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Journal ArticleDOI

Review Articles : Central Dilemmas in Giddens's Theory of Structuration

01 Aug 1993-Thesis Eleven (SAGE Publications)-Vol. 36, Iss: 1, pp 138-150
About: This article is published in Thesis Eleven.The article was published on 1993-08-01. It has received 2 citations till now.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that cooking with solid fuels is a traditional practice and, using the capability approach, argue that this practice, which is influenced by persistent social arrangements, could constrain people's capabilities to pursue a flourishing life.
Abstract: Energy poverty is an alarming problem affecting nearly half of the global population who rely on solid fuels for cooking. Numerous interventions are in operation aiming to reduce the number of affected people, yet many have not achieved the desired level of change. This paper offers a novel perspective to conceptualise inertia towards entirely abandoning solid fuels. We explain that cooking with solid fuels is a traditional practice, and, using the Capability Approach, we argue that this practice, which is influenced by persistent social arrangements, could constrain people’s capabilities to pursue a flourishing life. It is also argued, applying a practice lens, that the perpetuation of the practice is a product of human agency dominated by established knowledge and other social practices. We postulate that inertia that is holding people from giving up solid fuels is formed around people's perpetual tendency to take recursive actions and refrain from performing new acions, guided by firmly rooted social structure. The paper argues that replacing solid fuels cannot be achieved only by simply giving access to modern fuels and stoves. Instead, it is imperative to understand the social context within which the reproduction of social practices takes place in order to break the structural resistance and enable transformation.

20 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: In this paper, a distinction between resources and services is made between the two types of potential services and services can be defined independently of their uses, while resources cannot be so defined, and this distinction is largely the source of the uniqueness of each individual firm.
Abstract: Stand am Anfang des Resource-based View zur Begrundung von Wettbewerbsvorteilen noch „anything which could be thought of as a strength (…) of a given firm“ (Wernerfelt 1984, S. 172), so werden heute vornehmlich organisationale Fahigkeiten, Kompetenzen, Prozeduren, Routinen und „patterns of current practice“ (Teece et al. 1997) als die zentralen Quellen anhaltender Wettbewerbsvorsprunge angesehen (vgl. etwa Teece et al. 1994; Campbell/Sommers Luch 1997). Insbesondere die letztere Interpretation des Resource-based View stellt die Erkenntnis in den Vordergrund, die Edith Penrose schon Ende der 50er Jahre zu Recht als zentrales Wesensmerkmal eines ressourcenbasierten Wettbewerbsverstandnisses verankerte: “Strictly speaking, it is never resources themselves that are the ‚inputs‛ in the production process, but only the services that the resources can render. The services yielded by resources are a Junction of the way in which they are used - exactly the same resource when used for different purposes or in different ways and in combination with different types or amounts of other resources provides a different service or set of services. The important distinction between resources and services (…) lies in the fact that resources consist of a bundle of potential services and can, for the most part, be defined independently of their uses, while services cannot be so defined. (…) As we shall see, it is largely this distinction that we find the source of the uniqueness of each individual firm“ (Penrose 1959, S 25; letzte Hervorh. S.D.; ahnlich auch Amit/Shoemaker 1993).

10 citations


Cites background from "Review Articles : Central Dilemmas ..."

  • ...…den situierten Aktivitäten han- 10 „The decentring of the subject is reinterpreted in the theory of structuration from the perspective of prac- tice“ (Browne 1993, S. 141). delnder Menschen Kontinuität „einhauchen“ und somit soziale Praktiken in ihrer systemischen Form innerhalb und…...

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