Anthony GiddensThinkers

An Abstract system is a system which has penetrated daily life and depends on trust while offering none of the moral rewards of personalized trust and all of the risks and vulnerability borne by the abstract system.

Action is a duree... a continuous flow of conduct. It is not composed of an aggregate or series of separate intentions, reasons and motives. It is not a combination of 'acts': Rather 'acts' are constituted only by a discursive moment of attention to the duree of lived-through experience.

Anxiety is fear which has lost its object. The expression of internal dangers rather than the expression of external threats.

Class continues to have major significance within contemporary western societies as one pervasive basis of conflict as a consequence of the 'asymmetry' of the capitalist labour contract.

Democracy is a political system which people have oddly not lost trust in despite having lost trust in politicians.

Democracy is a system involving effective competition between political parties and regular elections.

The Duality of structure is the suggestion that structures are both the medium and the outcome of the practices which constitute social systems.

Enlightenment (European) is a thing in which the seeds of nihilism were present from the very beginning. This is because, if the sphere of reason is wholly unfettered, no knowledge can rest upon an unquestioned foundation and as such, even the most firmly held notions can only be regarded as valid 'in principle' or 'until further notice'.

Evolutionism is the notion that history can be told as a narrative of development.

Functionalism is a school of thought that sees biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for the social sciences.