Conversations with Anthony Giddens

Making Sense of Modernity

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by Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson

Stanford University Press

Due/Published January 1999, 233 pages, paper

ISBN 0804735697

These seven extended interviews with Christopher Pierson, conducted shortly after Giddens's arrival at the London School of Economics and Political Science, seek to cover the full range of his thought since the early 1970's, beginning with his engagement with the makers of "classical" sociology and concluding with his thoughts on the nature of world politics under what Giddens terms "reflexive modernity." The style of the interviews is conversational, and Giddens sets forth his ideas with his customary clarity and directness.

In addition to the interviews, four short pieces at the end of the book give examples of Giddens's recent thought, treating Tony Blair's political philosophy, the risk society concept in the context of British politics, and the dangers of chemical contamination. The volume concludes with a conversation between Giddens and European financier and philanthropist George Soros.