"Structure" is one of the most important, elusive, and undertheorized concepts in the social sciences. Setting out from a critique and reformulation of Anthony Giddens's notion of the duality of structure and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus, this article attempts to develop a theory of structure that restores human agency to social actors, builds the possibility of change into the concept of structure, and overcomes the divide between semiotic and materialist visions of structure. "Structure" is one of the most important and most elusive terms in the vocabulary of current social science. The concept is central not only in such eponymous schools as structural functionalism, structuralism, and poststructuralism, but in virtually all tendencies of social scientific thought. But if social scientists find it impossible to do without the term "structure," we also find it nearly impossible to define it adequately. Many of us have surely had the experience of being asked by a "naive" student what we mean by structure, and then finding it embarrassingly difficult to define the term without using the word "structure" or one of its variants in its own definition. Sometimes we find what seems to be an acceptable synonym-for example, "pattern"-but all such synonyms lack the original's rhetorical force. When it comes to indicating

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2781191.pdf

A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation

Two very powerful stories structure the history of the changing roles of English women. The tale of the nineteenth-century separation of the spheres of public power and private domesticity relates principally to the experience of middle-class women. The other story, emerging from early modern scholarship, recounts the social and economic marginalization of propertied women and the degradation of working women as a consequence of capitalism. Both narratives echo each other in important ways, although strangely the capacity of women's history to repeat itself is rarely openly discussed. This paper critically reviews the two historiographies in order to open debate on the basic categories and chronologies we employ in discussing the experience, power and identity of women in past time.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0018246X93000019

Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history*

1. Economic growth during the long twentieth century Nicholas Crafts 2. From empire to Europe: Britain in the world economy Kevin O'Rourke 3. Population, migration and labour supply Tim Hatton 4. Health and welfare Bernard Harris 5. Income and living standards Ian Gazeley 6. Technology, innovation and economic growth Tom Nicholas 7. Consumption and affluence Avner Offer 8. Cycles and depressions Matthias Morys 9. The City and the corporate economy David Chambers 10. Armaments and the economy Jari Eloranta 11. The deindustrial revolution: the rise and fall of UK manufacturing, 1870-2010 Michael Kitson and Jonathan Michie 12. The rise of the service sector Steve Broadberry 13. The household economy Peter Scott 14. Growth of the public sector Bob Millward 15. Soft power: the media industries Gerben Bakker 16. Sterling and monetary policy Catherine Schenk 17. Economic policy and management Roger Middleton 18. Economic ideas and ideology Roger Backhouse and Keith Tribe.

The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain

Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that the advance has occurred through such an outpouring of research and writing that it is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of recent monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three complementary perspectives: those of regional communities, of the working and living environment, and of social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change.

The Cambridge social history of Britain, 1750-1950

Rehabilitating the industrial revolution. Gradualist perspectives now dominate economic and social histories of the industrial revolution. Analyses of economic change which rely on growth accounting and macroeconomic estimates of productivity indicate continuity with the past; social historians have followed in turning aside from the analysis of new class formations. This article challenges these perspectives. Currently accepted economic indicators and recent social history underplay the extent and uniqueness of economic and social transformation. The article emphasizes change in technology, the use of a female and child labour force, regional specialization, demographic behaviour, and political change.

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Raphael Samuel

Papers

WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD: Steam Power and Hand Technoloy in Mid-Victorian Britain