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Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world.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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01 Feb 2003
TL;DR: The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, a remarkable painting jointly executed circa 1615 by two painters with very different styles, hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague.
Abstract: The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man , a remarkable painting jointly executed circa 1615 by two painters with very different styles, hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. A standing Eve, offering the apple, and a seated Adam, receiving it, both in the left foreground, were portrayed figuratively by Peter Paul Rubens. The lush garden in which they are placed, an overwhelming background filled with dense flora and the prolific animal kingdom against which the protagonists and their act of exchange stand out, was painted by Jan Breughel the Elder, Pieter Breughel the Elder's second son and friend to Rubens. This collaboration, the best example I know in the visual arts of an oscillation and combination of perspectives and methodologies in a single work, is a performance of analytical history. Marking the critical moment when a single exchange disenchanted the world and transformed the status of humankind inside nature, it is, like the best historical social science, a work about a particular time, setting, and choice, a perceptible narrative constituted by a story of periodization and an account of preferences. What I wish to say about the vitality and possibility of comparative historical scholarship is contained in this canvass, or at least suggested by it. Macrohistorical scholarship tilts in the direction of periodization. This rich vein of learning, with a lineage in Marx's story of epochal transformations and class-based agency and in Weber's combination of “objective probability” with sequences and patterns of purposeful action composing what he called sources of “adequate causation,” primarily offers large structure analyses of long-term processes marked by titanic transformations.
141 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take a critical and evaluative stance toward micro-activity-based approaches to understanding strategy and argue against a tendency to reduceism without equal emphasis to the contextual influences that bound micro-strategising.
Abstract: This paper takes a critical and evaluative stance toward micro-activity-based approaches to understanding strategy. It argues that such approaches bring with them important theoretical and empirical challenges. The paper argues against a tendency to reductionism without equal emphasis to the contextual influences that bound micro-strategising. Finally, the paper argues for a more international and comparative approach to micro-strategy studies than has currently been the case.
141 citations
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TL;DR: The authors propose a liaison between middle-range theory and realist social theory to federate empirical inquiry in sociology, and demonstrate how middlerange realism can be applied to improve research using survey methods and evaluation research in two contrasting substantive areas.
Abstract: This paper proposes a liaison —‘middle-range realism’—between two long standing explanatory strategies in sociology— ‘middle-range theory’ and ‘realist social theory’. Each offers what the other lacks. Middle-range theory carries an acute sense of the function of theory within empirical inquiry but has left undeveloped any notion of its appropriate explanatory form. Realist social theory has propositional precision but has been unable, in the most part, to descend from a critical domain to the empirical plane. Middlerange realism thus offers a research strategy of the appropriate form and scope to lead and to federate empirical inquiry. Examples are provided of how middle-range realism can be applied to improve research using two different strategies (survey methods and evaluation research) in two contrasting substantive areas (voting behaviour and offender rehabilitation).
139 citations
TL;DR: One response to the possible outsourcing of the human resource (HR) function is to turn to "science" and seek to demonstrate an empirical association between HR practices and increased organization as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: One response to the possible outsourcing of the human resource (HR) function is to turn to ‘science’ and seek to demonstrate an empirical association between HR practices and increased organization...
139 citations
TL;DR: Situated learning as discussed by the authors explores the relationship between experiential education and other holistic theories of education including constructivism, social constructionism and cultural discourses, and provides a comprehensive theorization of learning as participation situated in the context of community practice.
Abstract: This paper explores the relationships between experiential education and other holistic theories of education including constructivism, social constructionism and cultural discourses. Situated learning is introduced because it provides a comprehensive theorization of learning as participation situated in the context of community practice. Thus situated learning affords a telling comparison with experiential education and provides conceptual structures which may support the further development of experiential education. The exploration of other learning theories broadly related to experiential education results in the identification of lacunae, or gaps, within experiential education. These lacunae exist specifically within the theory of learning in experiential education. The consequence of this is that the learning process in experiential education requires further theorization.
138 citations