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Anthony Giddens

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Famous Anthony Giddens Quotes

“To live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an environment of chance and risk, the ineveitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination of nature and the reflexive making of history. Fate and destiny have no formal part to play in such a system, which operates (as a matter of principle) via what I shall call open human control of the natural and social worlds.”

WorldHumansMatterPlayCultureUniverseSocialNaturalChancePrinciplesDestinyEnvironmentFateRiskFormalDominationModernityFate And DestinyChance And Risk
Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age
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“[C]ultivated risk-taking represents an 'experiment with trust' (in the sense of basic trust) which consequently has implications for an individual's self-identity. (...) In cultivated risk-taking, the encounter with danger and its resolution are bound up in the same activity, whereas in other consequential settings the payoff of chosen strategies may not be seen for years afterwards.”

YearsMaySelfIndividualRiskDangerIdentityActivityStrategyBoundsExperimentsSettingChosenSettingsEncountersResolutionImplicationsRisk-takingSelf IdentityPayoff
Author:Anthony Giddens
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“Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects (...), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptable/appropriate/recommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims.”

ThinkingWellsMayMeanLightTodayTermLevelsPracticeTakenRiskModernTomorrowCircumstancesAspectClaimsPhilosophicalInstitutionsConstantProfoundEverydaySeekingGrantedOutcomesCharacteristicsAppropriateInterpretationAcceptableBehaviourRapidsMomentumAlteredTaken For Granted
Author:Anthony Giddens
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“Abstract systems depend on trust, yet they provide none of the moral rewards which can be obtained from personalised trust, or were often available in traditional settings from the moral frameworks within which everyday life was undertaken. Moreover, the wholesale penetration of abstract systems into daily life creates risks which the individual is not well placed to confront; high-consequence risks fall into this category. Greater interdependence, up to and including globally independent systems, means greater vulnerability when untoward events occur that affect those systems as a whole.”

WellsMeanWholeFallIndividualMoralGreaterRiskEventsDependsConsequenceIndependentRewardsEverydayIncludingAvailableSettingTraditionalSettingsVulnerabilityAbstractDaily LifeCategoriesEveryday LifeFrameworkInterdependenceWholesalePenetration
Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age
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