Travelling with vehicular ideas: The case of the third Way

Travelling with vehicular ideas: The case of the third Way

In all the various debates around Anthony Giddens's Third Way sequence, few attempts have been made to characterize its logic and impact as a type of discourse, a certain mode of ideas-work. The first dimension of this paper involves deploying Thomas Osborne's categories to depict the Thir...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economy and society 2004-11, Vol.33 (4), p.484-499
Main Author: McLennan, Gregor
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Concepts
critical intellectuals
Discourse
Giddens
Giddens, Anthony
Human capital
Ideas
Ideologies
Information exchange
Intellectuals
Knowledge
Political behavior
Political ideas
Political ideology
Problem solving
Social impact
Social Philosophy
Socialism
Sociology of knowledge
Theory
Third Way
vehicular ideas
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In all the various debates around Anthony Giddens's Third Way sequence, few attempts have been made to characterize its logic and impact as a type of discourse, a certain mode of ideas-work. The first dimension of this paper involves deploying Thomas Osborne's categories to depict the Third Way as a 'vehicular' idea, with the intellectual style of Giddens himself correlatively framed as that of a new sort of 'mediator'. In these terms, the essential inclusiveness and indeterminacy of the Third Way series of texts is illustrated, and the issue of what counts as ideas 'success' in the vehicular mode is broached. Second, in line with the inherent mobility of vehicular ideas, I identify the keynote shifts in Third Way thinking over time, including the sociological register that it occupies, its pragmatism and its relationship to New Labour politics. In a third phase, the article takes up questions about the role of the critical intellectual today and the practical, though not theoretical, recovery of 'ideology-critique' in appraising ideas like the Third Way. The scope and limits of the very notion of 'vehicularity' itself are central to this discussion.
ISSN:0308-5147
1469-5766