Top sociologist Anthony Giddens has a knack for creating things. So what magic has this 'conjuror' got in store for the LSE when he takes over as director next month? Harriet Swain reports.
An interview with Anthony Giddens begins with him firing off a barrage of questions that continues until he has defined its context. The Cambridge professor of sociology, who takes up directorship of the London School of Economics next month, does not stand back and let things happen. While already wrestling with a stack of documents outlining the LSE's financial position, he has started writing a book on the position of Britain in the late 20th century, using it as a model to explore changes taking place throughout the world.
He will also be keeping an interest in Polity Press, the publishing group he set up ten years ago that has since become one of the chief social studies publishers, producing about 90 books a year. And he fully intends to continue his research into risk, social globalisation and political change, which will form the basis of a series of lectures at the LSE.
He explains why he is so prolific in simple terms. "One book leads to another, one thought leads to another," he says. Start him on the thinking roll and, with a steady gaze and unassuming manner, he will pull out ideas like a string of coloured handkerchiefs from a bottomless pocket.
Just as you feel they must be coming to an end, that he cannot possibly hold any more, he will draw out one more and then another and then a further seemingly endless stream until he decides to stop.
"He's a conjuror," says Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor of sociology at Leeds. "He creates things out of nothing. He created one of the most important social science publishing houses in the world out of nothing and then developed sociology at Cambridge, which was an incredible feat. He's published a whole series of works which influence our theories of contemporary society. He's very good at creating."
Giddens is by far the most famous sociologist in England and so much has been written about him that there is talk of a "Giddens industry". Yet like any good conjuror he is skilful at diverting attention away from his person and focusing it on his handiwork.
At the base of this work is "structuration", Giddens's idea that social structure and individual action are inextricably linked and that human beings can draw on information and experience to transform the structures that organise them. From this comes his interest in the globalisation of society as the result of modern communications, the contrasting pressure on the individual that goes with it and the increased element of risk that accompanies the breakdown of traditional social structures.
"Everything is becoming experimental," he says. "We live in a culture where we cannot avoid thinking in terms of risk. You cannot rely on the past to guide you and that applies to personal life as well as to global futures."
But while he talks passionately about his studies into the modern transformation of private life, particularly the unsettling effects on human relations of the women's movement, he clams up when speaking of his own background, offering just the bare bones.
He was born in 1938 into a lower middle-class north London family. His father worked as a clerk on the tube, his mother as a housewife. His younger brother survived the trauma of not passing his 11-plus to become a highly successful director of television commercials in Hollywood. Giddens himself fell into academia by accident after first wanting to be a civil servant.
His critics argue that he creates too restlessly, never pausing to round off his ideas. Less broadly focused academics are particularly nervous of his propensity to dip in and out of their subjects, mastering and appropriating what he finds interesting and fitting it in with his own theories.
Far from seeing any shame in this, Giddens prides himself on keeping his fingers in lots of pies as a means both of stimulating yet more ideas and of discovering consistency in the kind of changes happening in the world.
He insists that he comes to the LSE as a social scientist with substantial knowledge across different disciplines rather than as just a sociologist. While he is confident of the entrepreneurial skills he will bring to the post after experience on Polity Press and top Cambridge committees, he is determined to keep up his research. "I don't just want to be a bureaucrat," he says. "In a university, intellectual property is also financial property. My keeping intellectually involved is an important part of how I do the job. I don't believe in universities being run by just economic motives."
Yet his post will involve quite a few sticky economic decisions, not least the question of introducing student top-up fees. Giddens insists that while LSE governors have decided in principle that fees are an option, he retains a genuinely open mind and will continue to do so until he has had a chance to inspect the school's full economic position.
But he believes financial restructuring of higher education inevitable, given that expansion is likely to continue without more money from government, and feels it is up to individual institutions to work out their own solutions.
Whatever its final decision, he wants the LSE to play a key role in this debate. In fact, he wants the LSE to play a role in most of the political debates taking place in this country and overseas. This time, his job will involve building on a rock-solid reputation for excellence rather than creating something out of nothing.
But Giddens does not believe in relying on the past. He has ambitions to propel the LSE to the top of the international education league, rivalling Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by attracting new professors, encouraging political involvement and broadening its interests.
He wants it to be a powerhouse for developing the new political agenda that he sees as inevitable following the breakdown of old left/right divisions.
The strong possibility of a new government taking power in Britain in the spring with a leader in Tony Blair who appears to share many of Giddens's ideas will make it ideally placed.
He also wants the LSE to be an intellectual powerhouse for London, both as a capital and as a global city and aims to make it more of a cultural centre, like London's Institute of Contemporary Arts with members of the public dropping in to listen to lectures or attend exhibitions.
The strong public image directorship of the LSE will bring holds no fears for him. He points out he already has a high profile in the academic world through his work - a profile that should help to attract the big names he wants for the LSE.
A recent piece in The Times diary described him as "as dry as a Bath Oliver biscuit" pointing out that he listed no interests in Who's Who.
In fact he is a keen tennis player and devoted Spurs supporter. What his Who's Who entry does list is more than 20 of his publications and it is a safe bet that he found all of them interesting.
For Giddens is primarily an enthusiast, hungry for information. He loves being an academic and he loves his subject. "If you are interested in sociology you are interested in everything about the process of lives," he says.