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Runaway world: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives By Anthony Giddens. NewYork: Routledge, 2000. 124 pp., $17.95.
The task of any scholar writing on large themes is made daunting by the need to carve up his world into manageable bites. The dust jacket tells us that the author of Runaway World has impressive credentials for this task. "Anthony Giddens is the director of the London School of Economics and Political Science and has been an advisor to both Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. He is the author of 31 books, including, The Third Way and Beyond Left and Right, and his work has been translated into 22 languages. He has taught at many universities including Cambridge University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the Sorbonne." This essay expanded into book-length, is to be taken seriously because of Professor Giddens' proximity to "Tony" and "Bill"-the sources of executive authority in the United Kingdom and the United States. These are two fellows with a presumptive vested interest in how best to carve up the world.
This slender, 100-page monograph began life as the Reith Lectures for 1999. Given its brevity, the number of individuals acknowledged as having contributed to his thinking on the subject makes it clear that Professor Giddens places great store by its contents. Indeed we can read this on several levels: as a think piece, a policy statement, or as an exercise in reconfiguring the nature of the social universe. Whatever one's perspective, it is best to begin with the volume's five-part construction on its own terms. In seeking a fresh overview, Giddens offers globalization, risk, tradition, family, and democracy as core concerns. Certainly there are differences between risk, which involve strategies for promoting change, and the family a concept with deep institutional roots in Western civilization. Nonetheless, the author must be appreciated for compelling us to deal with the here and now, without entirely ignoring what was or what is to become of us.
Globalization is the first of the five segments. The collapse of the Soviet Empire and the bipolar universe that existed for much of the twentieth century, introduced globalization of free markets and democratic politics. Giddens understands, somewhat reluctantly it seems, that these twin peaks help explain the relative ease with...