Anthony Giddens is arguably the world's leading sociologist. In this controversial contribution to the Giddens debate, Stjepan Mestrovic takes up and criticizes the major themes of his work - particularly the concept of 'high modernity' as opposed to 'postmodernity' and his attempted construction of a 'synthetic' tradition based on human agency and structure. Confronting Giddens' as theorist and social critic with the realities of world developments from the continuing genocide in Africa to atrocities in Chechnya to the secessionism in Quebec, this book argues that the construction of synthetic traditions holds the ominous potential of ushering in a new form of totalitarian control - what Mestrovic calls 'postmotionalism', rather than the possibility of freedom and agency promised by Giddens.