Showing papers on "Structure and agency published in 1996"

Social Integration and System Integration: Developing the Distinction:

Abstract: This paper underlines the importance of the distinction between `social' and `system' integration (agency and structure) introduced by David Lockwood in 1964. Its four sections (i) examine the original difficulty of maintaining any distinction between the `parts' of society and its `people' against the social ontology of Individualism whose proponents argued that the former must always be reduced to the latter as individuals were the ultimate constituents of society, (ii) shows how collectivist opposition held `systemic factors' to be indispensable in sociological explanations, but could not substantiate their ontological status against the charge of reification whilst empiricism held sway, (iii) explores how once the individualist/collectivist debate was superseded, Lockwood's distinction was redefined in structuration theory, where insistence on treating structure and agency as mutually constitutive effectively denied their independent variation and thus reduced the `social' and the `systemic' to differ...

Structure and agency in management accounting research: a response to Boland's interpretive act

Abstract: In his paper, “Accounting and the Interpretive Act”, Boland [Accounting, Organizations and Society (1993), pp. 1–24] argues that our paper Macintosh & Scapens [Accounting, Organizations and Society (1990), pp. 455–477] which used structuration theory as a framework for management accounting research is a structuralist analysis which merely views structuration at a distance and ignores the role of the human agent in the creation of meaning. In this paper we clarify our position and deal with Boland's specific criticisms of our discussion. After noting some inconsistencies in Boland's own position, we discuss the need for methodological brackets in operationalizing structuration theory. Giddens offers a bilateral set of brackets and distinguishes between institutional analysis and the analysis of strategic conduct. We draw on Giddens' distinction between institutional analysis and the analysis of strategic conduct to argue that both Boland's and our viewpoints can be accommodated within structuration theory. We then suggest that this accommodation has implications for some of the wider debates which have taken place between accounting researchers who use different social theories in their studies of accounting practice.

The politics of cultural difference in northern Cameroon

Abstract: The historical constitution of a multi-ethnic society the Fulbe ethnic category and its incorporative potential the Gbaya ethnic category - peripheralization or political mobilization? the Mbororo ethnic category - distinction and exclusion situation, agency and structure in inter-ethnic relations violence and the politics of difference in global and local perspective an epilogue on ethnicity.

The ontologist always rings twice: two more stones about structure and agency in reply to Hollis and Smith

Abstract: The focus of inquiry for a critical, post-positivist International Relations requires a shift away from concern over universalist epistemological legitimacy and a move towards understanding the ontological underpinnings of international social, political, and economic life. Recent debates over the ‘agency—structure problem’, as represented in the Wendt vs Hollis and Smith debate and more recently in the latter's response to Walter Carlsnaes, have centred around Hollis and Smith's assertion that there are always ‘two stories to tell’, both ontological and epistemological, and that because of an assumed causal relationship between agency and structure, epistemology is as important as ontology, or stands on the same footing. In providing two further stories in our reply to Hollis and Smith, we argue firstly, that an ontological discourse, such as that suggested in Giddens's theory of structuration, must precede substantive epistemological questions, and secondly, that an assumed universalist epistemology negates difference in international social life.

C.P. Snow's Fictional Sociology of Management and Organizations

Abstract: This paper seeks to use CP Snow's Strangers and Brothers novel sequence as a resource to demonstrate aspects of organizational life and, in particular, the social practices of managers The paper begins with a discussion of the case for using fiction in organizational analysis Then, Snow's novels, following an overview, are explored in two major ways First, Snow's account of decision-making in organizations is shown to be a subtle and incisive account of group processes, which is sensitive to the dialectic of structure and agency Second, the development of the novel sequence is shown to indicate something of the dissolution of the modernist scientific rationality which has dominated management and organization theory and practice Thus the paper aspires to persuade that there is an interest in Snow's fiction for organizational analysis and, more generally, that it is desirable to use fictional representations within the academic study of management and organizations

'You just wear what you want don't yer'? : an empirical examination of the relationship between youth consumption and the construction of identity

Abstract: The social scientific debate over consumption is of increasing concern to commentators addressing the cultural implications of socio-economic change. All too often, however, the individual meanings that consumers have for the goods they consume have been neglected by these commentators, notably in favour of abstract discussions of the role of consumption in the emergence of a 'postmodern' culture. Arguing that consumption provides the sociologist with an invaluable means of addressing questions concerning the relationship between structure and agency, this thesis attempts to move beyond the limited conception of a fragmented self, picking and choosing his or her identity from the menu of life, to begin to establish an empirical grounding for the relationship between consumption and identity amongst young people. Data were collected from a triangulated three-stage research process, in the form of a series of focus group interviews, informed by Personal Construct Psychology, a participant observation study in a sports shop, and a Consumer Meanings Questionnaire. Arguing that young people's identities are largely constructed in peer group settings, the evidence presented suggests that consumption provides an everyday cultural framework, within which young consumers negotiate some semblance of everyday stability in a 'risk' society. In this sense, young people appear to pursue a dual task. First, they are intent upon forming group-based identities. Second, they attempt to construct a sense of individuality in this context. Hence, it is argued that whilst young people choose consumer goods according to peer group meanings, they tend to see their own choices as 'individual' and those of their peers as being determined by media and marketing-created desires. As such, whilst it would be misleading to see young people as dupes of the capitalist system, neither are they free agents. Teenagers construct their identities partially through the framework that consumption provides, but not with products of their own choosing. Far from being whimsical consumers in this context, I argue that essentially, young people are modernists, adapting to the rational constraints upon their everyday lives and changing the character of their consumption patterns accordingly. The situated realities of so-called postmodern forms of consumption can therefore only be understood, it is argued, through innovative triangulated research methods which address consumer meanings in routine everyday settings and which, in turn, consider the theoretical implications of such meanings, for both an understanding of the ideological impact of consumerism and it's relationship to debates concerning structure and agency.

A Review of The Models of Land Development Process: The Structure Models

Abstract: This is the final part of a three series paper reviewing the models Df land development process. One aspect which is lacking in all the three types of models discussed earlier is the focus on the way the production of the built environment is influenced by ""ider forces, It is suggested that the structure models seek to overcome this by focu,sing cxplaination of the development process within the perspective of the structural dynamics of the modes of production. However, they barely penetrate into the details of the events of the land development process and the network of the agency relationships. Therefore, it is concluded that the land development process is best explained within the critical framework of the institutional analysis as shaped by the structure and agency approach

Crime and oppression: Structure and agency in the Inner City

Abstract: There are fundamental tensions facing criminologists who are interested in connecting scholarship With social change. These include grappling with social structure and individual responsibility, and with victimization and agency in the lives of individuals who engage in crime. We must also deal with what policy and social activism can mean in a society so Unwilling to take responsibility for its part in the creation of crime, and for people whose life experiences have often resulted in a 'resistance for survival' (Robinson and Ward 1991) that in turn has devastating effects both for themselves and for others in their communities. 1 There remains a dearth of scholarship and public discourse that takes a critical approach to the causes and meanings of crime. In response to this blind or intentional 'individual blame' approach, critical criminologists have often written in ways that focus exclusively on structure, and/or in ways that tend to romanticize offenders and frame their criminal involvement simply as a result of victimization, or as a form of resistance against oppression. MacLean summarizes: