Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach
TL;DR: 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Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world.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.
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TL;DR: Critical realism as discussed by the authors provides an ontological foundation for theories of business markets, revealing the interaction of social structures and subjective agency in shaping professional buying processes and revealing emergent properties of business relationships, where interacting businesses create value that no individual company could produce in isolation.
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the sport policy process in the Republic of Korea through an examination of the cases of elite sport and sport for all, concluding that elitism is the most appropriate framework to apply in Korean sport policy.
Abstract: This thesis aims to analyse the sport policy process in the Republic of Korea
through an examination of the cases of elite sport and sport for all. This study
assesses the utility of a number of theoretical frameworks all of which were created
either in the North America or Europe. The following macro-level theories are
discussed and assessed: Marxism, Elitism and Pluralism. At the meso-level Policy
Community (Marsh and Rhodes 1992), Multiple Streams Framework (Kingdon,
1995) and Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier and Jenkin-Smith, 1999) were
investigated and their utility in the Korean context was evaluated.
Two case studies, elite sport and sport for all, were chosen and qualitative research
methods were used in order to gather empirical data. A series of forty three semistructured
interviews were undertaken. The first round of interview was conducted
between 22nd June 2007 and 11th July 2007 followed by more extensive second
round of interviews from 29th November 2007 to 15th June 2008 in Korea. The
interviewees included academics, journalists, elite athletes, senior officers in the
government and sub-national government, senior officers in national government
organisations such as KSC, NACOSA, SOSFO, senior officials in KISS, NGBs, the
business sector, the military sector and voluntary organisations such as YMCA.
Interview data was supported by extensive analysis of documents including
government reports, annual Sport White Papers, newspapers and magazine articles.
One of the central findings is that decision-making in relation to high performance
(elite) sport policy is dominated by members of the political, business and military
elite. High performance sport decision-making is tightly controlled by the
government which has been consistently the core actor in Korea’s elite sport policy
process with there being little evidence of civil society involvement. As regard
Sport For All, different levels of government and also non-government
organisations were involved in promoting Sport For All. However of particular note
is the lack of contact and cooperation between the government and other nongovernment
organisations, for example, YMCA in terms of sharing experiences of
promoting sport. Despite the involvement of different levels of government and of non-government organisations policy direction and momentum was largely set by
the elite level of central government.
The analysis reveals that elitism is the most appropriate framework to apply in
Korean sport policy at the macro-level. As for the meso-level, none of the three
frameworks were considered to be particularly useful although Policy Community
appeared to be appropriate in the early stage of the research.
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16 Sep 2021
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TL;DR: In this paper, a set of policy epistemologies based on state rules on informal vending in selected global South cities is presented and analyzed, and it is shown that understanding policy orientations in urban informality requires looking into the structure-agency interaction.
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