Re: Giddens and Existentialism

Greetings,

What is the relationship, in Giddens' work(s), between what you call the tradition of 'mass culture' evoked by him, and 'participative, transformative agency'? Perhaps the connection he makes between them (in his The Third Way: the text that responds to critics of his book by the same name) is that mass culture is itself transformative through the mediation of international nongovernmental organizations?

Yes it seems as though Giddens opt for this reconciliatory path. However I, for one, am little bit puzzled how this participative-transformative aganecy could be anchored in what Giddens call 'ontological security' of a Kirekegaardian dread-existentialism. It seems as though Giddens is trying to solve the grand problem of existentialism of Ethos kind by elevating it to a collective domain via a 'social-institutional' notion of trust and responsibility. Although he himself seems critical of such a trend but does not offer any direction in terms of what Simon de Bouvire terms 'Ethics of Authenticity'.

Kind