How useful is Giddens Reflexivity?

Michael Handelman
Throughout the 1980s, reflexivity became a concept that became increasingly associated with the work of Anthony Giddens. But in contrast to Bourdieuanother major theorist who has become associated with reflexivityGiddens treats reflexivity as a property of human beings, rather than as a strategy of turning ones intellectual gaze onto oneself (the researcher) as a strategy for gaining better knowledge of the world. In other words, Giddens treats reflexivity as an ontological concept, rather than as an epistemological principle. What I want to do in this paper, is to demonstrate that the way Giddens uses reflexivity is not particularly helpful in highlighting the nature of social life. Far from deepening our understanding, it at best provides a very superficial understanding of the social world; at worst, we get ontological incoherence, in which far from overcoming the dualisms he so strongly criticizes [e.g. Giddens 1984], he ends up reproducing some of the worst forms of subjectivist empiricism, and voluntarism at the micro-level and extreme determinism at the macro-level. It is not an understatement to say that for Giddens, reflexive modernitys macro-determinism means that the best (and perhaps only) politics in the contemporary social world is the politics of being a dandy/demimonde. To demonstrate this, I will first explicate (the lateri) Giddens understanding of reflexivity with an emphasis on clarifying the meaning of reflexive modernity. Then, I will use the competing system of Habermas and Offes work on legitimation crisis as a means to highlight an alternative (conjunctural) understanding of reflexivity. To offer a contrasting position on neo-liberal modernity, I will use Habermas work on the colonization of the lifeworld to provide a corrective to Giddens macro/determinist, and micro/voluntarist account of contemporary social life. In this section, I will suggest that it is not enough to emphasize that people see they have choices, it is also useful to a) understand the mechanisms behind these choices; b) understand what we are forbidden from choosing. Giddens notion of reflexive modernity Perhaps the most confusing aspect about Giddens deployment of the term reflexivity, is that he uses it in so many different ways (social reflexivity, reflexive modernity, institutional reflexivity; one wonders what isnt reflexivity)ii. However in this section, I will only focus on a few of Giddens uses

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of reflexivity: I will first examine transhistorical reflexivity and the reflexivity of modernity, as a means to clarify the meaning of reflexive modernity. Transhistorical reflexivity should be understood not merely as self-consciousness but as the monitored character of the ongoing flow of social life. To be a human being is to be a purposive agent, who both has reasons for his or her activities and is able, if asked to elaborate discursively upon those reasons [Giddens 1984:3]. This conceptualization is one he derives from phenomenology and symbolic interactionism: against treating human beings as passively controlled by the structure (judgemental dopes to use Garfinkels term), Giddens wants to emphasizes peoples inherent knowledgability about the world. Furthermore, I call it transhistorical because it is a universal feature of all human beingsirrespective of whether they are in modernity or non-modern societies. In other words, as a human being, one is by definition a reflexive actor. By contrast, there is the reflexivity of modernity: Modernitys reflexivity has to be distinguished from the reflexive monitoring of action intrinsic to all human activity. Modernitys reflexivity refers to the susceptibility of most aspects of social activity and material relations with nature, to chronic revision in the light of new information or knowledge [Giddens 1991:20; see also Giddens 1990:36-42]. Since Giddens derives this conception of reflexivity from the classical theorists effort to distinguish pre-modern and modern societies [Tucker 1998:20], it is a useful starting point to compare traditional and modern societies: In traditional societies, we are expected to follow a tradition because we cannot imagine any alternative. As Giddens explains It [tradition] is a means of handling time and space, which inserts any particular activity or experience within the continuity of past, present, and future, these in turn being structured by recurrent social practices [Giddens 1990:37]. Thus, tradition does not require any sort of linguistic (discursive) justification for ones behaviorsince one cannot imagine that there can be another way of doing things (if one sees A as ones only choice, you dont really have to justify choosing A).

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With the reflexivity of modernity, people start to realize that there are other ways of life that are different from the prescriptions of tradition [Giddens 1990:38]. Furthermore, Giddens identifies several explanations for the new forms of reflexivity that are generated by modernity: capitalism and industrialism tend to promote rapid changeand this destabilizes peoples attachment to their tradition; this is because tradition requires a belief in an unchanging world [Giddens 1990:103]. As well, the development of new communication technology, allows people to see other traditions in the worldthus denaturalizing their own tradition; tradition also requires a relative immobile population for traditions hold on their consciousness; but modernity undermines this immobility since people are increasingly forced to move (e.g. for finding employment) [Giddens 1994a:84]. Finally, the rise of science promotes a more critical attitude towards traditionthe methodical doubt that is necessary for science, starts to demonstrate that tradition does not need to be followed [Giddens 1990:38-39]. All of these phenomena promote a more questioning (reflexive) understanding of what the world is. But if it is the case that modernity promotes reflexivity, then how do we distinguish between the reflexivity of modernity and reflexive modernitygiven the fact that modernity by definition is reflexive? Giddens answer is to highlight the fact that early modernity replaced one faith in one tradition with a faith in a scientific tradition. As Giddens puts it, the advocacy of unfettered reason only reshaped the ideas of the providential, rather than displacing it...divine law was replaced by another (the certainty of our senses, of empirical observation) and divine providence was replaced by providential progress [Giddens 1990:48]. By contrast, in reflexive modernity, the scientific doubt becomes radicalized against itself [Giddens 1990:49]. This doubt of science transforms the relationship between experts and laypeople. The pluralization of experts (i.e. a situation where different experts disagree with each other), and the recognition of the dangers of science (and this knowledge is partly a product of the politicization of science by the New Social Movements) means that lay-actors must become somewhat knowledgable

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about scienceso they can make choices about science. As Fuller puts it, ....people continue to believe in science, but now also believe that they have a choice as to which science they believe (Feyerabend 1979) [Fuller 1999]. As a result of this, there is an increasing interactivity (a feedback loop or what Giddens refers to as institutional reflexivity [Giddens 1994b:91]) between experts and lay-people; expert knowledge diffuses within the general public (e.g. through mass communication devices) and it becomes appropiated and transformed; in turn, this transformation of knowledge by laypeople, may alter how experts understand knowledge. While, Giddens argument about science is his best argument about how reflexive modernity is different from non-reflexive modernityiiithere are other factors which suggest that reflexive modernity is less a break with plain modernity, than an intensification of modernityiv: medical and scientific advances have further opened the door to increased individual control over lifeso for example, the development of the birth control pill, means that people are now forced to choose if and when they want to have children [Giddens 1992:2, 27]; globalization has produced geographic dislocation, further disembedding people from tradition; finally, the new social movements have denaturalized social relations: from our relationship to nature to familial relationsno longer can we simply assert that our relationships are natural. Thus, our lifestyles increasingly become a matter of choicerather than being governed by tradition [Tucker 1998:57, 60]. Furthermore, the existence of choice means that people have to constantly discursively justify their choices (e.g. why choose A rather than B) [Giddens 1994b:105-106]. Reflexive modernity also alters political life quite dramatically. At the micro-level, the choices we have in terms of our lifestyle is now a form of political power (life-politics) to shape the world [Giddens 1994a:91]. As Giddens explains, Local lifestyle habits have become globally consequential. Thus, my decision to buy a certain item of clothing has implications not simply for the international division of labour but also for the Earths ecosystem [Giddens 1994:5]v. What is more, the fact that

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we must construct our identitiesrather than simply accept them, means there is the possibility of remaking ourselves in an emancipated fashion. As Tucker puts it, Giddens believes that truly innovative social movements must offer the utopian possibility of changing the fabric and texture of human relationships....for the first time in history emotionally healthy people can share universal, cosmopolitan, values, such as the sanctity of human life, the preservation of different species and a care for future as well as present generations [Tucker 1998:149]. At a more macro-level, the welfare-state has collapsed due to reflexive modernization. To elaborate on this, the welfare-state was dependent on equating work with paid employment in the labour market; it hence also presumed the patriarchical family [Giddens 1994a:139]; the naturalness of these social relations was put into question by the reflexivity of the feminist movementthus undermining the welfare-statevi. As well, the centralized bureaucratic organizations of the welfare-state is inconsistent with the values of choice that reflexive modernization promotes [Giddens 1994a:142]. As a result of this is, we must accept some form of neo-liberalismsince only neo-liberalism allows us to exercise our capacity to choose our lifestyles. Habermas and Offe: From Legitimation Crisis to the Colonization of the Lifeworld There is a certain amount of resemblance between Habermas and Offe on the one hand, and Giddens on the other; they both recognize the importance of the crisis of the welfare-state, and the role of New Social Movements in the contemporary period. In fact, the title of one of Giddens chapters is entitled Contradictions of the Welfare-State [Giddens 1994a]which is exactly the same title of a book by Claus Offe [1984]. But these similarities should not obscure the differences; as Offe has commented,
In view of such unanimity [over the crisis of the welfare-state] we must ask whether the theoretical differences separating the liberal-conservative and materialist approaches in the social sciences have actually evaporated and whether the differences result less from the analysis itself than from the normative criteria and political aims with which the analysis is associated. In other words, in a situation where everyone is convinced of the facts of the crisis and where general agreement exists regarding its symptoms and course of development, one is faced with the question of the specific political-theoretical role of crisis theories. [Offe 1984:74]

This is precisely the point: We all may agree that the welfare-state went into crisis in the 1970s, but

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Giddens takes the crisis of the welfare-state, as indicative of the rise of reflexive modernitywhich he views as having certain inevitable political conclusions at the macro-level. By contrast, Offe and Habermas are much less willing to regress to those deterministic conclusions. Giddens makes two claims that should be treated separately: the nature of reflexivity (specifically the reflexivity of reflexive modernity) and what is happening in post-1970s capitalism. I will first use Habermas Legitimation Crisis and Claus Offes Contradictions of the Welfare-State, to disaggregate what Giddens refers to as reflexivity. In my second section, I will use Habermas work on the colonization of the life-world, as an analytic that is superior (to Giddens) in terms of its descriptive capacity to understand contemporary social life. Disaggregating Reflexivity As I have suggested previously, one of the confusing aspects of Giddens argument, is that he uses reflexivity in too many ways. But it is not simply confusingit also allows one to (illegitimately) link radically different phenomenon together under the aegis of reflexivity. So Giddens sees both (neoliberal) globalization and NSMs as examples of reflexivity. The problem is that in the contemporary period, many NSMs oppose neo-liberal globalization [Crossley 2003a]! Thus to disaggregate reflexivity, I want to go back to Habermas and Offes seminal analyses of the crisis of the welfare-state in the 1970s. The reason for this move, is that I feel this period is the height of reflexivity; this is in the sense that institutional arrangements were open to question (delegitimized): e.g. Civil Rights Movement challenged segregation and racism; feminism challenged the naturalness of patriarchy; and environmental movements challenged the instrumental conception of the economy. The starting point for Habermas and Offe is Webers insight that in modernity, there is the autonomization of value spheres [Habermas 1984:166-167]. The economic, political, cultural spheres

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all have become relatively autonomous spheres, which can come into conflict. Out of this, the welfarestate existed primarily through redirecting the crisis-tendencies (and class conflicts) of the economic sphere into the political-administrative sphere (so labour now has a political voice in decision-making). However, this may create new crisis possibilities: since the state can be influenced by popular pressure, it may lead to the states incapacity to steer in the interest of capitalist accumulation [Offe 1984:68]. As Habermas puts it, While the state compensates for the weaknesses of a self-blocking economic system and takes over tasks complementary to the market, it is forced by the logic of its means of control to admit more and more foreign elements into the system [Habermas 1975:47; see also Habermas 1987:347-349]. What is perhaps most significant in terms of the issue of reflexivity, is the way in which different crisis-tendencies tend to denaturalize the social. So for instance, in the socio-cultural domain, there was a promise that higher education would guarantee a respectable job. From the standpoint of labour-markets (given that there is a limited number of respectable jobs), this was increasingly less likely. This disjuncture between the socio-cultural promises and the economic reality, increased the probability of questioning and challenging the social orderin the form of social revolts [Collins 1979; Habermas 1975:81-82, 91]]. This is an instance of a motivational crisisand these types of crises tend to force people to re-think their social existence [Habermas 1975:75]. In a similar fashion, the states increasing involvement in social reproduction (e.g. the family), tends to denaturalize it in the socio-cultural realm; the family becomes increasingly recognized as a political phenomenonthus opening the door to political revoltslike the feminist and gay social movements [Kellner 1989:218-219]. Furthermore, Habermas account of the effects of these crises-tendencies of welfare-state, is remarkably akin to Giddens notion of reflexivitynamely a questioning, rich in practical consequences, of the norms that still underlie administrative action [Habermas 1975:69]. My examples highlight the ways in which contradictions between different value-spheres may

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provoke reflexive attitudes towards a variety of institutions. Indeed, this is a far more genuine conception of reflexivity than the one proposed by Giddens; in Giddens account, reflexivity primarily seems to be geared towards exploring ones identityand not a critical questioning of institutions. In todays society we may be more reflexive towards the family, but how reflexive are we to the law, state, and the market? As Crossley puts it, Discursive persuasion [which is the crux of Giddens argument, see Giddens 1994a:6] is not necessary for effective legitimation most of the time because much of the consent that agents grant to the state and the status quo is granted at the level of habitual assumption. [mh: italics are my own] [Crossley 2003b: 46]. Furthermore, Habermas and especially Offe raise the importance of the ruling class response to the social crises of the 1960s/1970s. These social crises were interpreted as instances of ungovernability; the solution that was eventually advanced by the ruling class was one of retrenching the welfare-state. This was a strategy to diminish the overloading of the system with claims, expectations and responsibilities [i.e. that were advanced by the NSMs] [Offe 1984:69]. This strategy should be understood as to where many of the constitutive elements of globalization (privatization, marketization, commodification, deregulation) come from [Offe 1984:69]. Thus for Habermas and Offe, we must understand neo-liberal globalization as originating in a ruling class project to deal with the insurgent movements of the 1960s/1970s. In contrast, Giddens sees globalization as a process in which human beings took no part in constructing (this is why I consider him to be extremely structurally deterministic at the macro-level). Thus, Giddens effort to link globalization with the new social movements as instances of increased reflexivity, simply highlights his failure to comprehend that these phenomena (neo-liberal globalization and the NSMs) emerged in opposition to each other. Or as Goldthorpe puts it,
However, their [Giddens and other similar theorists like Beck, Castells etc.] attempts to show the connection with globalisation [and the transformations that the NSMs have generated] amount to little more than placing two trends of change alongside each other, with no clear specification of the causal processes supposedly linking one to the other. [Goldthorpe 2002:28]

Reflexive Modernity or the (Economic) Colonization of the Lifeworld? Giddens account of what life is like in neo-liberal modernity is perhaps not so much wrong, as it is incomplete. Giddens is suffering from what Habermas refers to as hermeneutic idealism

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[McCarthy 1984:xvi] or what I call subjectivist empiricism: Giddens is constantly talking about how in reflexive modernity, we have so much choice in terms of our life-styles and consumer practices; but to be epistemologically sceptical: how do we know we have so much choice? Implicitly, Giddens seems to think that because people subjectively perceive that they have choice, the choice must be real. In other words, he is grounding his epistemology on peoples subjective perceptions of the world (hence subjectivist empiricism). But what are the forbidden choicesnamely the choices we are not allowed to make? In order to answer this question, we need to explore the mechanisms that produce particular types of subjectivity; and this will allow us to see what is forbidden by the structure. In my view, Habermas notion of the colonization of the life-world provides such an analytic tool to explore these issuesvii. Habermas conceptualizes the social world in terms of the system and the life-world: the system is the subsystem of the capitalist economic system and state bureaucracies governed through the media of money and power [and instrumental rationality] [Kellner 1989:199]; by contrast, the lifeworld is the realm of everyday life, where we attempt to achieve mutual understanding (communicative rationality) about the world [Sitton 1998:63]. This is the sphere of cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization [Sitton 1998:63]. Habermas saw that the system has increasingly colonized the lifeworld; this is manifested in the way in which citizens became objects of political intervention and manipulation by state bureaucraciesrather than as subjects who were politically engaged within the public sphere (there is a shift from citizens to clients) [Habermas 1987:350; Sitton 1998:69; see also Crossley 2003a:294]. Unfortunately, Habermas account of colonization is limited because it is an exploration of the welfare-state at its high-point (1960s)rather than in the contemporary neo-liberal period. However, following Crossley [2003a], we can reconceptualize contemporary social life, in terms of the economic colonization of the life-world rather than in terms of the political colonization of the life-world. This

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economic colonization can be seen by

...the many ways in which public space has been invaded and subject to new forms of corporate regulation; the way, for example, in which town centres are being replaced by private shopping malls and every blank wall is becoming advertising space; the way in which university campuses and even courses are increasingly corporate sponsored, with the effects this has for student activity, course content and even the existence of some courses and departments; and the similar range of effects that are discernible in relation to various popular televisual and artistic publics [Crossley 2003a:297].

This objective fact of the economic colonization of the lifeworld, produces a particular type of subjectivity. The subject is increasingly interpellated by ideology as a consumer (and the consumer identity demands that choice be seen as a sacrosanct principle)rather than as a citizen or as a client. But what is crucial is that the choices which do not conform to the logic of consumerist capitalism have become forbidden. For instance, the political choices have narrowed considerably over the last 30 years; this is because anything that deviates from a politics rooted in commodification and consumerism has been excluded from the allowable choices. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can choose any politics you want, as long as it is neo-liberal. From this angle, the expansion of Giddens much vaunted choice in contemporary social lifeis something of an illusionviii. By identifying the causal mechanism that produce consumerist subjectivity, one is suggesting that it can be challenged and overthrown. It is hard to imagine how people can practically oppose reflexive modernity; but it seems eminently feasible to resist the economic colonization of the lifeworldjust as it was possible to resist the political colonization of the life-world in the 1960s. As well, the colonization of the life-world model allows us to identify a rather serious problem with the idea that contemporary social life is characterized by a reflexive relationship between scientific experts and laypeople: namely, not all scientific knowledge gets diffused equallyix. To be more specific, Giddens has no conception of structural selectivitynamely the way in which structures selectively reinforce specific forms of action, tactics, or strategies [or knowledge] and to discourage others [Jessop 2005:49]. As a result, Giddens does not think about why certain types of knowledge get diffusedand conversely, why other knowledge does not get diffused. By contrast, Habermas emphasis on structural phenomenon like the market (which is in turn structured by corporate power) means that the scientific knowledge that is diffusedis much more likely to be consistent with hegemonic interests. To offer a concrete example of this structural selectivity: Heather Rogers has highlighted how in response to environmental struggles, the waste industry encouraged recycling as the solution to

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garbage problems [Rogers 2005:157]. As a result of this, people may end up suffering from reflexive misrecognition: there has been a diffusion of ecological knowledge among the population (producing a reflexive attitude towards the environment), but they treat environmental problems as purely the result of individual choices (i.e failure to recycle)and not as the result of structural forces like the market economy externalizing environmental costs (i.e. people suffer from misrecognition)x. As a counterfactual, what would happen to the social order, if people diagnosed ecological problems in terms of the pathological effects of the economic colonization of the lifeworld? A severe legitimation crisisxi, perhaps? To reiterate, this highlights how the knowledge that is diffused amongst the population, is much more likely (structural selectivity) to be consistent with the continued operation and reproduction of a neo-liberal society. Conclusion This paper has both attempted to explicate Giddens notion of reflexivity and to suggest that it is theoretically inadequate to capture what life is like in neo-liberal modernity. Perhaps, what is most troubling is that Giddens argument is anti-sociological: we can abolish environmental problems by changing our values [Giddens 1994a: 225, 227]; we can solve our emotional problems, by working on ourselves to become more emotionally fulfilled people. In both cases, Giddens has converted public issues into personal troubles; this is in sharp contrast to C. Wright Mills sociological imaginationwhich always attempted to link personal troubles to public issues. In contrast, Habermas and Offe remain wedded to an analysis that links character to social structure in a way that is consistent with Mills sociological imagination. Habermas and Offe recognize that fluid self-identity may not be the solution to social problems; rather it may serve to misdiagnose and mask the nature of social injustice under the rubric of personalistic, psychologizing discourse. In other words, if efforts to transform ones identity is detached from collective projects of social change, fluid self-identity becomes part of the problemrather than the solution to social problems.

Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994b). Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity in association with Blackwell. Collins, R. (1979). The Credential Society: an Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. New York ; London: Academic Press.

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Crossley, N. (2003a). Even Newer Social Movements? Anti-Corporate Protests, Capitalist Crises and the Remoralization of Society. Organization, 10. Crossley, N. (2003b). From Reproduction to Transformation: Social Movement Fields and the Radical Habitus. Theory, Culture, Society, 20(6). Fuller, S. (1999). 'Toward a Re-enchantment of Science: A Fit End to the Science Wars'. Beatty Memorial Lecture at www.alp.mcgill.ca/sci_soc/steve_fuller_lect.htm 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 in association with Blackwell. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity. Giddens, A. (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy: Love, Sexuality and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Oxford: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (1994a). Beyond Left and Right: the Future of Radical Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goldthorpe, J. (2002). Globalisation and Social Class. West European Politics 25(3) Habermas, J. (1976). Legitimation Crisis. London: Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press. Jessop, B. (2005). Critical Realism and the Strategic-Relational Approach. New Formations, 56(1). Kellner, D. (1989). Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Kim, K.-M. (2004). Can Bourdieus Critical Theory liberate us from the Symbolic Violence? Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 4. Offe, C. & Keane, J. (1984). Contradictions of the Welfare State (Contemporary politics). London: Hutchinson. Pleasants, N. (1999). Wittgenstein and the Idea of a Critical Social Theory: Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar. Routledge.

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Rogers, H. (2005). Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New Press. Sitton, J. (1998). Disembodied Capitalism: Habermas' Conception of the Economy. Sociological Forum, 13(1). Tucker, K. H., Jr. (1998). Anthony Giddens & Modern Social Theory. Sage Publications, Inc.

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i I say later because the earlier Giddens is quite critical of many of the things the later Giddens did. E.g. in Constitution of Society [1984], Giddens is critical of methodological individualism, reification, voluntarism etcall things the later Giddens suffers from. I strongly suspect it has something to do with which theorist Giddens was trying to emulate at the time: Constitution of Society has a certain family resemblance to Habermas Theory of Communicative Action (they use similar theorists, dealing with similar meta-theoretical problems etc). In contrast by the late 1980s, Giddens arguments starts to sound a lot less like Habermas and a lot more like Beck (and we should remember that Risk Society came out in the original German in 1986and Giddens is likely to have read it in when it came out in the original German). This shift undermined the meta-theoretically cautious Giddens, towards a much more meta-theoretically careless project. ii I am not the only person who has observed this, However, despite the considerable ambiguity of Giddens multifarious predication of reflexive, this is not what he means by reflexive modernity [Pleasants 1999:87] iii Even this notion of the doubt about science as constituting a break between modernity and reflexive modernity seems problematic, because it is still an accentuation of already existing trends: e.g. we could place reflexive modernity about the time when verificationism (Vienna Circle/Logical Positivism) gave way to falsification (Popper) because falsification essentially makes science much more provisional and thus more open to doubt. We can no longer prove anything, but we can disprove things; what is true today, may be falsified tomorrowthus, inherently there is greater doubt about the truth claims that science makes. So why not classify reflexive modernity around 1950? iv The reason why I consider these as intensifications of modernity, rather than breaks is because none of these things are not particularly new. For example, the development of antibiotics signifies our greater sexual freedom choice, since we the threat of VD no longer scares us into accepting traditional sexual behavior. Why doesnt Giddens see that as the beginning of reflexive modernity (1920s)? Similarly, since globalization began at least since the beginning of capitalism, we could see that as the start of reflexive modernity. The intensification of already existing processes does not suggest a way of demarcating between plain modernity and reflexive modernity. Goldthorpe [2002:21] comes to very similar conclusions about the difficulty of demarcation lines (and we came to it independently: Curtis Jones told me about this articlewell after I had written this footnote). v This clear regression to methodological individualism and voluntarism clearly violates a lot of what he argued in Constitution of Society; e.g. his rejection of methodological individualism [see Giddens 1984:213], his emphasis on the importance of a durable structure that is resistant to the actions of agents (see his examination of Willis study on working class resistance to schoolswhich had no effect on the school system; just like ones individuals choices in terms of consumption will not have much effect [Giddens 1984:289-304]). vi This seems to be a remarkably dubious argument, since the social democratic welfare-states (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) are both the most expansive welfare-states and the most gender egalitarian. Furthermore, Giddens argument seems to be rather essentialist, where the welfare-state is inherently patriarchical. Following Foucault, we should treat the welfare-state in more agonistic terms, my point is not that everything is bad, but everything is dangerousso while the welfare-state may have its origins in the reproduction of patriarchical society, it can be transformed for more gender egalitarian purposes. Empirically, I think it would be useful to examine whether feminist movements have attempted to defend and expand the welfare-state to improve the lives of women. I strongly suspect that this is the case, since the way in which patriarchical ideas structured welfare-policy (e.g. the stigmatization of single mother families on welfare) could only have been solved by making the welfare-state more universalist, less stigmatizing and more generous. As well, demands for universal child care are clearly calls for an expansion of the welfare-state and (at least) gender egalitarian policies. It seems to me, that Giddens is so entranced with his theory of reflexive modernity, that he refuses to examine empirically some of the claims he makes. For a much more sophisticated empirical critique of Giddens (and for that matter Beck) along these lines, see Goldthorpe 2002.

vii In this regard, Bourdieu is also quite useful critic of subjectivist empiricism, According to Bourdieu, sociologists must
not be simply satisfied with the description of how agents self-understanding of their institution and society is displayed in their interaction. Rather, they must go beyond the self-understanding of the agents and should offer a critique of current practice so that the social agents can liberate themselves from the grip of the legitimated social classification. [Kim 2004:363] viii I think this is another example of the radical duality between the micro and macro level in Giddens account: freedom of choice at the micro-level (lifestyles) and lack of choice at the macro-level (politics). ix Another illustration of structural selectivity has been highlighted by Pleasants: It can be reasonably concluded that the critical social theory of Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar is not amongst those theories which exercise a powerful

influence on large numbers of peoples minds and actions [Pleasants 1999:178] x Rogers points out, that despite [probably] more Americans recycle than voteyet greater amounts of rubbish are going to landfills and incinerators than ever before [Rogers 2005:176]. Recycling itself may act as a form of greenwashingin which people think they are helping the environment, when in fact they really arent doing much to stop ecological degradation. xi It is interesting that Giddens solution to environmental problems is about changing our values (not to be productivist [Giddens 1994:227]); one wonders wouldnt changing our values so their inconsistent with the needs of capital accumulation, not generate a motivational crisis as a result of the disjuncture between the economic and socio-cultural realms?