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MonographDOI

Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach

Margaret S. Archer
- 01 Sep 1997 - 
- Vol. 22, Iss: 1, pp 335
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Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world.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.

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I, Teacher: re‐territorialization of teachers’ multi‐faceted agency in globalized education

TL;DR: In this paper, the focus becomes teachers' agency as a framework for understanding how teachers are redesigned and reassembled to do things differently within restructured education systems, and the discussion considers the possible consequences of teachers work and practice, given teachers's agency relative to the macro policy of superfigures and the transitional national/global structures.
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Defining personal reflexivity A critical reading of Archer’s approach

TL;DR: In this paper, the main contributions and limitations of the theory of reflexivity of Margaret Archer are discussed, focusing on the main contribution and limitation of Archer's approach, as well as the dimensions necessary for a more complex and multi-dimensional study of the concept, such as social origins, family socialization, processes of internalization of exteriority, the role of other structure mediation mechanisms and the persistence of social reproduction.
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Entrepreneurial action and the Euro-American social science tradition: pragmatism, realism and looking beyond ‘the entrepreneur’

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look to other social sciences such as sociology, as well as to history and the philosophy of science to shift the focus away from 'entrepreneurs' and onto the much broader phenomenon of entrepreneurial action or "entrepreneuring" in its societal and institutional contexts.
Journal ArticleDOI

Conceptualising the link between information systems and resilience: A developing country field study

TL;DR: Investigating what the subdiscipline of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) can contribute finds that it offers the IS discipline fresh insights that can be built into a new framework of resilience, and an arena within which this new framework can appropriately be field tested.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Undersocialised Conception of the Embodied Agent in Modern Sociology

Chris Shilling
- 01 Nov 1997 - 
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that while structuration theory and analytical dualism focus on the creative powers of human reflexivity, as part of their rejection of the oversocialised agent, the theoretical weight they place on consciousness neglects the socially shaped somatic bases of action and structure, and results in an undersocialised view of the embodied agent.