MonographDOI
Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach
TLDR
The Morphogenetic Cycle: the basis of the morphogenetic approach 7. Structural and cultural conditioning 8. The morphogenesis of agency 9. Social elaboration.Abstract:
Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and Agency, in this 1995 book Margaret Archer develops her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common theoretical practice. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Policy coherency and regime complexes: the case of genetic resources
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the development of regime complexes co-evolves with the pressures on decision makers to coordinate their policies in various issue-areas, and introduce a typology of policy coherency according to its procedural and substantive components.
Journal ArticleDOI
Emergence in Sociology A Critique of Nonreductive Individualism
TL;DR: The emergentist position that R. Keith Sawyer has formulated, nonreductive individualism, contains three propositions as mentioned in this paper, namely that social characteristics must always be realized in individuals.
Book ChapterDOI
How Agency Is Transformed in the Course of Social Transformation: Don’t Forget the Double Morphogenesis
TL;DR: In this article, the authors advanced the generative mechanism of late modernity as constituted by neo-capitalist market competition and the diffusion of digital science needing to work together, and resulting in intensified social morphogenesis.
Journal ArticleDOI
Giddens à la Carte? Appraising empirical applications of Structuration Theory in management and organization studies
TL;DR: Structuration theory for management and organization studies is viewed as a process theory that offers a distinct building block for explaining intra and interorganizational 15 change, as exemplified through concepts such as routine, script, genre, practice and discourse as discussed by the authors.