Anthony Giddens talks about his own inspiration as well as the nature and value of studying sociology today.

	What first inspired you to study sociology?
	Actually, my first degree was in psychology and sociology. At that time I thought of myself primarily as a psychologist. I had been interested in psychology a long time before I went to university. Arriving at the university, though, I got more and more disillusioned with the subject. It didn't seem to me, at least at that time, to offer what I was looking for - a better understanding of what makes the world and the people in it tick. Psychology was heavily experimental and didn't have too much to say about real world situations. I moved more and more towards sociology because it seemed to provide answers to the questions which preoccupied me. When I was in my first teaching job (at Leicester University) in the 1960s, I continued to teach psychology. But I moved more and more into sociology as my prime research interest. Sociology for me is not only about the big institutions, such as government organisations, business firms or societies as a whole. It is very much about the individual and our individual experiences. We come to understand ourselves much better through grasping the wider social forces that influence our lives. I refer to this in the opening chapter of the new edition of the text book. The American sociologist, C. Wright Mills put it very well. If a person loses his or her job, for example, it may be a personal tragedy. If hundreds of thousands of people are unemployed in a society, that personal tragedy can be put into a much wider perspective.
	What are the key issues facing sociologists at the opening of the 21st Century?
	We live in a world of quite dramatic change. Some thinkers believe that the world is changing as fundamentally today as happened with the early development of industrial society in the late eighteenth century. I think there is a good deal of truth in this view. There are three major sets of changes happening in contemporary societies and it is the task of sociology to analyse what they mean for our lives today. They are the following: First, the impact of globalisation. "Globalisation" refers to our increasing interdependence. Our lives are more closely tied than ever before to events and happenings many miles away, sometimes even on the other side of the world. The influence of globalisation is everywhere, including in the poorest countries in the world. Its most obvious expression is to be found in the role of financial markets, whose fluctuations affect each and every one of us. But globalisation isn't just economic: it refers also to the increasing intensity of communication, and to greater cultural and political integration. The past few years have seen a revolution in communications, linked to the connection of satellite technology to computers. We can communicate with anyone, at any point in the earth, and at any time in an instantaneous way. Instantaneous communication changes many aspects of how we live. Cultural globalisation is evident in the spread of the English language around the world and in the films and TV programmes that are sometimes seen by hundreds of millions of people in different countries. Politically, the world is more inter-connected than it ever was before: most governments now recognise that there are many decisions which can't be tackled simply on a national level - an example is ecological issues, which truly need to be confronted globally as well as locally. The second big influence is that of technological change. Information technology is altering many of the ways in which we work and in which we live. The nature of the jobs people do, for example, has been transformed. There are far fewer people working today working making manufactured goods than once was the case. Many such jobs have become automated, as a result of the introduction of information technology. The third fundamental set of changes is in our everyday lives. Our lives are structured less by the past than by our anticipated future. Habit, custom and tradition play less of a role for us than they did for previous generations, especially in the industrialised areas of the world. A good example here is the changing role of women. Women's role in society used to be largely fixed by tradition: it consisted mainly of a home centred life, involving learning for children. Today, however, women want increasingly to live more autonomous lives; and in Western countries large numbers of women now are in the paid Labour force. Sociology has a crucial part to play in working out both why these trends have become so important and what their likely consequences will be.
	Which single thinker or writer do you think has the greatest impact upon the nature of sociology today?
	I would tend to say that Max Weber has had the most pervasive and enduring impact on sociology. Weber is one of the three "founding fathers of sociology, the others being Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim. Marx's theories, of course, held sway across much of the world for most of the twentieth century. But they are in some respects now completely discredited. Durkheim's ideas have been a source of inspiration to many sociologists. For instance, in his book The Division of Labour in Society Durkheim set out a theory of social change which many subsequent sociologists have made use of. The same goes for his writings on social cohesion and on the social origins of religion. But in spite of Durkheim's very wide influence, I think Max Weber is really the key figure. He wrote on so many different areas that have influenced subsequent sociologists - including religion and the rise of capitalism, the nature of capitalist society, modern democracy, cities and urban life, class and stratification and many other fields besides. He also wrote a series of profound essays on logical and methodological problems of the social sciences. Most of his writings don't seem at all dated when we read them today.
	Why do you think people should choose to study sociology now?
	I would hope that the feelings and interests that I referred to in my answer to your opening question are also shared by many other people too. Sociology is a genuinely enlightening subject. Most people who study sociology are changed by the experience. The reason is that sociology offers a different perspective on the world from that which most people have when they start out in the subject. Sociology helps us look beyond the immediate contexts of our lives and so helps us understand the causes of our own actions better. Sociology also can help us change the world for the better. In other words, sociology also has an important practical dimension. To take just one example, we couldn't hope to improve people's education without understanding the structure of schools, how pupils and teachers interact with each other in a class room, what handicaps poorer children face, and so forth.

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