concept of Clinical Regression Compared with
that of Defence Organisation, pp. 19399 in C. Winnicott, R. Shepherd and
M. Davis (eds) Psycho-Analytic Explorations. London: Karnac.
Winnicott, D.W (1989b/1969) The MotherInfant Experience of Mutuality, pp.
25160 in C. Winnicott, R. Shepherd and M. Davis (eds) Psycho-Analytic
Explorations. London: Karnac.
Wittgenstein, L. (1978a/193744) Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics,
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L. (1978b/1953) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M.
Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Steven Groarke

Is Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey Roehampton. He received his MA and

PhD degrees in Cultural Studies from the University of Birmingham. He currently co-
ordinates an undergraduate programme in childhood studies.
Address: School of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Surrey Roehampton,
Southlands College, 80 Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SL, UK.
E-mail: s.groarke@roehampton.ac.uk