Introduction

Like Habermas, Giddens sought to develop a theoretical perspective on history that could inform analyses of the tensions and contradictions of contemporary capitalist society. Giddens's theoretical arguments about the historical formation of modernity were originally shaped by questions that related to the prospects of a transition to socialism and whether socialism is an immanent tendency within capitalist society (Giddens 1981a). He would later contend that the current phase of modernization has undermined and overtaken the conditions that had been used to formerly justify socialism. Rather than Habermas's proposed reconstruction of historical materialism, Giddens elaborated a critical deconstruction of Marx's theory of history (Giddens 1981; 1985). The project of a contemporary critique of historical materialism expanded on the structuration theory conception of practice that Giddens partly derived from Marx, but its ‘deconstruction’ of historical materialism's underlying assumptions contrasts with Habermas's endeavour to reconstruct them (Giddens 1981a).

Giddens's critique of historical materialism presents power as the linchpin of historical process, rather than material production or culture. Power is conceived to be constitutive of social relations of domination and power is expressed historically in the differing alignments of authoritative resources and allocative resources, as well as being articulated in the structuring of time- space relations. According to Giddens, the centrality of production, or allocative resources, to capitalism is one of the major reasons why modernity is radically discontinuous with preceding social formations. This historical change explains why, he argues that, class relations are integral to the reproduction of capitalism in a way that was not the case for prior social formations. At the same time, Giddens increasingly emphasizes that the principal institutions of modernity extend beyond capitalism and that the institution of authoritative resources, especially in the organization of military violence and surveillance, have substantially shaped modernity.

The separation between sociology and history is one of the binaries that Giddens has sought to overcome with the theory of structuration (Giddens 1984). This intention is evident in structuration theory's process approach and the importance that Giddens attributes to the temporal, as well as the spatial, constitution of society.