Reflection And Future Of The Emancipatory Politics

This essay represents its writer's essential interpretation of Giddens' modernity thoughts. On the basis of systematical discussion of the main elements of Giddens' thoughts, the author holds that, the endeavor of reflection and reconstruction of modernity is the consistent disquisition theme throughout his academic career. Around the core issue of emancipatory politics, Giddens sets his way to reflect the development of modernity, and on the basis of systematically reflect the problems that emancipatory politics has resulted in, he puts forward the theoretical conformation as the future prospect of the late modernity society. Reflections of the emancipatory politics and prospects of the life politics represent the central clue of Giddens' reflection and reconstruction modernity thoughts. Around this clue, this essay sets out to study Giddens' modernity thoughts by the following steps:Firstly, after liquidating the status quo of the studying of Giddens' thoughts in and out of our country, the preface has demonstrated the central clue that this essay will circumfuse. That is the disquisition theme of modernity, the core idea of emancipatory politics and the future prospect of life politics, illustrates the inherence relationship among these concepts. After doing that, this part also advances the basic analytical framework that this essay will be based on and the main researching methods that this essay will involve.Secondly, "various images and coalescence: prospect of the late modernity society". This part elucidates the main sources of Giddens' modernity thoughts and the modernity theory that he has reconstructed, comprehensively exhibits the fundamental views that he holds for the late modernity society. "Various images" represented Giddens' reflection of Marx's capitalism theory, Durkheim's industrialism theory and Weber's rationalization theory, while "coalescence" represents on the basis of his inheritance of the three ideologists modernity thoughts and his absorption of modernism and post-modernism, his reconstruction of the modernity theoretical framework: capitalism, industrialism, surveillance and violence. These four dimensions reveal the vivid picture of the late modernity thatGiddens has depicted.Thirdly, in the light of emancipatory politics, this part illustrates the reasons and models that the late modernity society has come into being, which embodies from chapter three to chapter five. In the final analysis, the formation of the late modernity society is the results of the emancipatory politics, which originated from the Enlightment. So on the bases of the analyses of Giddens' Structuration Theory, this part construed the models of the emancipatory politics thoroughly. The ultimate goal of the Structuration Theory is to rebuild the relationship of the central category in social theory, that is the relationship between action and constraint, or between agent and structure. It deems that social structure has both enhancement and constraint functions to human's action. And the relationships between structure and action are media and constraint, which are continuously reproduced out through people's actions. Embodies on the emancipatory politics, these relationships incarnate on the categories between emancipatory action and modernity. Emancipation stands for action, it results in and reproduces the intended consequences of modernity. But these unintended consequences become the conditions and constraints of the emancipatory actions furthermore. With this analytical model, the following chapters analyze the paradoxes in which the emancipatory actions had resulted in the process of social vicissitude. Scientific technologies are fundamental weapons that enable people to be liberated from the adherence of nature and tradition. But the consequences of de-traditionx created environment and manufactured risks which result from the development of modern scientific technology indicate that what science has brought to human is not just certainty, but also uncertainty which not only has saturated in all as...