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Learning PlanSessionsContributors
 The Globalisation Debate
 Anthony Giddens, Leslie Sklair
Anthony Giddens
giddensAnthony Giddens is the director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He started his academic career at the University of Hull, and went on to study for an M.A. in sociology at the LSE; by 1976 he had completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge University.

Giddens has held numerous teaching positions within sociology, including at the University of Leicester and the University of Cambridge, and has lectured extensively at many overseas universities. He has received 10 honorary degrees throughout his career. More recently he was the BBC Reith Lecturer in 1999.

Giddens is the most widely read and cited social theorist of his generation, authoring 34 books and countless articles and reviews. He co-founded the academic publishing house Polity Press in 1985 and still stands as chairman and director of Polity Press Ltd. as well as the director of Blackwell-Polity Ltd. He also stands as the chairman and director of the Centre for Social Research.

Giddens is well respected for developing the theory of structuration, and has been at the forefront of developing ideas in left-of-centre politics, helping to popularize the idea of the "third way," and travelling to many countries around the world to talk to political leaders and heads of state about the development of third way politics. Frequently referred to as "Tony Blair's guru," Giddens has also made a strong impact on the evolution of New Labour.




Leslie Sklair
SklairLeslie Sklair is a reader in sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is responsible for the doctoral programme in the sociology department. He has been a visiting professor at New York University, San Diego State University and Hong Kong University, and has lectured on globalisation all over the world. His Sociology of the Global System (1995) has been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, Chinese and Spanish. He has conducted fieldwork on transnational corporations in Mexico, China, Hong Kong, Egypt and Australia, and in Europe and North America.

Sklair's latest book, The Transnational Capitalist Class, aims to provide the first systematic, research-based sociological analysis of the relationships between processes of globalisation and the major transnational corporations that are widely considered to dominate the global economy. Using the Global Fortune 500 as an example, the book focuses on the extent of globalisation in these corporations.




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