Runaway world: how globalisation is reshaping our lives

Anthony Giddens, Profile Books, 104 pages, paperback, £6.99

This short book is based on the six lectures given by Anthony Giddens on BBC Radio 4 and World Service at the end of 1999. His definition of globalisation is very broad. It is not only economic, especially in the form of the huge extent of finance and capital flows, but is also political, technological and cultural, and has been influenced above all by developments in the system of communication dating back only to the late 1960s. One of its main effects is that some of our traditional institutions, such as the family and parliamentary democracy are becoming "shell institutions", still with the same name even lthough their basic character has changed. Like Tony Blair, Giddens has abandoned any belief in socialism as a alternative society. Hence globalisation has to be accepted and each one of us must learn to live with the "risk" it imposes on us. In these lectures he discusses four main issues - risk, tradition, the family and democracy. In these and other areas, he says, we need new institutions to enable us to cope with the stresses and inequalities created by globalisation.