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Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson, Conversations with Anthony Giddens. Making Sense of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, 233 pp, cloth.
For those seeking a capsule version of Anthony Giddens' career and ideas since the early 1970s, this book will be especially welcome. Consisting of a series of seven interviews of Giddens, conducted by Christopher Pierson in the winter and spring of 1997, and prefaced by a short, synoptic essay by Martin O'Brien, the volume also includes four occasional pieces in which Giddens elaborates his views on politics, trust and risk. The text contains some biographical information, but concentrates mainly on providing the reader with an overview of Giddens' multifaceted oeuvre. Areas covered include Giddens' writings on the classics, structuration theory, modernity, intimacy and life-politics, the "third way" between left and right, and world issues touching on such varied subjects as environmental degradation, global financial markets and NATO. Christopher Pierson is well chosen as an interlocutor, engaging his subject without a trace of sycophancy, and never forgetting that the reader is more interested in Giddens than in himself.
When we read interviews with distinguished figures, what is it typically we want to read about? Well, of course we want to be informed about their ideas, but we can find those ideas set out systematically and at length in the authors' books. In an interview, we surely want to know something else: something about the person behind the ideas. George Orwell once remarked that "a man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats." What kind...