A trading card with a British sociologist on it has a subtly ridiculous quality. It’s not ridiculous in a negative sense; rather, it’s absurd in a way that causes you to pause, take another look, and then want to tell someone about it right away. The card in question features Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens, who was born in 1938 and is perhaps the most well-known social theorist of the late 20th century. It originates from a series created by scholar David Gauntlett, who apparently came to the conclusion that sociology should be treated the same as Yu-Gi-Oh characters and Premier League football players. It’s the kind of concept that, until you see it, seems absurd.
The card is tidy, compact, and strangely endearing. Giddens’s name, his nationality, and a few words about structuration theory—the framework he developed to explain how big social structures and individual human behavior constantly influence one another—are all written on it.
It takes a career to fully understand the concept of structuration and a semester to get comfortable with it. Depending on who you ask, fitting it onto a trading card is either brilliant reduction or mild heresy. There appears to be a lot of disagreement in university sociology departments regarding which one it is.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that Gauntlett’s original intent for the card has been greatly exceeded. The Giddens card frequently reappears on Pinterest boards, in Reddit threads, and in the back corners of academic Twitter. It can be used as satire, as genuine enthusiasm for merchandise, or as the beginning of protracted debates about whether turning theory into collectibles trivializes the work. The arguments seem out of proportion to the topic. However, that could be precisely the point.
Giddens is a man who is difficult to categorize. His structuration theory, which was most fully developed in his 1984 book, challenged the notion that social structure or individual agency could be the only explanations for how society functions.
He maintained that the solution was always both, constantly influencing one another. It’s a framework that underpins a great deal of contemporary social science, including, somewhat paradoxically, scholarly examination of the reasons behind the initial cultural significance of phenomena like Pokémon card collecting. That connection is made in a paper. Therefore, the Giddens trading card is in a peculiar cycle: it is a collectible item that has been examined through a theoretical lens by the same theorist whose lens you would use to examine it.
The card is genuinely intriguing as a cultural artifact because it sits on the brink of multiple things at once, which is likely why it continues to spark debates. It is both parody and merchandise. It is absurd and instructive. It’s the kind of thing that a first-year student might find amusing without understanding why, and that a professor might find unsettling without being certain that’s a valid response. Anthony Giddens’ trading card has evolved into a subtle test of how seriously you take the distinction between ideas and the things that carry them.
It probably depends more on you than on Giddens whether the card belongs in a joke shop or a seminar room. He wrote about that tension throughout his career, if nothing else.
