Travelling with vehicular ideas

The case of the third Way

Bibliographic Data

ID2159376
AuthorsGregor Mclennan
Year2004
Volume33
Issue4
Pages484-499
Publication date2004-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomy and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-5147 • E-ISSN: 1469-5766
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0308514042000285251
OpenAlexW2102016354
LanguageEN
Citations received45
References cited8

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

Argument (complex analysis · Dimension (graph theory · Epistemology · Ideology · Indeterminacy (philosophy · Mode (computer interface · Political science · Politics · Pragmatism · Scope (computer science · Sociology · Computer Science · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Religion and Society Interactions · Law · Philosophy

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