Όχημα του τζαγγερνώτ ή κοινωνία της διακινδύνευσης;

Abstract

In this article we make an effort to present from a critical point of view A. Giddens’s theses on the characteristics, consequences as well as the prospects of modernity. The keystone of our article is the thesis that in the Consequences of Modernity the problems of the post-industrial societies are not conceived mainly as political public issues for which are required purely political arrangements. Since the consequences of modernity are not settled by ‘power’, Giddens suggests, on the contrary, the necessity of ‘responsibility’ and of ‘a new critical theory’. The theory of ‘risk society’ by U. Beck as well as ‘sociology of risk’ by N. Luhmann are taken as the framework of our analysis and counter-argumentation against the views of the British theorist. According to our thesis, these two approaches offer us the theoretical framework of facing, politically, the consequences of modernity; namely, the social conflicts which, because they are not implied by the trends of dedifferentiation and individualization, do not have the characteristics of cleavages, and they do not also align with certain and dinstinct structures of conflict.