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Modernity and Self-Identity
Giddens's 1991 book — the work that most fully developed the concepts of ontological security, the reflexive project of the self, and fateful moments — and the single most important theoretical resource for understanding the AI transition as an identity phenomenon.
Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age is the book in which Giddens most fully developed his sociological account of the self under conditions of late modernity. It synthesized his work on structuration, abstract systems, and risk into a comprehensive framework for understanding how identity is constructed, maintained, and threatened in conditions of continuous institutional reflexivity. The central concepts — the reflexive project of the self, ontological security, fateful moments, the sequestration of experience — have become essential vocabulary for analyzing the AI transition's impact on professional identity and existential meaning.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The book appeared in 1991, during the period in which Giddens was publishing a series of major works on modernity: The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), and The Transformation of Intimacy (1992). Together they constitute Giddens's most sustained engagement with the