"The Third Way", Or Modernity Criticism?

Anthony Giddens, one of the most famous social theorists in the world today, his modernity theroy with a strong flavor of realism makes him a unique social theorist in the circle of contemporary social theory. Giddens is pondering under the guide of high modernity society in contemporary western with a purpose of leading humanity to "reflectively" rebuild the future social life in a rational manner. Giddens's theory of modernity reflects his academic courage and accountability towards understanding and changing the world.However, the current domestical research on Giddens'thought has defects of unclear understanding for the purport of Giddens' social theory.Starting from this question, the dissertation tries to focus on the purport of Giddens' social theory and illuminate the legality which regards modernity theory as the purport of Giddens' thought. By means of literature interpretation and comparative analysis, the dissertation will go on towards two directions:1, Revealing the essentials and purport of Giddens' social theory by analysis and interpretation of Giddens' writings; 2, Elaborating uniqueness and value of Giddens' modernity theory by diachronically and synchronically comparing Giddens with classical and contemporary thought of modernity.Specifically, the dissertation carries out demonstration from three steps.The first chapter is to reveal "The Third Way" Political Theory is concrete consequence which Giddens applies his theory of modernity to analyse social reality, and is reality policy to reconstruct contemporary politics. After conceiving politics of life, Giddens gets into political practice, and then advances "The Third Way" Political Theory in face of dilemma of western traditional binary politics and three global changes, through which aims to set up a completely new policy framework and a concrete political reconstruction scheme.The second chapter is to outline three stages of Giddens' thought development, those are unscrambling classical social theory, rebuilding methodological framework of sociological studies, criticizing and reconstructing modernity. Then legally corroborating that reflection of modernity is the central subject in Giddens' academic research by analysing the internal thinking in Giddens' theories system. This subject combines Giddens' varies researches and components of theories system into an integrated entity.The third chapter is to diachronically compare Giddens' modernity thought with Marx, Weber and Durkheim, and then synchronically compare with relevant theories of Habermas and Lyotard, through which aim to locate the uniqueness, value and significance of Giddens' theory of modernity in the development of contemporary social theory.